Financial Priorities

I have been reading Your Money or Your Life recently. I'm only part way through the book but the big takeaway for me so far is a short mental checklist for expenditures:

1) How much fulfillment, satisfaction, and value do you get from an expenditure compare to the life energy spent?

2) How is this expenditure aligned with your values and purpose?

3) How would this expenditure change if you no longer had to work?

It is a good reminder for me that for each purchase we are trading my time (life energy) in return for whatever we are buying. It reminds me to stay focused on our financial freedom goal and reexamine that what we think we really need vs what is a nice to have. I can think of several purchases over the past year that wouldn't make it past this mental checkpoint.

Related in Financial Goals:

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Comments (4)

Now that we're living on one income I don't think we could ever go back to having us both working, the trade off of time/money is too great, it's something that really struck home when I received a job offer last year, all of a sudden there would be a bunch of sacrifices we would have to make (vacation/kids activities & school/time together/etc.), in the final analysis it wasn't worth it

Posted by PFM | February 20, 2012 10:39 AM

I agree. Your Money or Your Life is a game changer if you read it carefully and apply it to your existence.

Posted by BusyExecutiveMoneyBlog | February 20, 2012 2:01 PM

Good points in your article! If you make $10 an hour and you go buy an $800 flat screen, that's 2 full week's worth of work! If you count taxes it's more than that. But you get the point. I don't think people think about how much time and energy it takes to make money and they spend it on things that give them very little pleasure.

Posted by Jason Spencer | February 27, 2012 10:16 PM

Well, in other words working is selling time and life energy, then more expensive your energy is than more successful you are. I think that setting right priorities is very important, you should know whta you want from life and what your money attitude is. I agree with you that before purchsing something it's worth to remember that we give our energy and our time. It's important to respect yourself and your job and do not buy unnecessary things. When you work, earn money and spend it wisely you respect your time and yourself.

Posted by Brian | August 31, 2012 2:09 AM