Your Money or Your Life – Official Website – Vicki Robin

Why did you buy that? Buy That? Buy that? Why?

Why indeed. What’s behind our consumer behavior – be it consuming stuff or websites or fads or cookies or the latest hot speaker (oops, would that be me?)?

We say: it was my color, I heard such good things about him/it/them, I was hungry/bored/curious, it was for my PhD research/husband/recipe. Yes… but… let’s look deeper. Could it be that we “buy” it because of very human yet rarely spoken about emotions. Like envy, gluttony or regret. She had one and I wanted one too. I can have whatever I want and you can’t stop me. How can I fix the past?

While these are hard to admit, they are also keys to happiness… by turning them on their heads, looking for the possibilities for pleasure within the pain. Ugh. Masochism? Nope, read on. (more…)

Okay, I can’t resist. Just turned 65, which has many benefits. The local movie is $2 off. It’s half off to take the ferry as a foot passenger. Medicare gives me twice the coverage as before – for half the cost. Beyond the financial, though, this cultural passage into “senior citizen” has me celebrating Life – as this photo taken at my birthday party celebrated with my improvisational theater troupe attests …

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Today I received a tote bag from Penguin, publisher of Your Money or Your Life. Our book (meaning the authors but also everyone who has helped it reach a large public) has been selected as one of the top 75 books Penguin has published in 75 years. You can even go on this website and vote for your favorite. Not to say you like Your Money or Your Life more than Moby Dick or Eat, Pray, Love or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest- but you might.

The tote bag is printed with all the spines of all 75 books. Seeing Your Money or Your Life there among truly the literary stars almost got me crying. (more…)

John Robbins, a speaker in the Conscious Money Speakers Series recently wrote The New Good Life. One Chapter is in fact his recapitulation of Your Money or Your Life. Read the following interview in the U.S. News and World Report and get inspired all over agains:

U.S. News & World Reports interviewed me recently about my latest book, The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less.  They have so far run two short pieces, one on intergenerational childcare and one on recovering from financial loss. (more…)

I just paid my “carbon sin tax” for all my globetrotting in the last year. I put 24 tons of carbon into the atmosphere and I decided to donate my “tax” to a local Land Trust purchase of a square mile of forest on the island where i live. You could do the calculation and donate to a conservation project in your community. Or beyond. Feel free to steal the idea. Even the writing (more…)

In February the NYTimes began a series about how strapped Americans are addressing the Long Recession.  “Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.” Thus begins the first article in the series.

I’m very interested in two things:

1. How ARE you adapting, adjusting, rethinking, retooling, reschooling, etc.? And to what? Foreclosure? Job loss? Moving to follow the money? Please post comments below so we all can learn from your stories, no matter where you are in the process.

2. If you’ve heeded Your Money or Your Life in some way, has it made a difference in these hard times?  I has for me… (more…)

Please enjoy this TED talk by Daniel Gilbert. And then I’ll tell you why it is for me a most delicious 18 minutes.

In the years between the second edition of Your Money or Your Life (1998) and the third which was a rewrite (2008), a lot happened in my life.  I spent half a decade taking more stabs at large scale social change: (more…)

Listen to the recording from April, 2010

Well, Melinda Tuhus did me/us a great favor by summarizing the workshop John deGraaf and I did at the Gross National Happiness conference. Please check out this link as it has a lot of very good information in it about John’s “Take Back Your Time” work… and a decent picture of moi.

http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/happiness_blog_part_2/id_26797

It’s been too long since I posted. Busy. On the road for nearly 2 months with a small pit stop home. Last week I was at the GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS conference in VT and then spoke on a GNH panel at the Green Festival in Seattle. This keys into my Summer’s theme: happiness. What it is? How we find it? Keep it? Spread it? Make societies that have happiness, not just economic activity, as the bottom line. So here’s a brief update on GNH for ya. (more…)