Your Money or Your Life – Official Website – Vicki Robin

An actual friend unsubscribed from my e-list today, and I don’t blame her. Right now I’m sending out more emails about my upcoming classes than I think is kind to anyone’s inbox – but it’s the best way I have to tell fans and friends about what I am teaching. Today I want to tell you why the flurry – and assure you it’ll settle down.

Money: Joe Dominguez (who was both practical and prescient) saw over 20 years ago our current economic crashing about. We wrote and promoted Your Money or Your Life to help the maximum number of people to eliminate debt, live within their means, save and get creative about meeting their non material needs non materially. The first edition reached a million people. We’re hoping the 2008 update reaches the next. My free classes next week are all to introduce the Your Money or Your Life approach and practices to as many people as possible and the KickStart class is to support you in setting up the systems to do the program – in a community of equally committed people.

Enough: You actually can’t achieve the amazing results with the Your Money or Your Life program if you can’t identify your “enough point” – that place of maximum happiness beyond which more isn’t better, it’s clutter. It turns out that the same strategies for identifying your money and stuff “enough point” work for food, time, commitments, committees, emails, striving and stress. As we shift from a preference from more to a preference for enough, we will learn to live well together within the means of the earth. And this is my hope and goal and intention and dream. This class is my contribution to the general cause.

Brazil: Happiness is my third area of education. Happiness is a result of having enough. Of experiencing contentment. Of knowing your life actions are aligned with your life goals. Ever since I first walked off a plane in Brazil (2001) I’ve known that something else is going on there and it had to do with an ease and sensuality from head to toe. I was so aware that I had a head with something hanging off it to walk me around and keep it going. I was all mind and hands – will and doing. Brazil was heart and soul. And still is.

I’ve been there 5 times now. I’m ever more Brazilian in my own heart and soul. Even activism feels happy there, full of laughter and dancing and good fun. I want you to feel it and thus to reorient your own efforts to change something – yourself, the world – around happiness rather than striving. You’ll stick with it and enjoy it and be less of a pill to those around you. And I think happiness is a more appealing horizon than mere “frugality” or even simplicity. It’s how life is once you let go of the products based notion of the good life.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for my current barrage of emails and if you aren’t part of the list, you’ll click the link at top and join in. And I hope you sign up for the classes. I really do!

Just sent out an email to my list about The Power of Enough; How Much is Enough? Of Anything? If you didn’t get it, you’re not on my email list and you can sign up by clicking the link at the top of this site. It’s huge. You can’t miss it. You can listen in to the first class free, but I’m giving a nice discount to those who sign up before that.

Speaking of Enough, I’m doing a 10 Mile Diet in September. Say what? 10 miles? I’m blogging at www.10milediet.wordpress.com if you are curious. It’s an experiment in hyper-local living. (more…)

“Smart SWF looking for a good bargain. Are you the one?” Interested? According to ING Direct and eHarmony, you might be.

When ING Direct Bank asked 1000 people what they’d think of a blind date described as frugal, only “3.7 percent answered “sexy,” while 15 percent picked “boring” and 27 percent chose “stingy.””

Back when we wrote Your Money or Your Life we tried valiantly to redefine frugal as cool. A “high joy to stuff ratio.” Even though frugality is a non-starter in the dating scene, ING discovered that “smart” is attractive. The NY Times article on the subject goes on to say “EHarmony also crunched the numbers on 30 million matches (more…)

You’re invited to join me and a dozen other adventuresome people on a Journey to the Heart of Brazil from November 27-December 9. Click the link to see the beautiful brochure.Journey to the Heart of Brazil Brochure

You will visit several eco-villages, see social change projects in favelas (slums), meet social movement leaders, visit biodiversity reserves, dance at a Samba club in Rio, (more…)

One more post before bed… To those who attended the EPA webinar, didn’t we have a grand time? It’ll be posted soon so the rest of you can join in. I’m glad to be teaching straight up YMOYL again.

It’s no news to you that we are in a persistent Recession. Calling it “double dip” makes it sound like ice cream but honest interpreters (from Paul Krugman to the Federal Reserve to name two) now admit we could be headed for deflation. No time like the present to once again encourage masses of people to use the 9-step program to clean financial house and put up some savings at the rate that farmers put up vegetables for the winter.

Consider my re-emphasis on Your Money or Your Life 9-step program to be Canning Lessons – how to grow and store money to have the security of enough and the happiness of freedom.

As you can see with the new teleclasses, (more…)

Since we’re talking about happiness (on this blog and in the Happiness 101 course this Fall) I wanted to share a snippet from Jurriaan Kamp of Ode Magazine: There is much that the West can learn from the rest (of the world). … For one thing: People in challenging circumstances in developing countries are focused on solutions. They are creative and constantly find new ways to improve their lives. As a reader recently wrote on odemagazine.com: “Too many people in industrialized countries are losing hope. (more…)

On August 19 (coming right up) I’ll be doing a talk/free webinar at the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle. You can sign up for the free webinar free here. And here’s the promo:

ENOUGH FOR LIFE: The “Your Money or Your Life” approach to living well within your (and the earth’s) means

Join us for a free webinar on Thursday, August 19, 2010 from noon to 2 pm (Pacific)! (more…)

As loyal readers know. Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) was selected by my publisher, Penguin, as one of their 75 all time great books to celebrate their 75th anniversary. Yay.

As you may know from looking at my 65th birthday picture in a prior post, I’ve lost weight. Yay. But it now bounces around in a 3 pound range and this morning’s bounce was up. Boo.

At the point of reissue in 2008, Your Money or Your Life was in the top 100 on Amazon. Yay. (more…)

Three years ago Katie Teague came to my apartment (while I was recovering from cancer and it shows…), making a film about Money & Life. Here’s a trailer for the film, followed by an excerpt of her interview with me. It looks like a very important film for these time… as our faith in the money system erodes. Consider donating! And consider signing up for the KickStart teleclass for support in transforming your own relationship with money.

http://www.moneyandlifemovie.com/

http://www.moneyandlifemovie.com/interviews/Robin/Robin.html

This child mesmerized by flowers in a meadow speaks of real wealth to me.