is a book about gaining financial independence. "Trick or treat?" - a book about gaining financial independence Trick or treat download fb2

"Trick or treat".

What would you do if someone stuck a gun in your ribs and uttered this phrase? I think that most would prefer to part with the wallet. The threat is valid because we value ours more than money. Or not?

Penny W. worked 70 hours a week and was considered a successful sales agent, but it was all wrong. She says:
After reading books like Paul Wachtel's The Poverty of Affluence, I realized that I wasn't alone in feeling like "something is passing me by." I started talking to people, and it turned out that many feel the same way. Having bought a comfortable house, stuffed with all sorts of household appliances, I often thought: “Is that all?” Do I just have to work and work - to exhaustion, and then be thrown into retirement - to waste the accumulated savings and waste the rest of my life?
Karl M. always loved music, but his life was spent mainly in the work related to the processing of databases. Everything was fine with him, but the hope that music would take the main place in his life disappeared. He wasn't sure he knew what it meant to be a man, so he diligently acquired all the attributes that he thought could help him become one, and waited for them to give meaning to his life in and of themselves. Carl graduated from college, got married, became a good professional, got a good job, bought a car, took out a house mortgage, and mowed his lawn regularly. He did not feel like a grown man - on the contrary, he did not leave the feeling that he had fallen into a trap.
Diana J. quietly hated her job as a programmer. She performed her duties to a minimum - so much so that there was nothing to fire her for. She had all the attributes of a successful person - a sports car, a house in the suburbs, but they did not compensate for the boredom that overcame her at work. Diana became interested in traveling, signed up for several clubs of interest, but nothing could dispel the depression that haunted her during the working week. In the end, she came to the conclusion that you can hardly expect anything better while work deprives her life of meaning.

Along with racism and sexism, our society is characterized by a caste system based on the way money is made. We call it “jobism,” and it permeates our relationships at work, outside of work, and even at home. Otherwise, why would we consider housewives as second-class citizens? Or teachers with people of lower social status than doctors, although they are much better for always rebellious students than doctors are for sick and dying patients?

Trick or Treat? Do you control money or money controls you

* * *

Dedicated, of course, to Joe Dominguez (1938-1997) an invaluable mentor and companion in an exciting adventure. And to everyone he loved

Foreword

We bring to your attention a new edition of the book "Trick or Treat? You control money or money controls you”, supplemented and adapted to the realities of the 21st century. New readers will benefit from a practical and transformational approach to making and spending money. Older readers will find in this edition everything that they liked in the previous edition, plus new useful ideas and information. Since 1980, the program described in the book has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world take control of their financial affairs. She will surely help you too. In our time, great changes on a national and global scale make it very difficult to manage money in personal and family life - and therefore planning for a secure future. You are well aware of this even without me, because you are convinced of this in practice every day. And this is the first reason why we decided to release an updated edition of this already classic book. Now more than ever there is a need for a new concept of earning, spending, saving money and living a good life. When this book was first published in 1992, the dot-com bubble was just inflating, and the real estate bubble soon followed. The flow of bubbles expanded and spread. We became acquisitive, seduced by our new-found deceitful prosperity in the wake of the emerging boom. But times have changed, and many things have changed too – not to mention many people.

Before moving on to the challenges of the new time - and also to a conversation about how the book "Trick or Treat?" will help you cope with them - I want to point out that most of the previous generations believed that for one reason or another the world was heading into the abyss. However, the current "chasm" heralds a fundamental, not just a cyclical shift in our way of life. Too many private crises have coalesced into a “perfect storm”: savings are shrinking, debts are piling up, pensions are depreciating, incomes are no longer rising, jobs are moving to countries with low wages, health and social insurance programs are showing their ineffectiveness. All of this against the backdrop of a rapidly changing climate starting with the depletion of critical resources (such as oil and water), population growth outpacing growth in food supplies, and multiple symptoms of instability in the global economy itself. If you're already feeling nervous, you can't help but admit that there are more than good reasons for that.

According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, "A growing number of economists are coming to the conclusion that America is currently a transformational economy in which consumer spending will play a smaller and smaller role over time as households, belatedly, realize the need to rethink your way of life."

Vicki Robin, Monique Tilford, Joe Dominguez

Trick or Treat? Do you control money or money controls you

Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

with Monique Tilford

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE:

9 STEPS TO TRANSFORMING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH MONEY AND ACHIEVING FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

Scientific editor Nadezhda Reshetnik

Published with permission from Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency (Russia)

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by Vegas Lex law firm.

* * *

Dedicated, of course, to Joe Dominguez (1938-1997) an invaluable mentor and companion in an exciting adventure. And to everyone he loved

Foreword

Global shifts, comparable in scale to the current one, are gradually beginning to affect our daily lives. You don't have to understand monetary policy to notice that our revenues are not growing nearly as fast as our spending. You don't need to understand the mechanism of global warming or how to calculate "energy return on energy input" (a problem in the field of oil production and refining) to understand that the summer is getting hotter and rainier, and gas station prices are constantly rising.

For these and a host of other reasons, the enduring common sense embodied in this book is needed now more than ever. And it's not too late to listen to him. The early adopters of this program in the 1980s and 1990s are now much more protected from the effects of global instability than most fellow citizens, and it is never too late to switch to a more frugal lifestyle. As a friend of mine says, frugality, like the "little black dress," is even more in vogue now, because we have never needed it so much before.

Let's review some of the challenges we face and see how transforming our personal relationship with money can help strengthen our personal dam and weather the coming storm.

Saving

In 2005, the personal savings rate in the United States of America fell below zero for the first time since the Great Depression. In subsequent years, it fluctuated mainly between zero and 1%. In the richest country in the world, citizens can barely save a dime on every dollar. While each of us is responsible for keeping our wallets zipped up, the temptation to spend more than we should be is everywhere. When Joe Dominguez and I wrote Trick or Treat?, only TV, radio, billboard, direct mail, and billboard ads could stop us from having the good intention of saving money and ruining us. Today, the Internet floods us with ads at every click of the mouse - pop-up ads, flashing ads, banner ads are waiting for us on every page. Even billboards have gone digital and are mesmerizing with twinkling lights and eye-catching movement. Plus, ads are now placed at the bottom of carts in stores, they can be seen on every floor of the mall, and they come in an endless stream to our e-mail. In 2006, advertising spending was estimated at about $155 billion in the US alone and $385 billion worldwide, with the latter figure already at $500 billion in 2010. Saving money in the age of credit cards looks like eccentricity at best and simpleton fun at worst. We were taught that duty = freedom, but this is very reminiscent of the famous paradoxical phrases from George Orwell's 1984 dystopia, which stated that "hate is love" and "war is peace."

Okay, let's deal with this mental problem. Repeat after me. To have savings means to be free. Savings means freedom from debt. Money in a bank account means you can quit your job at any time if your boss treats you badly or if the promised benefits and compensation turned out to be zilch. And if you lose your job, having savings keeps your car and house going as long as you keep paying your bills—at least the first ones. Having savings means you can start a business or buy a plot of land, even if the bank has denied you a loan because, ironically, the habit of saving has led to the fact that you have no credit history and the tail does not follow you. debts.

People who choose to follow the program described in this book, on average, reduce their costs by 25% within six months, and in doing so, almost all report that their quality of life has improved. When participants really get excited about the ideas of the program, they often manage to save up to 50% or even more of the amount of each paycheck, "dumping" debt from themselves in the same way that overweight people shed kilograms - of course, with due perseverance.

How to start talking about debt? A savings rate fluctuating near zero is a great excuse to stay in debt like silk, drunk and in financial distress. Did you know that the typical American consumer has more than $3,000 in credit card debt, and the typical American household has more than $8,000 in debt. Moreover, these figures do not take into account debt on a mortgage (an average of about 5 thousand dollars) and on a car loan for a middle-class car. Encouraged at every turn to consume as much as possible, we spent every last cent and shamelessly used credit limits on several payment cards. And during the real estate and market bubbles, they used real estate loans and subprime mortgages to keep lenders off the hook. We evaluated each resource in terms of its credit potential and, to tell the truth, we made significant progress towards the end of this exciting game. Nowadays, there are more people who have filed for bankruptcy than there are university graduates. And it will only get worse. According to the U.S. National Debt Counter, the national debt stood at $9,624,855,389,454 as of August 27, 2008, and had increased by $1.85 billion a day during the previous year. Thus, for every US citizen, there is a debt of $31,500. Whose debts are these? Our. (And how are we going to pay for them?)

Rated the book

At the beginning of the week, month, and especially the new year, we all love to make promises to ourselves - to lose weight, stop smoking, read more. For example, in 2016 I want to stop being a spender and spend everything I earn to the last penny. Therefore, I set myself the goal of saving money every month and saving the necessary amount by the end of the year. And so I decided to start my book year with a suitable book - “Trick or Treat? You control money or money controls you.”

Absolutely right: now money completely controls me. I live paycheck to paycheck, I start the month thinking about how much I need to earn, I end with new settings for the next month. The authors of the book promise to change the attitude towards money and teach how to manage money, and not vice versa. They promise to form the so-called financially independent mindset.

Financial independence is the acquisition of freedom on a psychological level. You are free from the fetters of unconscious ideas about money. You will no longer buy things you don't need or don't like. You no longer have a metronome in your head, counting down the hours until the end of the working day, the days until payday.

And they offer to do this with the help of a special program consisting of nine steps. The book is devoted to their description.

To be honest, the book didn't impress me at first. I read the first chapters with the thought that this is all unrealistic and does not work. But the further, the more I was imbued with the ideas set forth in the book. But not by all. Now about everything in more detail and in order.

I'll start with the negative so I can end on the positive.

1. Trick or Treat is a very Americanized book. No wonder it was written by Americans and for Americans. It usually doesn't bother me in such books for self-development. But not here. For example, the first step of this program is: "Find out how much you have earned throughout your life." The authors advise, for example, to find old tax returns. bam! This could be closed. But I did not lose hope and, as it turned out, it was not in vain.

2. This is definitely not a book that can be read in one gulp. Yes, I did it, but for myself I decided that I would return to the book. In theory, you should start each new chapter only when you have done everything that is written in the previous one.

3. This is a book that needs to be constantly filtered and adjusted to Russian realities.

But I will continue to be positive.

1. “Money is what we exchange our life energy for,” the authors of the book say. Honestly, I didn’t think about it, and therefore the formula “money = life energy” impressed me very much. One of the steps of the financially independent program is to find out how much we sell our life energy, to calculate how much one hour of our life costs.

“I earn 10,000 rubles a week by working 40 hours. So I sell one hour of vital energy for 250 rubles. Not really. For a correct calculation, the authors of the book are advised to take into account all the time and all the expenses one way or another related to work. Do you spend 10 hours a week and 500 rubles on daily trips to work? Remember to add hours and subtract money. The same goes for lunches and snacks. At work, there is a dress code and you are forced to buy appropriate clothes. You have to subtract again. You leave a lot of nerves and strength at work, and then actively rest from it. Subtract again! Etc. As a result, 250 rubles turn into 100 rubles.

2. Another step is accounting for income and expenses. It would seem nothing of the sort. For example, I manage it anyway, thanks to my two favorite and beautiful mobile applications. But in the light of the formula “money = life energy”, accounting begins to play with new colors. 1000 rubles spent on the purchase of morning coffee is no longer just 1000 rubles, but 10 hours of vital energy.

3. The next step after this is the visualization of income and expenses. Literally. The authors advise taking a millimeter, a ruler and pens of different colors and drawing a graph of income and expenses in order to constantly see how these lines are located to each other. Again, it would seem nothing of the sort. But the schedule is a constant reminder of the desire to transform the relationship with money, the schedule is motivation, in the end the schedule does not let you lie to yourself.

4. I liked the book and how the authors teach to minimize costs. Here, for example, is one of the most reliable ways to save money - do not try to impress others. And here are a few more - live within your means (meaning you save money first and then buy something), wear out things and use them in a new way, plan your purchases in advance.

Perhaps, for many, all this is a well-known fact. And for me, much written in the book "Trick or Treat" was not new. But this does not negate the fact that the book and the stories described in it give an impetus (or a magic pendel, as you like) to change, to savings, to that very financially independent thinking.

Rated the book

Nine to five to sixty five

First impressions:
At first, the book made me sad. Well true! It is intended for the American reader! Statistics, American financial systems, problems of the US economy. Almost fell asleep! Interesting? Yes. Actual? no. I was downright upset.. until I got there - - The program has two main outcomes: transformation and independence. It consists of 9 steps that will help you define for yourself what garbage is, achieve a painless and even joyful disposal of it.
- The program itself is very interesting and I am sure that it is effective, because although in the practical part I have stopped for the time being on collecting data (recording expenses / incomes), I want to speed up the time (!!!) in order to quickly start analyzing myself, their buying behavior, their interests and so on. Now I know how to do it and I'm sooooo curious what will come of it!
- For example, in Step #1, the authors suggest “Come to terms with the past”: you need to calculate how much you have earned in a lifetime, and also calculate your net worth. Ha, that seems impossible! I counted how much money I earned in 24 years - it turned out to be a very interesting amount !! and in Step No. 4 there are three questions that will turn (have already turned) your (my) life. At each stage, it is written why to do this or that task, how to complete it and what it will give. I am very glad that this book came into my hands. I threw off quotes (which I added on LL) to my mother and girlfriends. "Trick or treat?" it's not about money, it's about you, your attitude to life, your hobbies and the path that you have chosen. I read the theory and only at the very beginning of the analysis of myself, but I already feel how this book is changing me. Already changed! 5 out of 5. I advise everyone: moms, dads, friends, girlfriends, children, grandchildren, colleagues and even passers-by.
P.S. damn, how I love all the books of the MIF publishing house: they are so pleasant to the touch, they are always comfortable to hold in your hands, the text is always structured so that it is easy to read. Thanks!!!

Marina Serova

Trick or Treat?

Chapter 1 Know Your Blues

I wonder what the mood every morning depends on? It happens that you wake up, you don’t really have time to open your eyes, but you already feel that on this day everything will turn out as it should, even if you don’t try too hard. And on another day, you seem to do everything as always, and take a refreshing shower, and brew a cup of fragrant coffee, and leaf through magazines during breakfast, and even treat yourself to something tasty - but still for some reason cats scratch at heart. My friend Sveta explains this solely by the location of the stars, and it even began to annoy me a little that she has an answer from the horoscope for everything: they say that today is an unfavorable day for Aquarius, for Sagittarius - on the contrary, sheer luck, for Gemini - neither this nor that etc. It’s not that I don’t believe astrologers at all, but I just can’t accept only the zodiacal explanation for all the oddities of life. How many times has it been, Sveta calls in the morning and begins to exhort: look, it’s better for you not to leave the house at all today, there will be serious troubles. And on this day, on the contrary, I am lucky all the time, and even I receive large cash rewards if Svetka warns me to watch my pockets and beware of thieves. But we will assume that we are even with Sveta, because she, in turn, also does not take seriously my belief in divination by magic bones, which often helped me in the most extreme situations. How is it, they say, cubes with numbers can warn about something or suggest important information from the future? But this, I tell you, is such a thing that you can only check it on yourself, and even then, if you know how to ask the magic bones correct and serious questions.

I already think that about whether to start a kefir diet for weight loss from today, magic bones will not even listen. About such things, as well as about the sexual energy of fans, Svetka usually asks the planets, from the very early morning poking into her books and tables.

But my aunt Shura is one hundred percent sure that the mood depends on magnetic storms. She always has clippings from the Izvestia newspaper hanging in her kitchen, where unfavorable days of each month are periodically printed. I think so, because of this valuable information from meteorologists, or anyone else, she subscribes to this newspaper from year to year, although then she does not read anything else in it. On the other hand, he knows the days of supposed magnetic storms by heart and already on the eve he feels weakness, nausea and dizziness. It seems to me that if wise people had thought of reducing the number of unfavorable days to one or, in extreme cases, two numbers a month, they would have saved the abyss of health not only for Aunt Shura, but also for hundreds of such suspicious readers.

But here's what's interesting: Aunt Shura's husband, Uncle Vasya, constantly mocks his wife's magnetic impressionability. If you ask Uncle Vasya what his morning mood depends on, he will answer without hesitation: "On what I ate yesterday." After suffering from a stomach disease, Uncle Vasya became seriously interested in all sorts of theories of natural healing of the body and especially became a fan of the famous Paul Bragg's system with his fasting and eating only natural products. “We are what we eat,” Uncle Vasya tirelessly repeats after the ultra-healthy American, and cooks vegetables for himself from morning to evening, bakes bread himself, sprouting wheat grains, eating all this strictly by the hour. He is sure that any fluctuation in his mood depends only on physical well-being, and physical well-being can be shaken only if Uncle Vasya could not resist and ate a piece of smoked fish or a cookie at a party, that is, spoiled his body with “dead food”. On the other hand, Uncle Vasya's faith solely in vitamins and minerals allows Aunt Shura not to waste time at all on cooking soups for him or frying meatballs, which is very important on days when she is under the breathtaking effect of magnetic storms.

Watching Uncle Vasya is especially interesting if you remember that my father’s mood depends on whether there is meat, fish, sausage, lard and other “real men” food in the house in the morning. If not, honestly, he literally becomes irritable before our eyes, even his face becomes somehow yellow and harmful, however, only before the first hearty breakfast.

And one artist I know firmly believes that it is alcohol and vodka that burn out harmful microbes inside a person, thanks to which a person wakes up after evening libations with a clean, sterile body - and only from unusual cleanliness it happens that the head is buzzing and the process of rejection is too rough for a renewed vessel of life and food inspiration.

And my former lover, Vitya Tarasevich, was sure that his inner spiritual vibrations depended solely on the quality and quantity of sex. If the night is spent with feeling and sense in this sense, then Vitya need not worry about the next day. And if such joys begin in the morning, preferably even with your eyes closed, then here, for sure, solid successes and victories are coming ahead, no matter what. And here's what is amazing: even one missed night could bring my friend into a state of real, deep depression, from which only an obedient female body could cure. As it turned out, Vitya, in my absence, the very next day fell into the terrible abyss of despondency and despair, from which he had to get out at any cost, clutching at the first skirt that turned up. In such clinical cases, you need a convenient, sure remedy - a legal marriage, so that a portion of "doping" is always at hand and taken two or three times a day. And if I tried to tell Vita that his gloomy morning state depends on the location of the planets, on gases in the stomach or the weather - that would be laughter!

I am saying all this to the fact that the ancient thesis that a person needs to know himself for happiness and it is desirable not to listen to anyone else around him remains in force at the end of the twentieth century.

I wonder why, nevertheless, in the morning I have such a foul, gray mood? What special things did I eat or with whom did I not sleep so that even a crow on a branch outside the window seemed half-dead, coffee beans - burnt, wallpaper - faded (it's time to make repairs!), Slippers are cold. I found something - in fact!

Although it's a sin to hide - in the depths of my soul I have one hidden explanation for the seemingly inexplicable morning blues. This happens if there is a big break in work, and now the pause between the last thing and this very dull morning stretched for about ten days, no less. Say what you like, but my work as a private detective is a drug cleaner than any heroin, not to mention Uncle Vasya's raw carrots at night, good for digestion. After all, while I am doing a new interesting thing, there is no need to indulge in the morning even thinking about my own moods and listening to see if longing is scraping in my chest or, conversely, if joy is breaking. At this point, I'm not interested in any horoscopes at all, no diets, no fortune-telling, no cereal-eating - nothing that can distract me from investigating another complicated story. Let me, Tanya Ivanova, be considered an overly ambitious girl, but I know for sure that it was I, and only I, who was able to solve several high-profile cases in our city of Tarasov, sometimes at the cost of enormous internal efforts, which I prefer to remain silent about. More precisely, I talk about them, but only once - when I tell the client the amount of my fee and "per diem" in dollar terms, which sometimes causes some surprise among the miser. But in this case, I answer: then you have come to the wrong address, call "02", write a statement, give official testimony and all that. You will be treated completely free of charge, as guaranteed by the Constitution.