Evening Exchange; Money Matters

Transforming your relationship with money and achieving financial independence. Up next an evening next day. A. Dreamy welcome to evening exchange. I'm koj Anandi. The best way to tell you about tonight's program is to simply say we're going to talk about money you Ehrmann that one commodity that seems to be truly the center of your universe. In reality it's only a method of exchange only valuable because we see it's value today. The currency is dollars in pounds or pesos. The past currency used to be rocks gold spices. Today it's a mere piece of paper or maybe a plastic credit card that use in exchange for food clothing and housing work. Beg borrow and steal to have enough of this currency. But most of us never seem to have enough while others just seem to be raking it in. Tonight we'll talk with the

authors two authors who say well it's all in your head. John sluttier can be heard on WDSU or he used to be. Probably will be back there again. He was also on W-well radio. He has written a book called A mind for money. Financial survival. This is what it looks like. Mr. sledder says his book is a white too. Not just how to welcome Johnson father to exchange. Also joining us is Vicki Robin. Vicki Robin has written your money or your life transforming your relationship with money and achieving financial independence. There you have it. Welcome. Also with us this Monique Miller Miller was a graduate of the methods taught by Vicki Robin and she is now what we can call an F either. Let us first ask Vickie Robin to describe what the F higher is. F5 stands for financial independence. Financial independence isn't exactly that picture that comes to your mind like rolling in money it's like having a lot of money. Financial independence is really a series of steps that you can

take in your life to be more and more secure in yourself so that you are not depending on money to handle all your needs. Like for example you are deep in debt you have more financial insecurity than somebody who is out of debt. To your first level of financial independence or being in fire is getting yourself out of debt. Second level will be having money in the bank. If you have a cushion in the bank it would see you through six months. You lost your job that's not a tragedy and that's an opportunity. That's your next layer of financial independence. Insulation from dependency on the 9 to five year 65 making a dying world and on and on it goes. It also means independence from worry and so many it is putting these steps nine steps into practice and becoming ever more financially. I want to talk about the specific steps in a minute but let us talk about conceptually what we're talking about here because that is what I found most intriguing about your book. When one picks up a book about financial planning or how to manage money it is usually with the objective of acquiring a

great deal of money or material goods as the ultimate aim and therefore being materially rich. Let me give you two quotes from this book that might help our viewing audience and me to understand more clearly what the concept is one is former former U.N. official John Muller who says the most important contribution that we can make to the planet that anyone can make to the planet is a return to frugality. You also say that during the I guess previous decades the 50s the 60s and 70s an MBA that is somebody with a master's of Business Administration used to be considered a boring person all of a sudden in the 80s. This person became a fascinating person to talk to. Could you explain those two ideas. What now I know. That's wonderful. Well in the 80s the MBA was the sexiest guy alive. What all the girls are parties because the MBA gave you access to the ability to manipulate the markets and make a lot of money you

want to turn over money. And people who knew how to play the numbers would play it to their advantage. Junk bonds it was its low instruments for making a lot of money very quickly. Now I think NBA and 90s will be the people in the one line or people who are with burgers because that's no longer That's not like Mission rule but you know the 80s when I describe the 80s as it's like the 80s is like New Year's Eve party you blew it off and you did the things that you know you shouldn't do but you did it anyway you spent a lot of energy and did things that you were weren't quite right. The 90s it's like morning after 9:00 this is the time waking up we're getting sober and actually we're finding out it's not half bad. A lot more comfortable at being sane and secure and balanced in our relationship. Is ok. There's an increasing amount of empirical data of studies polls taken in the light indicating that Americans in the 90s don't seem to think getting rich is as important and objective as we thought it was in the 80s

is that the reason why frugality is so important at this point. There are several reasons and that goes to the other quote by Robert Mueller that the single most important contribution we can make to the planet is the retirement. Now what that's about is that we were beginning to discover that the planet has limited resources and limited capacity to absorb the waste of our industrial production. So we're going to have to scale back our lifestyle especially here in North America in order to be able to survive in order to be able to have our grandchildren have a style of life at least equal to ours right now in a century. So Robert Mueller who worked in the U.N. for two years is saying we've got to scale back. We've got to return to frugality in order to be able to have a future for our children our children's children. In reality it's a penny pinching. It's having enough of everything you really want not buying into advertising which tells you you have to buy a lot of stuff. Never really never really use it it sits in your attic. Right. So it's balance it's having enough. Our

book is designed not to have you have more than have you had no. How much is enough for you to have a really full and rich and happy life and not be birdbaths and be able to talk about the specific steps and how they have affected or are affecting Monique's life at this point. But John slaughterer I have enjoyed listening to your radio broadcast for a number of years and when Vicki mentions the word balance it seems to me that that's one of the words I hear you using a lot. Well no question to your listeners about how to manage their affairs but I'm just interested in what your book advocates for financial survival and be what you think about the whole notion of the objective of financial planning and money management is not to get materially rich or the biggest challenges and many of us find ourselves getting into or is understanding that all of things that impact on our lives. We're hit with about 3000 commercials on a daily basis from the time we wake up in the morning told us that if you want to be happy you need this. So if you want to be clean and wake up if you want to

heaven or ride to work we need to have this car you have this kind of suit on. We need to change our life this way in order to be happy. If you drink this beer on Saturday you get the girl. These are the things we've been ingrained and we're taught. That's what I do. And you mentioned it first the thing about advertising though the point is that our society is changing dramatically. We have 76 million people moving in this country like a giant elephant slowly across the timeline. That's the baby boomers the baby boomers were in their teens they were arguing about war war war. How do we as a baby boomer came of age in the late 70s early 80s. The magazine that was most important most read was Psychology Today when the 80s came in. Then the most read was The Wall Street Journal which ties in when you mention about the NBA the people who argue about peace cables are about making money. So the 80s came in carrying in all the

notions of we've got to get ours at the same time the marketers advertise advertising hey don't worry about it. Charge it. The attitude of the other baby boomers at that time was I don't need money in the bank. Long as I have two credit cards and of the limit I'm OK. So now the 90s came up the boomers are now hitting at least the leading edge of the booms and are hitting for late 40s late 40s early 50s. A weak spot on the brakes here. I got to take care of retirement. I got to take care of two or three kids to go into college if not if they're not always there and mom and dad and the other ideas we're living so much longer. You and I probably live to be a night easily. Thank you. We want to live that long in a situation where we cannot afford to. And so now for the first time we quit calling on her neck wondering how we're going to make our ends meet. And he's changing time money. To what extent are you a victim of the phenomena that both Vicki and John have just described. At what point did you decide that you needed to make

a choice essentially between your money or your life. I think basically it's a dynamic process and it's something that you start slowly and process continues and you are continually re-examining the choices in your life where your job is where your thinking is at what priorities you have and what's important to you. The message that I get from listening to both authors is security and I think that that's ultimately what we all think is important. Yet following Vickie's program security actually is providing for ourselves if we want to be good to ourselves we need to be able to save enough money and I know in my own personal life this has made a dramatic change. What led you to Vicky and I should mention that Vicky is the co-author of your money or your life along with Joe Domingo's. You started out on Wall Street She started out in theater. Somehow they manage to come together and we have your money or your life. What drew you to it. I'm personally involved in environmental protection

and I threw new about her book through my professional work. I was already very sympathetic to the message I have had a very real plan in my life of slowly saving money and it allowed me to do things in my life and in saving a little bit more money more. And now I'm in a stage where basically I was able to save money and wait until the proper job came along. And they're making more money than I ever dreamed I would. I'm saving more money than I ever dreamed possible and I have ultimate security because I'm not concerned about losing my job. Are you involved in the kind of job that has to do with your passion for environmental work. Oh yes very much and that's one of the reasons why you feel this the whole nine step program is working for you working for me and I encourage it. One of the best gifts you could buy for Christmas for a friend for a brother brought it from a lot of my friends already because I feel that it's the most important message it addresses what your meals are and

live what your purposes and I can encourage. Let's talk for a second with Vicki about her personal experience because she got introduced to this program some 20 years ago you graduated from Brown University and a career in theater and we're doing pretty well. Now you live on $60000 a year which comes from investments. It is my understanding that you accept no money at all from either the tapes or the book Your Money or Your Life. How did you do. That's a big question. Well starting out with $6000 a year and I just want to be very clear with people that were not saying that everybody needs to scale back and $6000 a year and that this is a book that's going to show you how to do it. This is how much is enough for me. Year in year out when I'm looking at how can I get the maximum fulfillment from my money. How can I spend my time in a way that I really enjoy. How can I happen to have my life shaped around my values. You're asking those important questions what's most meaningful What

am I going to be really good about having done when I look back the year. Just turns out that's how much money I spent. So I just want to say that that's the by product of really trying to live the best life I can. But the most important aspect of what you're doing is trying to live the best life you can. A lot of people in our viewing audience feel that the better live the best life you can is to accumulate the largest sum of money that you can and in order to do that they feel they have to sacrifice some of the more desirable aspects of their lives like working with the environment like doing more community work like working with the labor unions. You are saying that if those are the things that you want to do then those most important things of your life can be facilitated by the mindset that it doesn't take much. Yeah because what happens when people do this program and the program is very simple accounting steps in how to to track and evaluate what's going on with money in your life on a daily weekly monthly basis and evaluated according to number one. Am I getting

fulfillment from how I'm spending my money. In other words I invested 30 hours in my job in order to get this new Laos for example that I get 30 hours of my life energy worth of pleasure from this bounce. I'm going to wear it for the next 10 years and it's the best thing I have been right. If it's going to hang in my closet it's not worth those 30 precious irretrievable hours of my life. In other words if this blouse cost $300 and you make $10 an hour on your job you have just spent 30 hours of your life exactly buying this place. That's right 30 hours of your work time. But if you get 10 hours $10 an hour in your job when you really consider you spend many more hours than the eight hours in the job on your job commuting etc.. And you have some cost associated with your job transportation job constant know that that may whittle down to five dollars an hour. So it might be $150 billion. So you start to look at what the tradeoff is and once you start to think that way you start to stop wasting money on things that you don't really want.

And when we called Huizinga skins you know everybody's got the things the buy automatically don't explain what a good single spend it's that you know that thing you know like for guys it's electronic stuff like reeds or CDs or or it's it's it's tools you know like a good power tool. Oh absolutely. And I've had a rush for of hatred out hour that they know that they actually have what they need in the garage but they forget it. Selective memory they can. They can go down get another one because the act of getting is what's exciting for women. A lot of times it's close. I mean women have closets full of clothes or shoes. You know Imelda Marcos how many pairs of shoes can a person where you know so. So those are those automatic spending habits and you're causing pain can get pretty big. Like if you have this idea that you know it's never good enough. You know how big my house is. It's just not big enough because I always have to trade up. You know I got a raise.

You make the point that we are encouraged always to seek a higher standard and that for the first world war we sought to survive after the Second World War. We sought comfort and in more recent years were seeking absolute Noggs Rees-Jones a lot. To what extent are we encouraged to do that by the environment we live in we live in a capitalist society that is chock full of commercial where are encouraged to have more than one tv more than one reproduceable you go into one of everything. Yes. The attitude is when we get the rates for the job that means there's more money to spend. I said there were more people in my private practice of helping individuals not only invest but learn much work with less a process called lessness. I find that many of us get caught up in the trap of I can't wait for the end of the annual raids on so I can buy this or when I get that that bonus at the end of the year that means I can do this or that tax return. We have a condition that we should know be we more more high level change our lifestyle to meet the new level person in my career you have a

certain kind of dress certain attire and lifestyle. Well most of the people I talk to around Washington seem to feel that living a life of luxury is an important and worthwhile objective I'd just like to read a very short segment of your money or your life for you. Until one day we find ourselves sitting unfulfilled in our 4000 square foot home on 2.5 acres with a hot tub in the backyard and not less equipment in the basement. Sounds good doesn't it. Meanwhile we're yearning for the life we had a poor college students who could find joy in a walk in the park. We hit the fullfilment ceiling and never recognized that the formula of money equal fulfillment not only had stopped working but had started to work against us no matter how much we bought the fulfillment curve kept adding down. Did you experience anything like that at all. Not necessarily that level but where are you headed in that direction. Actually that segment would talk really to people who are probably older than 27 years old I think that that might have someone who's 45 perhaps on average.

I probably learned frugality somewhat from my parents and then was encouraged as I met people along the way and also of course meeting with the most difficult thing I have found to convince people of is that rich people are not necessarily fulfilled. You have described a situation here that many people may feel oh give me that and I'll be happy. To what extent have you found it to be true to what extent or the 45 years old 45 year old that Monique described have actually come to you and said it ain't happen. I have it all. But it's like I cannot tell you how many people we used that we did this is a live seminar and we would do a survey in the beginning of the seminar. We would ask people what is your monthly income. And then we would also ask them to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 for one being miserable five being ecstatic How happy are you. Honestly you know we're not going to grade you on this how happy are you really in your life. And we do it Palli for each seminar and reflect back to the whole group that the

relationship between income and happiness for that exact group of people. And we would divide them up 0 to 1000 1000 to 2000 per month two to three three to four four to five every single group was within 2.6 to 2.8 on happened in school not even three not even so so can't wait. And when the people who thought if I had more money then I'd be happy. Saw that merging on the blackboard the person sitting next to you has twice three times my income and they're still reporting that there are no more than on water in a confrontation with that illusion that more money is going to bring more happiness is like the term good money. You say well he's making good money good money always means more money than you have. That's what she makes the point that there are people including she herself who have quit jobs and who now earn less gross money than they used to earn but have much more fulfilling satisfying has no.

Well let's take off. Well which is what she feels inside is like I wrote in my newsletter would you have a company called brooked financial budget comes up by lovely. I wrote a piece called Time wrote that you are wealthier when you have more time for yourself. Think about it. We are a nation now that has more single parents than ever before. And what commonly happens with single parents is that they're working working working come back home and feel badly because they didn't have a chance to spend been with the children. So what they do is go to Toys R Us was buy out the play. And what happens is it's on a never ending cycle because they're working to make money. They feel badly it has been so much time working and then they find themselves spending more money and it's a cycle that they have to break to break out of. And I want to emphasize that that time is the wealth of the 90s. No question it's right. Indeed we do have to take a short break right now but your money or your life has to calculate specifically exactly how much of your energy is going into your work toward the purpose of earning money to buy all those things and how maybe

you can relieve yourself of the burden when we come back we'll go through the nine steps and then we'll take your telephone calls. Stay with us. We'll be right. Back. We're talking to you about your money with two authors John Slaughter. His book is called a

mind for money and this is his newsletter. This is nuts financial the just digests and financial digest that John Slaughter puts out. We're also here with Vicki Robin the author of The Book your money or your life. And Monique Miller we have described as an F either which is somebody who follows the nine step program advocated in your money or your life. This book is really talking about a lot more than your money. It's talking about your relationship to your family to your community and to the planet as a whole. And these nine steps that Vicki Robbins advocates are supposed to put you into closer contact with all three of these phenomenon not a separate entity because she sees them along with Joe Domingo's as part of one complete whole with what without which any of us cannot have full time. Could you tell us what exactly. Yes if we don't have good relationships at every level we are impoverished. So the 9 steps. Very simple very easy. You don't need it. Computers are a matter of fact. Use a computer it'll slow you down. Step one is what we call making peace with your past

and you basically do a balance sheet of assets. Everything you have and what the cash value is and liabilities. We also have another little different thing we do which is that you do an assessment of how much money have I made in my lifetime. And so you total up all your jobs. IRS has been keeping track. Social Security's been keeping track. And so you ask yourself OK now I've made a hundred thousand. Allow me to interrupt because a lot of people will say how will I ever do that. And yes it's not necessarily easy. But in this book and I guess you've got a good book. It will tell you the number of ways in which you can total up every penny you made during it. That's right. And so you take a look at the difference between and when you look at that even just a minimum wage worker making it to middle age we'll find I've made three quarters of a million dollars in my life. And then you look at what have I got to show for it. Boy and you look at your balance sheet and it's very motivating because you realize if I could pull in that money before and blow it I would again try and save it. So

that's step one step two is recognizing that money is not with they. They tell you it is in the advertising that they tell you it is on television. Money is not power. Squeege success with the opposite sex money is simply something that you trade the hours of your life for if your life energy. So step two you do the calculation I said you figure out how much am I. Actually everything factored in trading the hours of my life for. So I know that one hour of my life equals $5 $10 $2 whatever. And then you start keeping track of your life energy. And people become very interested in this. It's not like you ought to do it. I'm fascinated. Where is my life energy going. You keep track of all the money you spend. Then step three is you do every month you do a tabulation according to category. It's a budget book. Let's say you have food that you eat at home and then you have food you eat in restaurants so you'll break that down. Find out how much is it costing me. How much is my restaurant have a cost. Step four is for each spending

category. You convert it into hours of life and you say I spent $100 last month and restaurants make five dollars an hour that's 20 hours of my life. That's three questions. Say am I getting fulfillment in proportion to the hours of my life I invested. Is it making me that happy. And if you find it isn't. You don't beat up on yourself. You just notice that so that you can change your behavior and you say is it in alignment with my values with what's really important to me. And the third thing they say is if I didn't have to work for a living what would my spending look like in this category. You'll find out a lot of your spending is in relationship to your job that life actually Basic Life is not that expensive. Indeed you mentioned the guy who had an office that he had to look good. He paid about $120000 for his office and was costing him a lot of money per month. Yet he never really did any business with anybody visiting him in his office so he decided I might as well work out of my home and save all of this. That's right.

That's right. And he noticed that out of doing the steps of the program before he did the steps of the program he had a concept in his mind the financial planner has a spiffy office and especially in several dozen spiffy suits. Yes. You know and then he noticed that he was working at home. See that's that's not like a tip like clipping coupons. That's like $100000 a year. It's big. So you start to notice the places where you are spending money you're getting no fulfillment. It's not aligned with your values and then have to do the job. It would disappear from your life. OK. Step Five is you make a wall chart of income and expenses. The first thing you notice is that you're good American you're spending more than you earn. You're a native of LSN overspends. That's right more than you earn on more than you need. That's the definition of the American consumer. But very quickly as you follow the steps of the program in on this welter you'll see that your expense line starts going down dramatically. People tell us after three months they say they're saving 20 percent. It's been 20 percent less than they were before. On average

a lot of times they say I don't even know what I was spending money on. And they always say and I'm a lot happier then they watch the income line and the income line once they get motivated. It's not like 9 to 5 you're 65 making a dime. You know it's like hey I could trade my life energy for $10 an hour instead of five dollars an hour. They get motivated they see in dollars and cents what's going on in say I don't know if you can reduce your expenses in that way it means that you can have more time to spend on the things you really want to do with your family and with your community. Absolutely it frees up your time. You understand that time is money you can go. Let's say your company is downsizing. You could go into a job share with somebody you could go have from that or the person does have time. You know I can live on half that income and I can spend the rest of the time being with being with my family and life will get cheaper because instead of buying a new toaster I'll fix the poster growth. What are the other steps where we step forward step five step six is once you see that you can just automatically lower expenses by paying attention you get really skillful and you learn

skills for consciously lowering expenses. Paris and shopping those sorts of things. And we have Chapter 6 in the book has all sorts of hints and tips about Step Seven is consciously increasing your income finding ways that you can increase that gap between income and expenses that positive gap so that you can more quickly get out of debt and develop your savings base so that you have increased freedom of how you spend your so that's to have seven step eight is noticing that. And then the third there's a third little line on that chart which is income from investments your savings you're putting into a bank account or a CD on some very safe instrument and you're getting some interest income. So you start to register that in your chart. And after a year or two of doing this you start to notice that your interest income is increasing and that at some point in the future there's going to be a crossover that your expenses are leveling out at a low level lower maybe 20 percent lower than you used to spend. Interest income is increasing.

And years. Those lines are going to cross I'm going to have income from my investments equal to my cash needs. I am going to have not and I won't have to work for a living. I can work for money and I want to. Step Nine is developing safe prudent strategies for investing the capital you need so that you can feel really secure. Live on the income and not burden yourself and being a speculator in the stock market and just taking on another financial burden. You have a stock market every day and if you pause the step nine is where to put the money so that you don't have to pay attention to really. Got two questions before we got to the phones one cultural aspect the other a practical aspect John the cultural aspect to this. To what extent do black people having been denied so much for so long feel that it is now our right. And in this book says that most Americans feel we have the right to consume fuel that we have a right having been denied so much for so long. To all of the luxuries in life and it's all right for white people to sit up and say that we don't need to do this anymore. But

we have to have the most expensive cars we have to dress as expensively as we can and the like. To what extent do you think that we are victims of that consumerist mentality because of our own level of deprivation. We're the biggest consumers in America. Yes. Everyone knows that we buy 20 percent of all the oil in this country Africa-American about 4 percent of all the the rice sold we buy it because of all the movie tickets sold in this country. OK. Because the reality we feel therefore that sometimes wonder where the money goes. Problem right here right between the ears I write advocating in my speeches and seminars that was called Family centered financial planning. So learn to communicate listen to one another. We all need to have people Salguero by the family to get and buy in bulk. OK. The biggest challenge is not necessarily to change everything you do and so that you have to live on $6000 a year. The challenge is changing your lifestyle so that you can reduce the amount of money that you're spinning. Oftentimes many will say we're hungry you want to eat. Now that means we've got to go to dawdles. All right we need to go someplace else. We to do it slow

down to a lifestyle a little bit and then we learn to read and therefore we can now reduce that we perceive in order to get what we really want. We then are away from the cultural means that I finally made it therefore I haven't had the most expensive most expensive car so that our friends will know we've made it as well. We have to change the lifestyle. Then we have more money not necessarily put into the banks but to put it towards other kind of vehicles that we can learn about to make or maximize the kind of returns on our dollars. Monique the practical aspect for those people who might feel intimidated by what they think is the meticulousness of detail with which you have to keep accounts and so that's just like doing another job. How difficult have you found it to comply with the program so far compared to how much energy we're putting out in relationship to your job making money. Know I really I think it's one of the best gifts a person can give to themselves. I don't see it as being compulsive at all. It's only in the initial stages when somebody is

really looking at every single penny that they spend. Soon enough she just really developed that is my understanding is so that you see patterns developing. Now I know what I need. What's important to me and I live my life with as much integrity as I can in relation to my monetary and. But you know I spent two or three hours a day doing fine point not at all not at all. Let's go to the telephone. Thank you for waiting. Those are the broad conceptual outlines and the steps of the program. Now it's your turn you're on the your caller go ahead. I can and I'm amazed. When you put that money in these companies like Babbar Maryland whether it's for retirement or whatever how much should I expect you to get a stockbroker from wait for securities in Baltimore.

And what you're talking about is something very very important is what in fact will I be paying to get the financial advice that you are receiving. You have to determine what it is you want to do. You have to determine it's all based on relationship. In my book a mine for money I talk about learning how to create a financial network. You can do one of two things or you can go out and buy my book. Vicki's book magazine's new goes and read everything you're so alert. Next question is time was it. Let me interrupt for a second. That's what Joe Domingo's when he went to Wall Street as a young man he just learned it all himself because that was not his training. He was not trained as a broker. He did it so you can do it too. You can do it you learn everything and so the the the carry on is do I want to learn everything myself. Ok if you don't want to learn everything and so then develop a relationship with someone that you learned to trust. I talk about that in my book How to work with a financial adviser to answer questions specifically do you go with mutual funds you can buy them either know a photo with me or they'll take it out over a period of time or you buy municipal. What load if we're all one time and

get it out of the way depending on how you structure it you will pay anywhere from 2 percent to 5 percent commonly for what is called a loaded mutual fund. If you go with stocks commissions or you will charge by the New York Stock Exchange or the exchange of which you are clearly buy that issue the broker should tell you if that's advice you would if he would be at that. Oftentimes if you decide to become a client you can negotiate broken things with that broker. Say I will become a good client. Therefore please can you give me this Galva become a better quiet baby get a larger discount. Right now the biggest watchword is the rap. The fee to bring your money over and they will have outside money manager magic for you. There's all kinds of ways. The key thing sir is to just sit down interview three or four different people and see what kind of comfort level you have with that and see if that person is interested in you. Back to the telephone it's your turn call you on the air. Go ahead please.

I guys do pretty good. Are you going to go to work. We'll go on a little bit of break. I would really rather go by that. Yes the Baba Bubel book I've been hearing about that book that is our resident Howard Stern fan. So me been resident. Thank you very much. Let's go to another call. Turn call you're on the air. Go ahead please. Caller are you there. Go right ahead. Oh we have no caller on the line right now. Route to the bookstore your book. Oh I'd what to say but there's an interesting ways that you have of acquiring this book could you tell our viewers. It's your money really. Well you can buy it and bookstore. I suggested using comparison shopping some bookstores have discounts. It's available now in paperback and you'll need to ask for it. And my co-author Joe Domingue is his name he's the first authors. And Judy or you can go to a library. We always tell people go to the library and get the book. See we're not retaining any of the proceeds from this book we're giving the money away. So it's not

necessarily doing me any favors by the book versus take it out of the library but the situation that happened in my hometown Seattle is that they consistently this past year had 200 requests on file for the book. And they had 50 books in the library system that were constantly out wards from all over the country that this was a situation that frugal people had gotten onto that tree. So I think that one of the things that's going to happen with the paperback is that there's a lot of what I'm calling store demand a lot of people want the book they just don't want to buy the hardback. They waited six months the library lost patience so I think that a lot of those paperback fiction. Well there's another interesting aspect of your book that we haven't discussed is that is the relationship to the planet. To what extent does frugality improve the environment or can it. It's a very important relationship. And somehow or another in our society we are insulated from the consequences of our consumption. It's like you ask a little kid where do carrots and tomatoes come from Will they come from the store but how are the carrots and tomatoes get

to the store where they're grown someplace. There's fossil fuels involved in getting into the store so that some pollution and some research is used up. Where does a toaster come from. And when K-Mart or Wal-Mart or whatever. No the chromium comes from someplace in Europe it still comes from someplace else. Plastics come from fossil fuels and from wire comes from simply everything we use comes as something we use has a wake behind the trailing behind it of the cost of manufacture and then we bring it into our home and we use it for a while and it breaks down. And it's a sealed unit. Or you think oh I can't fix this thing. And then off it goes into you know where does garbage go sweetie. You ask the 5 year old or goes in the garbage pail and then the garbage man picks it up. Where does it go it goes back to the body of the earth which the earth cannot break down. The the the byproduct of Arcand something quickly enough to return those things to any sort of viable useful soil. So everything we consume is taking something

out of it. That is tell what we are able to curb our appetite for conspicuous consumption is the extent to which we contribute absent towards the purification of anybody in your audience who heard about the Earth Summit last year in Rio de Janeiro. It's a big discussion was the people of the North were saying you folks of the south you've got to stop having children overpopulation is the big problem. And then the people the South Pole the trump card and they said. A baby born in North America is in his or her life. And it's been 60 times the resources of any of our children. So you all have to conserve your consumption and survive. We have to take a short break. I know we have a full load of telephone calls when we come back I promise to keep my mouth shut and allow you to talk about authors and Monique So stay with us. We'll be right back. Come back.

We're back talking with our authors Jon Slaughter Vicki Robin and follower of the money or life book Mo'Nique. We're going to take your telephone calls in the segment I promise to shut up so let's go right to the telephone. It's your turn. Quali we're on the air. Go ahead. Hello. Hello. Yeah. I wouldn't go. And I need to get back to I want some business but I don't want to ever forget what you and I don't have enough money to buy. How is it the book crap. Ok let's try another telephone call. It's your turn calling you on the air. Go ahead please. Hi how are you. Pretty good. I wouldn't let me say that I had you know I finally got the courage to go to Harvard College correct. And the time to reply to me that had come back about it it were work and found out that I have my breast bone and I've had a fight.

Right now I don't know whether or not I really don't have one. And they were right. I haven't. Did you do that on your own or did you have help from some guy some financial advice. I my own that I had very stressful very stressful and when I got a real number down from our the amount of hours that I was working. I know I'm OK. What am I right. I proud of my family. I wish I was. Thank you very much. Vicky what do you say to people who say I can't quit. I want my son to go to Harvard. He's only four years old right now and saving. I've got to save money for him to go to

Harvard. What do you say to those. Well when I say to those people is that you actually when I say do the steps of this program and evaluate over time. What your priorities are. Want to put away money for your call. You can do that now and I'll tell some stories of what other people have done. And one of the stories you tell are about people nowadays who say no not here because it doesn't make sense to pay that much money for undergraduate school anymore. Right. One one father said OK here's a fixed amount of money you can have one year at Harvard or four years at the University of Wisconsin. Wisconsin to Washington or whatever else you consider your education. His son decided to go to one year at college and said Oh it is not me. That's not what my life is about. And he is now on his great adventure doing service we're in South America and meeting people and having adventures and having an education. And when you think about it I'd rather have that kid working for me on

the job than perhaps a graduate of Harvard who has no life experience. That's that's the key there. So bored with the versity that we have in the universe right now with the fact that we're going to have this country better for more years there'll be no major ethnic origin. The key is being able to have life experience to work with everyone. And what you mention is so true. But the other challenge that there's your question is what about who does want to send their kids to college who says hey look I can't stop. The key thing is you have to put them kind of priorities while the other wanted you do not want to sacrifice your retirement or the money that you need to save for your health or your health with your kids education. That's number one. Number two I talk about my book my money too if you have just enough money for one year for college send that kid to a good community college and then take classes that know he can ace that he comes away with one year of college under his belt. He didn't go to university for those freshmen that punched

out of school because they couldn't handle it. There's three years now of scholarship remaining that nobody can use. They can go the rest of the financial aid department and say look I want to get that hardship scholarship. Now I have outstanding grades with these courses at a local community college and now I want to get those scholarships that money is not used. Can we do this. These are the I'm your student have to do Monday. You have to come with us. That is basically the one thing I would interject is that it seems to me that having money in this case can be really detrimental. It's much much easier to get funding for school if you don't have a lot of money if your parents didn't have a large salary. You can apply for scholarships so if I were a parent I'd be much more inclined to say my student to my child study and study hard and study all the way through and make really good grades and I'll help you with that instead of me being gone at work all day long and making the money and trying to make it work so that you don't have to study very hard so that you can get into college as college with season. Or you could take the approach of teaching parents how to shelter money so that all the

financial aid forms in the original methodology you look for and you actually are. The test is to put money into your 401k plans. OK. Get a home equity loan to pay all bills. Therefore it looks like a large mortgage but the bills are paid off. These are ways that you can learn how to do to make it more got to get back to the telephone your own here. Caller go ahead and call. I have to quite like to ask you one question and I heard that the health plan is the best and best second question I like the actor that I've been with Jack White for 10 or 12 years. I have that just don't have time. Someone to answer the question and tell me is that a good man. Shall I continue with what you are. I'm out get my money out. And if that is what you've invested in utilities and you want to know about investment in health. Yes buy health plans like are you talking up for yourself or you are talking about real estate investment trusts or what she's gone oceangoing. OK.

Utilities are a good investment for us so. OK. I would say go to a utility mutual fund. Right now telecommunications is a great booming area. I would go to a telephone utility neutral fund and parking money there you might get a consistent return of about 15 plus return a year. And that is one way that will allow you to invest in utilities electric utilities and gas utilities are also hit primarily by interest rate swings more so than telephone utility companies. So you have to be aware of what's going on in the market conditions I don't understand what you meant about health insurance and investing that long either Once again though Monique was nodding. Well just in agreement that I've invested my money right now. So there you go back to the telephone your turn. Caller you're on the air. Go ahead please. Thank you. Europeans have our number. Thank them. All right. I was we're you know we went through

every penny that I was in but my husband is on that rather fast track and I want to roll with it. OK. Everything we're in. And I'm very proud of it. I think that one of the things that you can do is just be increasingly at peace with your own choices and show through your actions that there is another option rather than through your lectures. Sometimes the direct approach induces resistance whereas if it's very clear that you are much happier with the choice that you made you may become more interested in. Another thing that people do. I guess there is a gender aspect to this too. Yes. Yes and it does seem that now that men have been more programmed to identify with their job. Women have although you know just like you were

saying about the African-American culture that they're going for it like crazy women are going for that job for same reason very much the same reason they were denied access to the workplace and the glass ceiling. And so now women are sometimes Warth Nations holding on their jobs and I've seen the opposite with men wanting to slow down have more leisure time just get a life. So in her case she should lead by example I got to get back to the telephone were under your caller. Go ahead please. Yes I've been trying for something for the fun. I'm back. Bye bye. Fun thing that safe enough for me. OK. My suggestion is pick a solid mutual fund an all weather mutual fund that does well and both up and down markets. Next thing is a start on a monthly basis. Figure out what you consider what you can save up. Let's say you can save $200 a month easily then start with it. OK. Probably the $50 a month but Fithian to your emergency fund that was a lot of money that you need in case the refrigerator goes up another

$50 a month and then every six months increase it by $.5 picking a good follow up on the average dollar as well as the S&P 500 is a good way to get started. Talk with a couple of people. We start reading some prospectuses as about how to invest money as slowly put your money to work for you is the best way to go. Time for one more call you on their call Caller go ahead please. How am I going. This is a good show. First of all I'd like to congratulate John enthusiasm's. I've known him I read a map of money out over 6000 hours. I'm going to be seeing you tomorrow about this. So a fun activity for me. But I'm very interested in Robin. I think that this is what I've been hitting on all along. It's more than just money. I see people every day were much older. I'm 30 years old and I see people who have been lucky to be in the industry the television industry where I work and they can't get out and they get to do anything. They are to do with everything. And now even know what to do. I don't feel like I it we borrow and I was at a

symposium for them and it's so pretty with a job. You got to let. You might have the right fit for most of that. That man was a genius. What about manical money. He wouldn't do it. So you're getting a great point. My question is did I listen to rap. I can see John tomorrow. Vicki Rahman go ahead Rob. OK. Are there any good people people want to bet that you can invest in that are ecologically good as well as you see in the 90s that are overseas. We only have a short period of time. There is a category of investment called socially responsible investing and I'm not investment counselor John I can tell you that Albert Collins has a whole group of mutual funds for social investors. And if you go into more detail about that when he sees you tomorrow we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. Stay with us.