Marina Serova
Wallet or life?
Chapter 1 Know Your Blues
I wonder what does the mood every morning depend on? It happens that you wake up, you don't have time to open your eyes, and you already feel that on this day everything will turn out right for you, even if you don’t try too hard. And on another day, you seem to do everything as always, and you take a refreshing shower, and you make a cup of aromatic coffee, and you leaf through magazines during breakfast, and even treat yourself to something tasty - but still, for some reason, the cats scratch their souls. My friend Sveta explains this exclusively by the arrangement of the stars, and it even began to annoy me a little that she had an answer to everything from the horoscope: they say, for Aquarius today is an unfavorable day, for Sagittarius - on the contrary, sheer luck, for Gemini - neither one nor the other, and etc. It's not that I don't believe astrologers at all, but I just can't accept the zodiacal explanation for all the strangeness of life. How many times has it been, Sveta calls from the very morning and begins to admonish: look, today it is better for you not to leave the house at all, there will be serious troubles. And on this day, on the contrary, I am lucky all the time, and sometimes I receive large monetary rewards if Svetka warns me to watch out for my pockets and be afraid of thieves. But we will assume that we are even with Sveta, because she, in turn, also does not take seriously my belief in fortune telling 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 on yourself, and even then, if you know how to ask the magic bones the right and serious questions.
I really think that about whether to start a kefir diet for weight loss from today, the magic bones will not listen. About such things, as well as about the sexual energy of fans, Svetka usually elicits from the planets, from the very early morning burying herself in her books and tables.
But my aunt Shura is one hundred percent sure that the mood depends on magnetic storms. In her kitchen there are always clippings from the Izvestia newspaper, where unfavorable days of each month are periodically printed. I think so, because of this valuable information from meteorologists, or whoever else, she subscribes this newspaper from year to year, although then she does not read anything else in it. But he knows the days of supposed magnetic storms by heart and already the day before he feels weak, nauseous and dizzy. It seems to me that if wise people had thought of reducing the number of unfavorable days to one or at least two days a month, they would have preserved an abyss of health not only for Aunt Shura, but also for hundreds of the same 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: "From what I ate yesterday." After suffering a stomach illness, Uncle Vasya was seriously carried away by all kinds of theories of natural healing of the body and especially became a fan of the famous Paul Bragg's system with his attitudes towards fasting and eating only natural products. “We are what we eat,” Uncle Vasya tirelessly repeats after the super-healthy American, and from morning till night he cooks his own vegetables, bakes bread himself, sprouts wheat grains, using all this strictly according to the hour. He is sure that any fluctuations in his mood depend only on physical well-being, and physical well-being can only be shaken if Uncle Vasya could not resist and ate a piece of smoked fish or cookies at a party, that is, he spoiled his body with "dead food." But Uncle Vasya's belief in vitamins and minerals only allows Aunt Shura not to waste time cooking soups or fry cutlets for him, which is very important on days when she is under the breathtaking effect of magnetic storms.
It is especially interesting to watch Uncle Vasya if you remember that my father's mood depends on whether there is meat, fish, sausage, bacon and other food of "real men" 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 until the first hearty breakfast.
And one artist friend of mine 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 buzzes and the process of rejection is too rough for a renewed vessel of life and inspiration for food.
And my former lover, Vitya Tarasevich, was sure that his inner emotional fluctuations depend solely on the quality and quantity of sex. If the night was spent with feeling and sense in this sense, then the next day Viti need not worry. And if such joys begin in the morning, preferably with your eyes closed, then there will certainly be continuous successes and victories ahead, no matter what. And here's what is amazing: even one missed night could lead my friend to 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 terrible abysses of despondency and despair, from where he had to get out at any cost, grabbing at the first skirt that turned up. In such clinical cases, a convenient, sure-fire remedy is needed - a legal marriage, so that a portion of "doping" is always at hand and taken two or three times a day. And I would try to tell Vitya that his gloomy morning state depends on the location of the planets, on gases in the stomach or the weather - that would be laughing!
I say all this to the fact that the ancient thesis that for happiness a person needs to know himself and it is desirable not to listen to anyone else around, and at the end of the twentieth century remains valid.
I wonder why, after all, in the morning I have such a foul, gray mood? What special things I ate or who didn’t sleep with, so that even the crow on the branch outside the window seemed half-dead, the coffee beans were burnt, the wallpaper was faded (time to make repairs!), The slippers were cold. That found something - in fact!
Although it's a sin to conceal - deep down in my soul I have one hidden explanation for the seemingly inexplicable morning blues. This happens if there is a long break in work, and now the pause between the last thing and this very dull morning stretched out 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 for the night, good for digestion. After all, while I am engaged in a new interesting business, there is no need to indulge in the morning even thoughts about my own moods and listen to whether melancholy is scratching in my chest or, on the contrary, whether joy is bursting. At this moment, I am not at all interested in any horoscopes, no diets, no fortune-telling, no eating grains - nothing that can distract from the investigation of another confusing story. Let me, Tanya Ivanova, be considered an overly ambitious girl, but I know for sure that it was I, and only I, who could solve several high-profile cases in our city of Tarasov, sometimes at the cost of enormous internal efforts, which I prefer to keep 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 to the misers. But in this case, I answer: then you have come to the wrong address, call "02", write a statement, give an official testimony, and so on. You will be dealt with completely free of charge, as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Vicki Robin, Monique Tilford, Joe Dominguez
Wallet or life? Are you in control of money or money is in control of 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 Literature Agency (Russia)
Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex".
© Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, 1992
© Vicki Robin, 2008
© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016
Dedicated, of course, to Joe Dominguez (1938–1997), an invaluable mentor and companion on an exciting adventure. And to everyone he loved
Foreword
We bring to your attention a new edition of the book “Wallet or Life? You control money or money controls you ”, supplemented and adapted to the realities of the XXI century. New readers will benefit from a practical and transformational approach to making and spending money. The old ones will find in this edition everything they liked in the previous one, 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 finances. Surely she will help you too. Today's big changes on a national and global scale are making it very difficult to manage money in your personal and family life - and thus planning for a secure future. You are well aware of this 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 now classic book. Now more than ever there is an urgent need for a new concept of earning, spending, saving money and a good life. When this book was first published in 1992, the dot-com bubble was just beginning to inflate, and soon after, the real estate bubble began to form. The stream of bubbles widened and spread. We got caught up in acquisitions, seduced by our new-found, deceptive prosperity in the wake of the boom. But times have changed, and so have many things - 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 note that most of the previous generations believed that for one reason or another the world was heading for the abyss. However, the current “chasm” heralds a fundamental, not just cyclical, shift in our way of life. Too many private crises have merged into a perfect storm: savings are melting, debt piling up, pensions are depreciating, incomes no longer rise, jobs are shifting to low-wage countries, health and social insurance programs are showing ineffectiveness. All this is against the backdrop of a rapidly changing climate, starting with the depletion of critical resources (for example, oil and water), population growth outstripping the growth of food supplies, and numerous symptoms of instability in the global economy itself. If you already feel nervous, you have to admit that there are more than good reasons for this.
According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, “more economists are coming to the conclusion that America is now a transformational economy in which consumer spending will play a diminishing role over time as households, albeit belatedly, recognize the need to rethink your way of life ".
Global shifts, comparable in scale to the current one, are gradually beginning to affect our daily life. You don't need to know about monetary policy to notice that our incomes are not growing as fast as our expenses. It is not necessary to understand the mechanism of global warming or the methodology for calculating the "energy efficiency" indicator (a problem in the field of oil production and refining) to understand that the summer is getting hotter and rainy, and the prices at gas stations are constantly rising.
For these and a variety of other reasons, the enduring common sense embodied in this book is now more essential than ever. And it’s not too late to listen to him. The first followers who began implementing this program in the 1980s and 1990s are now much more protected from the consequences of global instability than most of their fellow citizens, and it is never too late to switch to a more frugal lifestyle. As a friend of mine puts it, frugality, like the little black dress, is even more in vogue now because we have never needed it so much before.
"Trick or Treat".
What would you do if someone poked a gun in your rib and said this phrase? I think most would prefer to part with their wallet. The threat is effective because we value ours more than money. Or not?
- Penny W. worked 70 hours a week and was considered a successful salesperson, but it was all wrong. She says:
After reading books like The Poverty of Affluence by Paul Wachtel, I realized that I was not alone in the feeling that "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 full of all kinds of household appliances, I often thought: "Is that all?" Am I just going to have to work and work - to the point of exhaustion, and then find myself thrown into retirement - to blow away my accumulated savings and waste the rest of my life?
- Karl M. always loved music, but his life was spent mainly at work related to database processing. Everything was fine with him, only the hope that music would take the main place in his life disappeared. He was not sure that he knew what it meant to be a man, and therefore he diligently acquired all the attributes that, in his opinion, could help him become such, and expected that they themselves would give meaning to his life. Karl graduated from college, got married, became a good professional, got a good job, bought a car, took out a mortgage on a house, 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 my job as a programmer. She performed her duties to a minimum - so much so that she had nothing to dismiss. She had all the trappings of a successful person - a sports car, a house in the suburbs, but they did not compensate for the boredom that beset her at work. Diana took a great interest in travel, signed up for several hobby clubs, but nothing could dispel the depression that followed her during the working week. In the end, she came to the conclusion that nothing better could be expected as long as her work robbed her of meaning.
Along with racism and sexism, our society is characterized by a caste system based on the way of making money. We call this “jobism,” and it permeates our relationships at work, outside of work, and even at home. Otherwise, why would we consider housewives to be second-class citizens? Or teachers as people with a lower social status than doctors, although they are much better for ever-rebellious students than doctors for sick and dying patients?
Over the past decades, the world economy has experienced many ups and downs. The economic situation of any country today is rather precarious and unfavorable, at least in comparison with several years earlier. In such conditions, a person, albeit unconsciously, forms a fear of financial collapse, even if in a given, specific period, everything is fine.
And this fear is fully justified and understandable. Modern society considers an individual as a full-fledged, successful and fulfilled in life, first of all, and sometimes only, according to his financial achievements. Therefore, gaining financial independence has now become a real dream of almost any person. And of course, there are many methods, books, seminars, the authors of which promise to make an ordinary citizen a millionaire. But often, such techniques are reduced only to general advice on how to effectively manage your budget and nothing more.
A team of unsurpassed authors Monique Tilford, Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez have created a truly working technique that has already helped millions of people on their way to their dream. Book “Trick or Treat? You control money or money controls you ”was first released in 1980 and has already established itself as a truly effective tool for achieving financial benefits. Now, the reader gets a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the second edition of the legendary book. Tilford, Robin and Dominguez, after analyzing the book's performance, readers' reviews and observing real-life examples of success, combined all the best in the newly republished book.
"Trick or Treat?" is designed to change the typical, stereotyped attitude of a person to money. And also, through the formation of a new worldview, the reader will be able to get rid of debt and start saving money; learn to use and control your money consciously, and not be dependent on them; will reconsider his attitude to material values and their role in his life; and finally, it will resolve its internal contradictions between true values and a way of life.
"Trick or Treat?" it is far from being a textbook on economics. This book can be viewed as a philosophical and psychological treatise that will surely solve the main problems between finding harmony with yourself and your material needs.
This book is a must-read for everyone who wants to use money as a means of living, and not live for it.
On our literary site vsebooks.ru you can download for free the book by Monique Tilford, Vicky Robin, Joe Dominguez "Trick or Treat? You control money or money controls you "in a suitable format for different devices: epub, fb2, txt, rtf. The book is the best teacher, friend and companion. It contains the secrets of the Universe, man's riddles and answers to any questions. We have collected the best representatives of both foreign and domestic literature, classic and modern books, publications on psychology and self-development, fairy tales for children and work exclusively for adults. Everyone will find here exactly what will give a lot of pleasant moments.
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