Growing Financial Freedom is written byMichael Hoag, with Vicki Robin.
As someone who’s been around farming and homesteading for over 30 years, worked on farmsat every scale, managed farm markets, worked on a commodities floor, worked with a foodjustice organisation and worked for a farm credit operation. One thing I’ve learned for sure isthat it’s difficult to get folks in our community to talk or think about money seriously.
Often, I’ve got to push hard to get people in our community to accept that talking about moneymight just be nearly as important as eating weeds.No wonder the vast majority of homesteads and regenerative businesses go under. No wonder farmsfail at a higher rate than any other business.
For some it’s just a worldly worry. For others in our movement it’s “the root of all evil”. Ithink that for some of us, money just doesn’t coordinate with our hippie fashion sense.But if we want to get serious about achieving our personal dreams and building a stronger,more effective movement for earth repair, then we need to start taking our financial designmore seriously.
Changing your relationship with money
The book that completely changed my relationship with money and helped me become mindfulabout finances was “Your Money or Your Life” (YMOYL), by Vicki Robin. Vicki has a longhistory of involvement with permaculture, the Transition Movement, local food activism, andsimple living. This book deserves to be on the bookshelf of every farmer, homesteader, activist,artist and permaculture designer. It teaches a strategy for freeing ourselves from the cage ofconsumer culture, debt and wage slavery, and climbing to the freedom of “FinancialIndependence,” or FI. This best-selling classic has helped many “FI’ers” to achieve the freedomto live on their own terms and it has inspired the trendy “FIRE” (Financial Independence/RetireEarly) movement.
As a permaculture designer, I’ve noticed that a lot of folks who fill up our PDC classes are FI’erslooking for meaningful ways to invest their time and resources. They’re folks who have achieved FIand can now put their money and energy where their values are.For Vicki Robin, that’s the point of financial freedom. “For me, FI has simply been the freedom topursue a higher purpose – to grow spiritually, to learn, to create and to serve”. That is exactly what Vicki Robin’s has done.
After, co-authoring “Your Money or Your Life” with JoeDominguez, Vicki Robin has been free to put her energy into helping others achieve FI with theNew Roadmap Foundation. She has served on the board of Transition US. Her book “Blessing theHands that Feed US” covers her experiment with a 10-mile diet. She has also promotedinvesting in local organic farming.
Take a year off….
Vicki invites us all to imagine: what would we do if we could take a year off work to devote toour permaculture dreams? To which I’ll add: Imagine what we could accomplish if there was anarmy of permaculturists able to free up more time and capital to invest in creating permacultureprojects and regenerative enterprises around the world….
Vicki says the barrier to this is that our systems for meeting our needs, including ourfinancial needs, have broken down. The old economic dream of working a simple 40 hour weekat a reliable job, owning a home, college for the kids, and retirement with time to enjoy thegolden years has become a mirage for most people. Yet that remains the standard roadmapmost of us are given to navigate our financial lives. As Robin says, “we need a new roadmap.”
So, what does the Your Money or Your Life new roadmap look like?
The first step is “freeing your mind from the grip of consumer culture. Realising you are beingmanipulated by culture, personal history, marketing, fashion, to spend money on so much thatnever brings out anything but clutter. The capacity to say no to false desires and feel smarterand freer rather than deprived, you’ve liberated your mind”. Unique for a “money book,” YMOYL is the most compelling and freeing critique of consumerculture and the financial trap of the modern economy that I’ve ever read. She shows how “weno longer live life, we consume it”. She gives primary source quotes to show how thiseconomic prison was intentionally created through manufactured demand, debit, plannedobsolescence, etc.
A natural match for us practical-minded permaculturists, it doesn’t end there. YMOYL walks usthrough a 9-step journey of tracking our spending. Evaluating it and plotting an escape planthat truly transforms our relationship with money and puts us on firm financial grounding.
The 9 steps
- Making peace with our past by calculating our life earnings and net worth.
- Understanding the hidden costs in our paychecks like transportation and clothing by“calculating our real hourly wage”.
- Tracking our expenses.
- Assessing whether our spending actually increases our fulfilment.
- Charting our money to give ourselves a visual representation of our progress.
- Spending less.
- Redefining work.
- Calculating our “crossover point,” the point at which we can live off our savings.
- Investing to meet that goal.
The real transformative power comes from actually going through the process. There’s stillno better tool for changing our relationship with money than “Your Money or Your Life”.
As Vicki Robin points out, “freedom in our lives is a feeling of expansiveness after a time ofconstraint”. This new roadmap gives us many opportunities to “celebrate the breakthroughsalong the way”. Deciding you don’t need those new clothes or that car payment can feelfreeing. Achieving a slush fund to handle emergencies can feel freeing. Getting over the ideathat we are defined by our work can set us free to do things that are more inline with ourvalues. It can free us to invest in creating real abundance.
“The world needs you to show up and follow your dreams.”
For me, the real challenge and opportunity presented by “Your Money or Your Life” is to starttaking ourselves seriously. To start really investing in ourselves and the future we want tosee. Vicki says:
“Turning your avocation into income production doesn’t mean abandoning your values – it is sharing what you value with others in concrete, useful ways. Harvesting income from the hard work of entrepreneurship is ethical. Pioneers of frugality, simplicity and regenerative practices who “package” what they know for “delivery” to “markets” eager to get off the money-go-round do a great service as the world detoxes from industrial growth.”
If we can set our movement on better financial ground, then we will really have theresources to invest in regenerative projects. And we can help others find the same firm groundto build on. In that way, as a movement, we can start truly accumulating resources, socialcapital, and with those, the political capital necessary to influence larger systems.
This gives us the tools to slowly but surely accumulate real durable power. We can use this power totransform the world.
Once we’ve achieved that footing, we may have more freedom to live with purpose. As Vickisays:
“Entry points to having an impact are everywhere, from helping one miserable familymember feel more buoyant… to influencing crowds of thousands who are like baby birds withtheir mouths open, seeking some guidance from somewhere. If they turn towards demagoguesit’s just that people like you and me are not showing up fully to offer something better. It’s easyto organise around hate. Too many these days are doing it. It’s much harder to get millions, likeflocks of birds, to respond to another signal and swoop towards love.”
So, now’s the time to ask yourself, which will it be: Your money or your life?
Today the question may be even more profound: Our money or our future? The choice is ours.
For more information, or to take our free course on Permaculture and Money, visit:www.TransformativeAdventures.org
Tags
??Permaculture? Capitalism financial independence financial management Permaculture permaculture businesses
