Change how you think about money.
Get out of debt.
Become financially independent.
Align your financial decisions with your personal values.
Watch how this is a fundamentally different approach to personal finance.
So many people find money — the lack of it, the worry about it, the time spent making it, or the guilt associated with having it — to be an obstacle to happiness. Money often becomes the cause (or excuse) for people not living their dreams or exploring what their life could really mean. This program is about helping you eliminate those obstacles and use money as a tool to get on with the life you want to live. It will coach you in how to act with intelligence, integrity and independence in relation to money and the economic pressures we all face.
Having “financial integrity” means understanding the true impact of your economic interactions, and having that impact reflect your true intentions. The purpose of engaging in the exercises and practices outlined in the Financial Integrity Program is merely—and profoundly—for you to transform your relationship with money. That relationship encompasses more than just your earning, spending, debts and savings; it also includes the time these functions take in your life. A healthy, integrated relationship with money is innately tied to the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that you can get from your engagement with your family, your community and the planet.
Since the 1960s, people have used this program for a range of outcomes. You could do the same.
- Free yourself of the burden of debt.
- Save money to take a few years’ sabbatical, in order to pursue opportunities you can’t take advantage of while working.
- Free yourself from paid employment for the rest of your life!
“This program changed my life!”
“I stumbled across this program in 1990 and it grabbed me. Vicki Robin made me conscious of my life energy and to appreciate frugality as a virtue. I later discovered John C. Bogle and his common sense investing message. I consider both of them personal heros. I now volunteer my time educating others.”
Rick Van Ness, host of FinancingLife.org
What’s different about the 9-Step Financial Integrity Program?
Many books and “step programs” on managing your money are available today. What most of these books have in common is that they assume your financial life functions separately from the rest of your life. The Financial Integrity Program is different. It is a ‘whole systems’ approach to your life. And it will take you back to basics—the basics of making your spending (and hopefully your saving and investing) of money into a clear mirror of your life values and purpose.
The purpose of the Financial Integrity Program is not to sell you anything—a product, a guru, a lifestyle. You don’t need any of those to achieve your goals. But you don’t need to go it alone, either. By using this proven, comprehensive program of nine steps based on classic financial principles, you can get where you want to go faster than making them up yourself. And it’s all free.
Is this program what you need? Ask yourself these questions:
- Are you comfortable with the amount of money you have?
- Is it enough?
- Are you spending as much time with family and friends as you would like?
- Do you come home from your job feeling fulfilled?
- Do you have time to participate in things you believe are worthwhile?
- If you were laid off from your job, would you see it as a tragedy or an opportunity?
- Do you have enough savings to support you through six months of normal living expenses?
- When you think about your finances, do you feel peaceful and at ease?
- If you were to die in the next few years, would you be comfortable with your legacy or contribution to your family, your community, the world?
- Are all the aspects of your life – your job, your possessions, your relationships, your values – integrated?
If you answered, ‘no’ to even one of these questions, read on.
What you can expect from this program
The late Joe Dominguez, former Wall Street analyst and co-author of the bestseller Your Money or Your Life, spent a decade developing this program for himself. Nearly 40 years later, people’s lives are still being enriched by the Financial Integrity Program he helped create. The program enables you to:
- Get out of debt
- Spend less
- Develop savings
- Learn to base your transactions (the getting, spending, investing and giving of your resources) on your own personal principles
- Achieve a degree of financial independence that allows you to spend your time doing what is fulfilling for you
No Purchase Required! Join Thousands From All Walks Of Life
Twenty-something or close to retirement. With or without kids. MBA or high school dropout. Thousands of people from all walks of life have followed the Financial Integrity Program.
This Program Will Help You
The Financial Integrity Program is a method to help you create a healthy, empowering relationship with money, allowing you to get beyond money concerns and get on with LIFE. There are many positive outcomes from this program. Which of these are relevant to you?
- Reduce stress around money.
- Have more clarity about money.
- Feel more in control and empowered about money.
- Get out of debt faster than you thought possible.
- Live within your means and develop savings.
- Get to the point where you can choose the type of work you do.
- Reconnect with a greater meaning and purpose in your life.
- Have more time for the activities and people that are important to you.
- Experience more fulfillment in your life.
Step 1: How Much Money Has Come Into Your Life?
And, What Do You Have To Show For It?
This step is about taking a clear, honest look at your current financial situation and how you got there. This is important in orienting yourself toward positive change. Through Step 1 you’ll review your earning history and get an idea of how much money has come into your life. Then you’ll then take a look at how you’ve managed it, reviewing what you own and what you owe (assets and liabilities) in order to get an accurate picture of your financial situation today. Getting clear with the past prepares you to come into the present and make positive changes into the future.
In Step 1 you will create two tools for your journey to “enough.”
- Your Lifetime Income Estimate
- Your Personal Balance Sheet
Learn more. Download the program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 2: Being In The Present: Tracing Your Life Energy
You will also take a look at what money is and develop a reality-based definition of money that helps you see what it really means to YOUR life. Implementing this step will radically change the way you think about money and how it works in your life.
The hands-on practices of this step include:
- Calculating your REAL hourly wage.
- Translating dollars spent into a meaningful measure: the time it took you to earn those dollars. We call this your “life energy.”
- Creating and following a method for recording all your daily money transactions. We call it “tracking your life energy.”
Download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 3: Where Is It All Going? Monthly Tabulation
With Step 3 you use the information gathered in tracking to see what patterns are emerging. You establish your own spending categories and create a monthly summary or “tabulation” of your expenses and income, including how these activities affect your bottom line at the end of each month.
This is different from a budget, with its arbitrary estimates of future spending. A monthly tabulation shows what you are actually doing with your money in the present and provides an accurate portrait of your lifestyle and spending patterns.
To learn more, download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 4: Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life
In Step 4 you’ll evaluate how you earn and spend money and if it aligns with what you want to do and be in your life. You’ll achieve this by reviewing each category of your monthly tabulation in the context of three life-changing questions:
- Did I receive fulfillment in proportion to life energy spent?
- Was this in alignment with my values, goals and purpose?
- How would this change if I didn’t have to work for a living?
These questions will help you adjust your current behavior to achieve maximum fulfillment in relation to money.
Download the program guide today: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 5: Make Your Life Energy Visible: Your Wall Chart
Step 5 is to create a visual tool to show how money flows in and out of your life over time – a wall chart of your monthly financial progress. By plotting your monthly income and expenses in a graph you can see a visual picture of your life energy in action, over time.
As you post your monthly expenses and income over time, the chart will give you not only a picture of your current financial situation, but also the trend of your progress. This is an effective feedback tool that can inspire, encourage and help you become more conscious of how your daily actions affect your financial progress.
Download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 6: Respect Your Life Energy: Minimizing Spending
In the previous steps you redefined money in a way that made it more real in your life – as a function of your life energy, your time. You have tabulated your monthly expenses, evaluated them in terms of fulfillment and alignment, and created a chart where you can visually see how they’re trending.
With Step 6 you look at ways to lower those expenses—because you respect your life energy and want to conserve it. You also want to be sure you’re spending it in a way that feels good to you. And you will look at expanding your sense of personal economics to include creating long-term value for yourself and others.
There are general principles that can naturally decrease expenses and maximize fulfillment. They involve the following processes:
- Evaluate each purchase in relation to fulfillment, goals and values
- Reduce spending that doesn’t bring maximum fulfillment
- Spend consciously by requiring maximum value for your money
- Consciously eliminate unnecessary spending altogether and find non-monetary ways of meeting those needs.
In other words, stop spending life energy on stuff that is not bringing you maximum fulfillment in proportion to the life energy you spent on it. Think about how much space and time that might give you to focus on living your life in alignment with your goals and values!
Download the free program guide today: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 7: Respect Your Life Energy: Maximizing Income
Respecting your life energy—the limited amount of time you have to live—is a key principle of this program. While Step 6 explores how this principle applies to expenses, Step 7 applies it to income. Together these two steps orient your personal finances toward the goal of maximum fulfillment and freedom, and help free you from “the rat race.”
Step 7 is increasing your earnings, exchanging the life energy you put into your job for the highest possible income, without compromising your values or your health, for a self-defined period of time.
Learn more today. Download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 8: Accumulate Capital With Appropriate Investment Risk
The last two steps reflect the time-proven investing wisdom that many call common sense investing. This is also known as the Boglehead Investment Philosophy, endearingly named for the lifelong champion for ordinary investors, John C. Bogle.
Step 8 is about accumulating your saving by investing it with the appropriate investment risk. This is all about your most important decision: asset allocation—or the ratio of stocks/bonds you should own.
Download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Step 9: Secure Your Financial Independence: Prudent Investing
Step 9 is an introduction to the 10 Simple Rules of Common Sense Investing. This time-proven strategy is recommended by nearly all world financial experts that aren’t trying to sell you something. It boils down to long-term investments in broadly diversified mutual funds at the lowest possible cost.
To learn more, download the free program guide: A 9-Step Path to Financial Independence.
Financial Freedom is when you can wake up each morning and
spend your time as you choose!
Don’t let your dreams slip away because you failed to make a simple plan.
“I got out of a great deal of consumer debt, tripled my retirement savings, and built an emergency fund.”
* * *
“I spend more consciously—respectful of the time I spend earning money”
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This workbook is organized to be very personal. You need some time, a pencil, and a commitment to get full benefit of this course. You may print specific pages from the PDF version.
This free course is made possible by Vicki Robin and The New Roadmap Foundation who wish to support people in transforming their relationship with money, and aligning their finances with their values. New Road Map Foundation (NRM) and FinancingLife.org freely offer the Financial Integrity material to anyone who can benefit from them, only asking that it be used and shared in the same spirit.
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