I’m currently reading “Your Money or Your Life,” and I came across something in the book that bugged me enough that I felt compelled to write about it.

A quote from the book:

Here’s the riddle: Who is more financially independent—someone who can fix a leaky faucet, or someone who must pay another person to fix it? … Isn’t needing money to make it through life actually a form of dependence? If that is so, then asking the question “What would this expenditure look like if I had the time and skills to maintain my possessions myself?” will lead you toward less dependence on money to fill your needs.

That little section bothered me because it’s emblematic of a very light undercurrent going through the book. A large chunk of the first few chapters are about figuring out how much money you are taking in, figuring out how you are spending that money and your time, and deciding if your priorities align with your spending—both money and time (at least that’s what I’ve taken from it so far). My issue is that here and in other places throughout the book they stray away from their message of telling you to figure out your own values, and move too close to just telling you what your values should be. 

The reason this stuck out and bothered me is because at this point in the book, I’m already deep into thinking about how I spend my time and money, and whether I’m happy with that balance, and one of the more significant things I’m thinking about is home ownership. We’ve had our place for about 5 years now and we’re looking to move on, so an important decision is whether we want to buy another place or just rent. And I’m starting to come to terms with and embrace the fact that I don’t really care at all about owning a house. I consider time spent fixing things around the house to be completely wasted. So I’d be more than happy to pay somebody to fix something that breaks. That would be a part of financial independence for me

Basically I just hope that other people reading the book are able to make their own decisions about what they value rather than take some of the author’s values as gospel.