The New Good Life Book Review

The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less by John Robbins was on my list of book that I found while searching on the library website.  I had it on reserve hold for a long time and I finally just decided that I needed to clean up all the things that I had on hold and start reading them.  I get through so many different books but I get easily distracted by the next great book.  I finished a huge book and I was switching to this one because it was totally different.

It took me a little while to read it and I am super excited to say that I finished it.  It was well worth it!!  Here is the table of contents from the book:

Part One: Healing Your Relationship with Money
1. Rags to Riches
2. Getting to Know Your Money Type
3. Four Steps to Financial Freedom

Part Two:  Living the New Good Life
4. Wherever You Live Is Your Temple-If You Treat It Like One
5. Life Is Too Short for Traffic
6. Eating Better, Spending Less
7. Kids: The Biggest Financial Decision of Your Life
8. Safe, Clean and Natural
9. The Economics of Happiness

The most interesting part of the the first section for me was reading the Money Types.  I read them and I made my husband read them... and then I called my mother in law and read them over the phone.  Here they are:

The Saver
The Innocent
The Performer
The Sensualist
The Vigilant
The Giver

I am a saver and my husband is a vigilant.  I found it fascinating to read all about me on a page of the book talking about careful budgeting, cautious spending and conservative investing.  Here is the sentence that rang home with me (and why it took me so long to quit my job and stay home with my son)... "They like having a steady paycheck, living within their means, and saving on a regular basis."  After the description, there is a section on the shadow side of the saver, the evolving saver, and the evolved saver (and every other money type).  It is so interesting to see what works with the different types of people and fit your friends and family into the different groups.  I have a hard time trying to figure out people who have a different money type then I do and the decisions that they make but this book really helps.

There was another interesting part that listed all of the ideas where household spending with breakdowns under that:

Food
Home
Transportation
Health Care
Utilities
Education
Personal Grooming
Children
Entertainment
Gifts
Hobbies
Professional Services
Pets
Holidays, Vacations, and Travel
Magazine and Newspaper Subscriptions
Taxes
Retirement Plan Contributions
Miscellaneous

The complete list is very comprehensive and useful if you are working on figuring out all of your expenses.

There is more interesting information in the book including information about food with recipes, cleaning tips to clean more green and inspiring stories.  There were two websites that had more information that people might be interested in checking out:

www.johnrobbins.info

cosmeticsdatabase.com

I hope that you check out this book whether you interested in living more green, frugal or budget friendly life.  There are tons of ideas that I have never even thought of and it is not your run of the mill frugality book.  I hope that you check it out at your local library or bookstore and see what it is all about!!

Shared at  Schneider Peeps Non-Fiction Love Monthly Link Up