This is a great introduction to thinking differently about money and time and questioning everything we are told to believe. I am a great lover of "Your Money or Your Life." This focused more on the choices people make and what else we could do with that time or money (and got you thinking about other opportunities) rather than the nuts and bolts math and logic of "Your Money or Your Life." I re-read that book regularly and I imagine I will do the same with this one to help me balance it out.

This gave me a different perspective on money and spending habits. Really enjoyed it.

Happiness wisdom seems to abound these days and Vanderkam illustrated how our money choices influence our own happiness. While it wasn't the best crafted book and I wouldn't necessarily agree with all of her suggestions, I did learn that the cost of having more kids is actually negligible. In my day to day life, I find myself asking if the money I'm spending on X could be spent on something more enjoyable or that would bring me more of an experience.

Really fascinating look at money and how we spend it.

Loved Vanderkam's book on time (168 Hours). This is a similar concept book, only more about money than time. Not your usual "make a budget and stop buying lattes" personal finance book.

It was what I expected. Vanderkam speaks to a very specific population--upper middle class dual-earner families--and you may find it frustrating to read if you are not in that group. If I put aside the things I knew would annoy me based on having read some of her other books, I could find kernels of wisdom. I think I lean too far towards frugality for frugality's sake and she made compelling arguments for finding a balance and spreading out the joy that money can buy.

A very good book that looks at money, how we spend it, and how it relates to our happiness. It covers all sorts of topics regarding money such as giving, saving, investing, making more money, and the like while bringing it all back to how it corresponds or doesn't with our own happiness.

I found the questions asked in this book to be thought provoking in terms of how we spend our money and what is the maximum happiness we could be getting per dollar spent. However, this book has a definite religious / conservative lean to it. Spoiler: the author doesn’t think retirement is the best idea, and questions the idea that a larger family = necessarily more expensive. Some of the justifications for increasing family size in spite of increasing costs including testimonials from kids of large families about always having support and never feeling alone, which therefore makes a larger family priceless. This is far fetched IMO and content like this, along with quoting scripture as a reason to donate, sprinkled throughout the book, made it lose some credibility for me given the author’s bias. However, I still think it’s worth a read due to the thought provoking questions asked throughout the book that make you hone in on how you could be maximizing the joy out of the money you have.

Gave me a lot to think about, especially in re-thinking the assumptions a lot of us make about money and its relationship to our lives and happiness. A few ideas that stood out to me: 1) assign a dollar value to your time. That way you'll know if spending an hour to save $x is worth it, when maybe you could be using that hour to work instead. 2) Spend less on your house and cars, which frees up money for small (or large) indulgences that make you happy on a more regular basis. 3) Figure out the things and experiences that really make you happy, and then make a plan do to them more often.