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Live Your Life For Half The Price: Without Sacrificing The Life You Love

Live Your Life For Half The Price:
Without Sacrificing The Life You Love
By Mary Hunt


Mary says, “It’s the money you don’t spend that ultimately gives you the freedom to live the life you
love.”  


Mary’s number one premise is that stuff doesn’t make you happy and you MUST discover what does
make you happy whether that is time with your family, growing plants, or reading a good book.  It is
only then that you can make more educated choices on how to spend your resources. Life is about
choices and when you change your choices then you can change how well you live on less money.
Let’s dive into some tips and tricks on making that happen.


Her second chapter focuses on Found Money.  According to Joe Dominguez, author of Your Money
or Your Life, It’s amazing that we go to work to get money, then we overspend which sends us back
to work again.  Unfortunately, many people fall into the trap of immediate gratification and
overspending (AKA charging things), to live in the now and don’t realize that they are really costing
their future self a lot more money.  Mary Hunt reviews the two ways to find more money, either make
more money or spend less. In addition, she introduces the 80% rule, which is to spend only 80% of
what you make. This rule has been around for a very long time.  She advocates saving 10% and
giving 10% away to charity.


Although we could all get a second or third job to increase our income, I don’t anyone who really
wants to work more, so that leave us with spending less.  Mary provides you with many tools, tricks
and tips on how to spend less while living a rich life. She reviews some of the major budget busters
(Eating, Lack of Time, Major purchases, etc.) and how to avoid them.  In addition, she keeps it real
with pointing out that if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. By taking a few minutes each week to be
thoughtful and plan out your week can avoid last minute trips to take out, putting money aside for
major expenses and other effects of a busy life.  

Mary provides us with some good ideas and many resources in the back of her book to help us
along the way to living a Half Priced Life.   I liked her book because it was logical and provided many
different resources that were divided by chapter and had a large general resource section of books
and websites.  

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