Books: Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (fully revised and updated for 2018)

First published 25 years ago, the revised edition of this bestseller would sit more comfortably in the self-help and personal development section than in business and finance. What is curious from the outset is that only a fraction of the content gives advice on investing. The rest is a philosophical journey asking some truly existential questions of the reader. It was an accidental purchase, as my original intention was to buy a guide to understanding stocks and shares. However, it was this book that cropped up time and again in lists of ‘must reads’, consistently achieving 5-star reviews. My interest had been piqued. The stock market could wait.

This book is one of those engrossing texts that offers light-bulb moments, that had me sat up in my chair, highlighter in hand, audibly exclaiming my delight and surprise. Why had I never heard anyone talk about money like this before? Early on the author introduces the concept of ‘enough’ as the goal of personal wealth. She argues that much dissatisfaction, heartache, and environmental damage results from the need to constantly accumulate, consume, and upgrade without sufficient attention to knowing when you actually have enough of the things you really need.

‘We try to satisfy essentially psychological and spiritual needs with consumption at a physical level’ is a maxim I can relate to personally and to many of the patients I see. The stuff beyond ‘enough’ is defined as clutter — which is anything in excess. This doesn’t just refer to physical items. I found it useful to think of the concept that we often fill our lives with other types of clutter, such as the ‘time clutter’ of unplanned errands and meaningless activities.

The real juice of the text comes later when the author defines money as ‘something you trade your life energy for’ and asks the critical question, ‘How much life is one willing to sell to have money?’

With this always in mind, the reader is taken through a series of steps intended to define one’s personal definition of ‘enough’ while providing a formula for achieving financial independence: the moment where working for money becomes optional. One of the steps involves calculating your ‘real’ hourly wage. When I did this, the results came as a shock. As a GP partner I was earning a real hourly wage of just £19 per hour.

This is a book you could recommend to anyone who appears to be dying for a living (selling their life doing something they hate), be they loved ones, colleagues, or patients, to help set them on a path to genuine personal wealth and fulfilment.

• © British Journal of General Practice 2019