If you’re feeling squeezed by the need to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and live

within your means, Spend Joyfully can help. It explores the basics of money in
your life.
• What does money mean to you?
• How do you manage money?
• How can you use money to your advantage?
• Why do you make the choices you do when you spend?
• How can you get the most bang-for-your-buck when you spend?
With Spend Joyfully, James W. Stone changes the way you think about spending
money. He explores how you can live your life with purpose and make decisions
about your money to fulfill a goal in life. The result is a new attitude about money
that leads to a more satisfying life. Tying that Attitude to a Budget, and
understanding Cash Flow are the ABC’s of managing your Financial Lifestyle.
The subject matter is presented in three sections focused on: 1) Where
your money is and how to manage it; 2) How to protect yourself from spending
mindlessly; and 3) How to live in a world dominated by advertising.

Spend Joyfully is easy to read, with several small stories to illustrate the material
and help you retain what you have read. Readers will identify with many of
the examples given. Spend Joyfully focuses on avoiding financial problems,
identifying problems when they do arise, and solving these problems. It does
not tell you how to make more money or how to invest your money. Rather, it
is about using the money you have to live a more satisfying life — and live
without letting money take control over you.

Out of the Coal Field and Into the Dealership

Born in the coal mining fields of West Virginia and raised by parents
of the Great Depression, Jim was taught the lessons that could help
him make the most of what he had. They were lessons of frugality and
making do.
But like many lessons they were forgotten the moment he left
Appalachia and saw how easy it was to have great new possessions,
from TVs and tailored suits to that big, shiny Buick. Very impressive,
too, until reality set in.
Things “wanted” had become “needed.” Bills piled up and soon Jim
was in over his head because his purchasing decisions had no
bearing on his ability to pay for them. $15.95 U.S.
Jim fought his way out of debt and developed his struc-
tured approach to Spend Joyfully with clear links between
spending and paying, in this easy-to-read book.
Spend Joyfully !
 Spend Joyfully !

Managing Your Financial Lifestyle

as Easy as
Attitude, Budget, Cashflow

by James W. Stone
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to
the subject matter covered. However, it is sold with the understanding that the publisher
and author are not engaged in rendering legal accounting or other professional service. If
legal advice, or other professional advice, including financial, is required, the services of a
competent professional person should be sought.

From a Declaration of Principles jointly adapted by a Committee of the American Bar

Association and a Committee of Publishers.

Author’s Web site — http://www.jameswstone.com

The caricature “Moe Money” is a trademark of James W. Stone.

Author photo by Phil Farber Photo Images Inc. wwww.photoimagesinc.com

Copyright© 2009 by James W. Stone

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans-

mitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, record-
ing, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

First published by Dog Ear Publishing

4010 W. 86th Street, Ste H
Indianapolis, IN 46268
www.dogearpublishing.net

ISBN: 978-160844-084-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 0000000000

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

 CONTENTS

Introduction....................................................................................1

Part One...........................................................................7
It’s about money (and elephant stew).
Chapter 1 .........................................................................................9
Setting the Stage
Spend like a millionaire........................................................9
Where’s the money?............................................................10
How do you GET money? ..................................................10
How do you SAVE money? ................................................10
How do you LOSE money? ................................................11
Chapter 2 .......................................................................................13
Life Objective - Principles and Practices
The LIFE OBJECTIVE ......................................................13
The Power of Vision............................................................15
Principles and Practices ......................................................16
Chapter 3 .......................................................................................19
Cash Flow & Cash Position
How much money do you have?.........................................19
What is Cash Flow? ............................................................20
How do I manage Cash Flow?............................................23
Cash Position, another great tool........................................26
How big should my Cash Position be? ...............................31
What about a budget? .........................................................32
What is your situation? .......................................................33
vi SPEND JOYFULLY

Chapter 4 .......................................................................................37
Developing a Plan
Big things are often just lots of little things .......................37
Break big things into smaller pieces...................................38
Surprises .............................................................................40
Spending Joyfully ...............................................................43
Tweaking the Spending Allowance .....................................45
Teach your children ............................................................47
But what about YOU? .........................................................48
Cash Flow Analysis worksheet ...........................................51
How’s your Cash Flow? ......................................................54
Chapter 5 .......................................................................................57
But I can make the payments
Danger ahead ......................................................................57
Is there a way to fix it? .......................................................58
The Three Essential Steps...................................................58
Give yourself a raise!..........................................................59
There is risk if you don’t act...............................................60
An Action Plan ...................................................................61
How soon do I see benefits?...............................................68
Your credit report................................................................69
Chapter 6 .......................................................................................73
What’s normal?
Just like everybody else I see .............................................73
Confident and Free .............................................................74
Eleven Principles & Practices of the Confident & Free .....75
Will you accept my invitation? ...........................................81
Chapter 7 .......................................................................................83
Don’t go shopping yet—A recap of Part One
So far it’s all about money, not about spending ..................83
So what have you learned so far? .......................................84
And what can you DO with this knowledge? .....................85
 MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL LIFESTYLE vii

Part Two .........................................................................87

How to control your shopping.
Chapter 8 .......................................................................................89
The Purchase Proposition
Facing the Deal ...................................................................89
Identifying the proposition .................................................91
Reacting to the proposition.................................................93
Fighting the Urge to Buy ....................................................96
The Four Essential Questions .............................................97
Finding Satisfaction..........................................................102
Finding Value....................................................................103
Am I ready to buy it?........................................................107
Chapter 9 .....................................................................................111
The power of “it’ll do”
How much is enough? ......................................................111
Choose your battles ..........................................................111
Keep your eye on the objective.........................................113
Chapter 10 ...................................................................................115
The Bigger Picture
Charlie’s letter from home ................................................115
Take your logical brain shopping......................................117
The Puzzle within the Puzzle ...........................................118
Chapter 11 ...................................................................................121
Critical Considerations
Some things sneak up on you ...........................................121
Time spent shopping.........................................................122
Value Set ...........................................................................124
Price Framing ...................................................................127
Sale Merchandise..............................................................129
Bundle Pricing ..................................................................129
What is the price? .............................................................131
Financing tricks and the risk of fees.................................134
Hidden costs .....................................................................135
Financing, if you must ......................................................137
viii SPEND JOYFULLY

Chapter 12 ...................................................................................139
Building Habits, Breaking Habits
A change of habit..............................................................139
Compulsion, Obsession, & Conviction ............................139
We’re all quirky ................................................................141
But these are only habits...................................................143
And what does this have to do with Spending Joyfully? ..144
Chapter 13 ...................................................................................147
Now you can shop—A recap of Part Two
So what have you learned in Part Two? ............................147
And what can you DO with that knowledge? ...................148

Part Three.....................................................................151
Recognizing forces that drive your decisions.
Chapter 14 ...................................................................................153
Advertising & Marketing
It’s You vs. the World ........................................................153
How to deal with advertising............................................153
Five Essential Deconstruction Tools.................................155
Chapter 15 ...................................................................................161
What Drives Your Decisions
Be Happy, Belong, Be Important......................................161
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs...........................................162
Who uses Maslow’s Theory? ............................................163
I know all this and I still “spend stupid”...........................166
Chapter 16 ...................................................................................172
Chasing the Image of Wealth
Confusing style with substance ........................................172
Does wealth set you apart from the crowd?......................173
What does set you apart from the crowd? ........................174
But I like Bling!................................................................174
Real wealth, where you want to be ...................................176
 MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL LIFESTYLE ix

Chapter 17 ...................................................................................179
The Roadmap
The game is scored by the amount of satisfaction you get in
exchange for your money. Here’s how to win the game.

Glossary of Terms.......................................................................185

Sources for More Information ..................................................189

Index............................................................................................193
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When a book is published with a single author, you can be fairly
sure there are other people who deserve some of the credit. That is
certainly true for Spend Joyfully.
The background material for Spend Joyfully came from my
experience in business and my good luck to have known great men-
tors. Some of my most profound guidance came from people who
have no idea how much they changed my life. Keep that in mind as
you live your own life … others are learning from you.
I particularly appreciate the opportunities I found while
employed by Illinois Tool Works. At their corporate Technology Cen-
ter, I was deeply involved in plenty of projects all over the world deal-
ing with operations, new product development, and marketing issues.
Is there a better way to learn how products are made and sold? Imag-
ine. I was constantly talking to management, suppliers, and our cus-
tomers about products for retail, commercial, industrial components,
and commodity hardware. This proved to be a great laboratory for
studying how people (management and the customers) make spend-
ing decisions.
My wife, Judy, has been behind the scenes all the way since I
mentioned the idea of writing this book. I must give thanks that God
made someone who can be as tolerant and helpful as she has been.
Judy has provided support, encouragement, and critique for every
step of this journey. She reviews every word and helps make my
thoughts understandable to readers. And that’s just a small part of
why I love her.
There was a team of family, friends, and associates who
reviewed the first manuscript and explained what needed to change
if this project were to succeed: Patrick Farran, Lin Fernholz, Bill
xii SPEND JOYFULLY

Freer, Elizabeth Hawkins, Erica Jeglum, Cindy Kaempfer, Janice

Kocek, Diane Leamy, Eva Lopez, Mary Martin, Tom Stone, and
Mike Velan. You guys did an excellent job. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Certain stars must be in alignment before a book is written. In
my case, it started in the fourth and fifth grades of school in a small
West Virginia town where Mrs. Watson taught me the basics of dia-
gramming sentences. She probably taught me more than that, but the
diagrams were more memorable than her geography class. Destiny
eventually brought Rosemary Camilleri into my life decades later.
Rosemary built on Mrs. Watson’s effort and gave me the confidence
to write. I must give her a well deserved reference. Check Rosemary
out at www.tregistry.com/camilleri.htm.
And thanks to you, my readers. Why would I write this book if
there weren’t people to read it?
 Introduction

The title — Spend Joyfully — sounds inappropriate for what has

recently happened to the economy, both here in the United States and
the world at large. But, spending is what will bring our economy back
to health. And to Spend Joyfully is not simply to go on a shopping
spree.
Let me ask you to pretend for a minute. Regardless of your age
or cultural makeup, for this exercise “pretend” you are single, in your
late twenties, and live with a roommate. That is just to give you per-
mission to think like this for a short while.
Imagine waking up in your house the day after you have thrown
a huge party. Let your imagination run with this idea a little bit …
let’s say you invited many friends to the party, but things got out of
hand when your friends started inviting people you didn’t know. The
party seemed to be a lot of fun and you let it continue. Heck, some of
the strangers turned out to be really great folks to have at a party. You
hadn’t planned on the party getting this big, but that turned out okay
as people brought snacks and drinks to share.
Now, as you wake up, you find the house is a total mess … and
you don’t feel too good. You are hung-over and there are grease stains
in your roommate’s oriental rug where someone stepped on a sand-
wich. The wine spill on your sofa is another matter. The kitchen will
take hours to clean and organize. Only then will you find that some
of the glassware is broken.
You get the idea.
Now quit pretending and look at your finances. Is there is a par-
allel to the party house? Welcome to today’s economy.
2 SPEND JOYFULLY

We’ve been in a party mood for several years. Credit has let us
do things we now realize we shouldn’t have been doing. We put our
trust in people and ideas we didn’t really know. Those people told us
it was okay to party with our credit cards and Home Equity credit
lines. They showed us how to do it and it was a great party. Now we
see a mess that needs to be cleaned up. Hello!
To clean up this mess, your first reaction is to stop spending —
totally. After all, you need to use your money to pay off your debt.
But when everybody stops buying, business dies. Jobs are being lost,
and yours could be the next one on the chopping block. To keep jobs,
we have to keep spending. Your income is generated, in some way, by
other people spending money.
The truth is, you can’t totally stop spending money. If you could
do that, you wouldn’t need money in the first place. But in our world,
you need to pay for a place to live, for clothing, and for food. Each
one of these purchases involves making a choice … How much do I
choose to spend on housing so that I’ll have money left for clothing
and food? Today, it’s harder to get credit than it used to be. You don’t
have the option of using credit to get what you want and simply hope
it works out in the future. Now, you really need to live within your
means. You don’t want to spend money you don’t have.
When you get down to the very basics issues of paying for what
you really need to have, and you are not sure you will have a job, or
that you can get a new credit card to charge to, the choices you make
begin to look very important. If you get too much of one thing, you
won’t be able to get something else you need.
The stress of making those choices — those purchase decisions
— with actual money and no wiggle room offered by credit is very
real stress. There is nothing “joyful” about those decisions. But learn-
ing better ways to track your money and evaluate purchasing oppor-
tunities can greatly reduce the stress. In fact, if you know you have
made a good decision in what you buy, it can be JOYFUL.
That is what this book is about — Learning to SPEND money
joyfully, responsibly, with satisfaction, and without guilt or regret.
Being confident of your choices can make you feel rich beyond
what you feel today. But if you think of “rich” as having a lot of
money, there will always be somebody with more money than you
have.
 MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL LIFESTYLE 3

Spend Joyfully pertains to what you think of money and how

you treat it, rather than how much money you have. It also deals with
what you think about yourself and the people around you.
If you think of yourself as meeting your expectations for suc-
cess, you won’t have to prove it by buying the “image of wealth” to
show other people. If you respect yourself, you won’t jeopardize your
future by contracting large credit card debt.
There are three major parts in this book:
Part One looks at how to handle money in a responsible way.
You’re in charge of your money as you learn how money is spent on
different types of goods and services. Categorize what you spend
your money for. Study ways to make sure you can pay your necessary
bills, and have money set aside to “spend” without guilt. If you don’t
understand this section, it will be difficult to improve your financial
situation.
Part Two prepares you to deal with the moment of the spending
transaction itself. This is about making a decision—Will you give your
money to someone else in order to get something you want in return?
The answer may be a simple yes or no. Or it may be more complicated
than that if you realize there are better alternatives that need to be eval-
uated. The Four Essential Questions that you need to ask yourself
before making a purchase will greatly improve your chances for suc-
cess in spending joyfully. This is the heart of my message—the reason
I wrote this book. This is about you being in control.
Part Three explores how the mind works — how we prioritize
our choices — how advertising affects our spending choices.
The purpose and method of this book is to deal with a conflict
that you have in your brain. We all have this conflict. It is caused by
two different brain systems and motivators. It’s where one voice says
we want instant gratification and another voice wants to assure us a
secure future. These two perspectives find it difficult to coexist.
Don’t get the idea that you can turn off your desire for instant grati-
fication. You’re human. That “I want it all, and I want it NOW!” feel-
ing is a very basic part of us. But we also have a cortex, a part of our
brain capable of thinking at a higher level of complexity than that
urge for the “instant feel good.” Spend Joyfully provides reasons to
listen to a rational, logical awareness. It exercises your entire brain so
that it can balance short-term and long-term satisfaction.
4 SPEND JOYFULLY

I want you to have money available for discretionary purchases.

— To make wise choices for how you spend your money. — To be
confident that YOU are in charge of where your money goes. I want
you to be happy.
Throughout this book, I direct my conversation toward readers
who could possibly pay their current bills and still have a little extra
money that they keep in their pocket for the occasional chance of
finding satisfaction. These readers can benefit from guidance and
understanding, to develop a viable objective for their lives that will
offer them a feeling of success and freedom. I am a strong believer
that the key to Joyful Spending is to never spend money you don’t
have. I offer the foundation for building an attitude that will help you
find satisfaction in living within your means. Along with that, I offer
ways to assure yourself that you are living within your means.
I am aware of two types of people who do not fall into the cate-
gory that I have selected for my audience. One of those is the person,
or family, who is absolutely destitute. They do not have the resources
or income to make ends meet, any way you want to look at it. I am
glad we live in a country where there are strong systems for wealth
transfer to help these people. I am referring to various welfare pro-
grams, faith-based support with housing, food and clothing, and even
Social Security. There are people who find themselves in circum-
stances where this book cannot help them. I ask you to consider that,
and, when you get to the point where you can save for your future,
you can also give to help people in need of your support.
The other situation involves people who have devoted an entire
working lifetime to “saving,” who approach retirement and cannot
bring themselves to “spend” the money they worked so hard to save.
This person is the opposite of what I consider my audience for this
book. My second non-audience sees risk as such a concern that no
amount of saving is enough, and no amount of risk is acceptable.
They have programmed their decision process to look only at reasons
“not to spend.” Maybe these people don’t think of themselves as
misers, but they aren’t happy unless they are contributing to their sav-
ings.
What I hope to achieve is a happy middle ground where you
have money reserved for paying your bills and have more money
 MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL LIFESTYLE 5

available that you look forward to spending. I believe in using an

“allowance,” much like you might have received as a child, as a dis-
cretionary fund. That fund is used to build your own confidence in
buying things that will maximize your satisfaction. What you learn
from handling a small amount of “pocket money” will affect how
you handle your larger expenses.
Wait … Before you get started reading the rest of this book …
I just want to say “thank you” for reading the book. I want to give
everyone a fighting chance at managing their money. This book is my
effort to do that. And, if you like what this book has to offer, buy
copies of it to give to your friends as gifts. (If this book has a good
message, how else can you spread that message quickly?)

MR. MONEY SAYS: Wait

again, Mr. Stone forgot to
introduce me. I’m not your
ordinary money bag, I’m Mr.
Money. You can call me by my
first name, “Moe”. Occasion-
ally, I have to step forward to
clarify what Mr. Stone has
said, or let you know when he
says something really impor-
tant. Okay, thanks. I’ll see
you later.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a
complete use of the other five.

—W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Of Human Bondage’, 1915

English dramatist & novelist (1874 - 1965)
 1
Part One
(Chapters One through Seven)
It’s about money (and elephant stew).

✦ Why is money hard to manage? How can you do a better job

with your budget?
✦ Why don’t budgets work for everybody? What is Cash Flow
management?
✦ Learn to manage your money to match a life that has pur-
pose. Have a Life Objective, Principles to live by, and Prac-
tices that improve your chances of achieving your Life
Objective.
✦ Why debt drags you down, and how to turn that around.
✦ Where you can find money to spend.
✦ How to be confident that you can pay your bills and be free
of most financial pitfalls.
 Chapter 1

Setting the Stage

Spend like a millionaire!

If this thought gets you excited, then read on to understand what it
means to “spend like a millionaire.”
Most of us have the notion that millionaires can buy anything
their hearts desire. Many of us want a lot of things we don’t have.
After you think about this situation and talk to a few million-
aires, you’ll find that buying anything our heart desires, and wanting
a lot of things we don’t have, leads to a feeling of inadequacy. That
feeling can cause behavior that leads to debt, stress, and depression.
This book will help you understand that you are very much like
the millionaires in the world. More importantly, they are very much
like you. What makes most millionaires different (besides the fact
that they have a whole lot of money) is the way they spend their
money.
I can help you change the way you save money and the way you
spend money. This book will give examples you can remember—
examples with practical help when you need it later. It will also give
you language that will help you plan and talk about your money.
Let’s have some fun with this as we go along. Take the time to
laugh about your mistakes. Seriously, if you’ve made some poor deci-
sions with your spending and have run up some monumental credit
card debt, I know you will have a hard time getting it straightened
10 SPEND JOYFULLY

out. But you should take the time to find out why you made bad deci-
sions that got you so far into debt, and how not to make the same mis-
takes again. If you don’t understand how you got to the bad decision,
how are you going to get above doing it again?
Most readers can do a better job of controlling their spending if
they are given some simple tools to work with. Let’s start with some
simple observations:

Where’s the money?

In America today, there is an ever-growing need to know more
about money. And money is different today than it was a few decades
ago. Today it is more a concept than a reality. We don’t see silver dol-
lars. Our government doesn’t issue currency based on gold anymore.
We spend our money with credit cards. And we have our paychecks
deposited into our checking account automatically. We hardly ever
see “money.” The way most of us thought about money as children
does not work in our lives today. When we were kids, most of us
knew where our money was. It was either in our pocket or in our
piggy-bank. So, we need some new ways to deal with money we
can’t see.

How do you GET money?

For most of us, work is the largest source of money. If you do
something for someone, you usually get paid for doing it if the other
person agrees that they should pay you. But that is really a narrow
view of how you can get money in today’s world.
In a broader sense, there are other ways to get money: You can
inherit it from someone who dies. You can receive it as a gift. You can
sell something for more than you bought it for. And, you can earn it
by letting people use your money and hope that they give you more
money back later (investing).

How do you SAVE money?

We have heard that we need to save money for retirement. (Not
all of us have learned this.) Our employers set up retirement savings
programs like 401(k) and 403(b) plans. And many employers give us
 MANAGING YOUR FINANCIAL LIFESTYLE 11

a strong incentive to put money into the plans by matching some of

the money we contribute with money they put into it for us. But for
many employers, this is a way to avoid the old-fashioned pension
plan. This, by the way, is not all bad news.
The tax advantages of IRA savings plans are being presented to
us daily in magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, and the Internet. Banks
are promoting their CD rates, too. But this doesn’t tell us how to save.

How do you LOSE money? Where does your money go?

When you think of losing money, some people might think
about losing money on investments. But there is a CHAPTER MISS-
ING from other books … TEACHING SPENDING. We lose money
when we spend it on something. If we can find a way to spend the
money on things that will bring us something else of value, we are
using money for a good purpose. That purpose should help us feel
happier, or more satisfied, with what we receive for our money than
we felt when we had the money.
Understanding why your money goes away from you is not a
subject that is easily learned. The reason this is true is because other
people will have money coming into their account when you have
money going out of your account. That is the transaction. Most busi-
nesses don’t really want you to know how to keep your money; they
want to get that money from you.
Looking at a larger picture, we see a more complex game being
played to help us determine where we spend our money. Other peo-
ple want to put our money in their bank accounts. To simplify the
game … The customer is on one team and the merchants are on the
other team. And it is not a fair game. The merchants have teams made
up of professional employees and services that specialize in making
you want what they have to sell you. They go to school to learn the
basics, and they conduct market trials and customer focus studies to
perfect their game strategy. How do you, the customer, prepare for
this game? You are an amateur going up against a professional team.
This, then, is how the stage is set for the process where money
(or its representation through credit) gets away from you in your per-
sonal life:
12 SPEND JOYFULLY

• One aspect of your world is distorted when you play this

game without real money. You play with credit cards, lease
arrangements, and other forms of debt. If you have money,
it is represented by numbers that tell you about your bank
account and your credit account. Ask yourself, How good is
the average American at understanding what numbers tell
him or her?
• Another aspect of your world is distorted when the media
shows you how well accepted a special product is. If your
friends are using it, shouldn’t you? If it removes a risk to
your life, shouldn’t you protect yourself by buying what is
shown in the advertising and TV program placements?
Haven’t you really worked hard enough in your life to give
yourself a reward?
This book will lead you through arguments I have used to help
people assure that each purchase is justified and provides value and
satisfaction. While the arguments found here are directed toward the
retail customer, they were developed in practice with professional
buyers, project managers, executives, and financial controllers who
use the techniques in their everyday operations in business. There is
plenty of evidence that budgeting techniques help manage money for
positive results in business. A well-run business will justify major
purchases with regard to the impact those purchases will make on the
business’s strategic objectives. These same practices can work for
you.
Going forward from this point, periodically you should remind
yourself that what we are talking about here is REAL MONEY; it is
your money. And, you are in charge of the decision about when to
spend that money. The person selling to you is not in charge of a sales
transaction. You are!

Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun
shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men
and animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for
us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not
belong to us.
—Blackfoot chief, (c. 1880)
The complete book may be
ordered from the author’s web
site
www.SpendJoyfully.com
(also available from fine bookstores everywhere)

This edition published by

Dog Ear Publishing
4010 W. 86th Street, Ste H
Indianapolis, IN 46268

www.dogearpublishing.net

ISBN: 978-160844-084-9