( P)- In money-
orld forever ch nting
" ore," ic i Robin and Joe
Doming z tnd imple pI ure in
yin "Enough."
ch liv on yearly budget of
bout $6, t ell below the federal
poverty level. And while that' not
unu u I the e d y t Robin nd
Dominguez t nd out for three
OIlS:
-They live th y do by choice.
-They wrote a boo urging
everyone to do the m.
-People dually are buying it.
Th authors have me gurus of
the New Frug lily, offering a morn
ing-after remedy of thrift for the
19 bacchanal of consumeri m.
The 00 "Your Money Or Your
Life," i amonga helffullofpopul
new busine and personal-finance
offering ernpha izing piritual as
well as material gains.
GRABBI G ALL YOU can is
out; making do with what you have is .
in. Instant gratification is out; long
term gains are in. Conspicuous is out;
conscious is in.
At the heart of it all is a concept
that may seem revolutionary to a
credi t-card generation of baby
, boomers but was obvious to their
grandparents: Live within your
means.
"This is not a fad," Dominguez
insisted. "It's a philosophy upon
which this country was founded. It's
about squeezing the buck until the
eagle 'grins.
This is where we come from. WC''' ...
forgo.t ••
THERE ARE PLENTY of new
books and newsletters to help us
remember:
-"Your Money Or Your Life,"
published by Viking in- -"September,
already is in its sixth printing with .
more than 100,000 copies dis
tributed. It has made the New York
Times' best-seller list of how-to
books four times.
-' 'The Tightwad Gazette," by
Amy Dacyczyn, a housewife in
Leeds, Maine, is full of homespun
hints for pinching pennies: Buy
peanut butter by the case, make your
own pizz instead of ordering out.
Published by Villard, the book com
pi les the fi rs t two years of
Dacyczyn's monthly newsletter,
which has grown from 1,700 sub
scribers to 80,000 since 1990.
-The Living Cheap News, pub
lished in San Jose, Calif., was started
last February by Larry Roth, who
found "The Tightwad Gazette" too
countrified. His monthly newsletter
offers _!!loney�saving tips for city
slickers.
Some advice' treads the line be
tween frugal and downright miserly.
Roth, for example, ays he uses the
same coffee ground for days but
concedes (hat might not be to
everyone.' taste.
The goal, he and the others say, is
conscious spending, not deprivation.
"I'm not into hair hirts and tom
Levi," Dominguez aid. "I'm into:
'Cool it, the mall is not the new
temple.' Slow it down. Most middle-
cIa folk s are not going to sur er if
they are alting away 10 percent to 2
percent of their income instead of
spending it at the mall."
nOMI U Z D ROBI ---'-
ugge t that instead of mea uring
purchase strictly by the dollar,
people' hould consider how much
time, or "life energy," they lo e on
the earn-and- p nd treadmill.
In "Your Money," they ffer a
sobering cal ulation of how a eem
-Ingly high-paying job can yield
urprisingly little per hour-once the
co ts of cornmu ting, parking, meal
d nice clothes are dedu ted and
then divided by hours working,
traveling and recovering fromjob-in-
duced tr and illnes .
Domin uez d Robinjumped off
their own treadmill more than 20
yea go.
Domin z, 5 ,wor ed W 11
Street naly t But fter hi company
o ded, h re 01 d t 25 never to
be dependent on an 'employer gain.
got a nother job, tarted aving,
nd within fiv y IS h d oc ed
w yS80,OOO.Hequithi jo _and
been living off the interest ever ince.
Robin, 47, grew up in a well-off
family on Long Island. Graduating
from Brown, he pursued cling in
New York but grew disill ioned and
hit the road with a S20,000 in
heritance .. She met Dominguez while
traveling in Mexico.
Dominguez and Robin re m ters t
keeping other co to bare bon .
hoppin pree for Robin i
buyin a d jump uit t thrift
hop. Dominguez does his erran ,
rain or hine, by bicycle. R tber than
go to re taur nt , they'll invite
friend over for a potluc dinn r.
Th ir imple life tyle w up-
po ed to be me ns to an end.
Dominguez nd Robin aid it gave
them more time for volunteer work
and m hed with their goal of moving
ociety toward more ustainable, le
environmentally destructive ways.
, H'ut friends wondered how they
made end meet, 0 Dominguez
started giving living-room talks on
his financial strategy in 1980.
By 1985, he w traveling tpe
country, giving seminars in packed
auditoriums. When it tarted eeming
too much like work, Dominguez
produced an audio-ca ette cours in
venue ide I of con
ume m, nd they I in hope
t t they ever ill. Fru lity i a e
ful philo ophi underpi nning for
reduced expec tio .
or tiU oth , it'
ofmaturity. Young ple, tl h
the n wfound power of pay h
often feel they have their entire live
to m e up for th mon y they're
bout to merrily quand r, But a t r
age 30, visions of mortality (and
meager retirem nt benefi ) tart to
gna .
Co ider Mike and Lind Lenich
of the Clicago uburb of South Hol
land. They followed the run - tep
program in "Your Money Or Your
I frug lity pre d
lowly in the 1 , then mu h-
roomed in 1990, Robin ide
UIt' m t if e turned the
decade, and the morning fter, people
kn w we were going to ve to do
something different," he aid.
"Th y knew th e free flow of money
of the ' w a r- that the faucet
w huttin down."
More recently, rece ionary fears
have kept Interest high, but d�per
motivations will rna e {rug lity
defining social trend of the 199Ot,
Robin aid.
For some aging baby boomers, it's
matter of valuing tim more than
nothi 0 how
Th Lenich
themselve wild penders, b
they probed their financea.
found plenty of hole where
money Ie ked through.
TH FRIENDS NOW live in
Seattle, baring a 3,600-square-foot
ho with three others. They paid off
the mortgage three years ago, and
III .... 6 ••
i
., ••••• f ,. _ , i,.1
ivilizations come and go" often leaving
their. art as .the �only record of their
_ .. accomplishments. It has been ,said tha
a nation that doesn't express itself in art is a
contradiction in terms; I_ike a person without
a perso ality. A nation, like a person. must
Identify with its past as well as its fu ure.
..
U.S.A.
\ I