JOE DOMINGUEZ &VICKI ROBIN
THE NEW ROAD MAP FOUNDATION
INTERVIEWED BY NEAL HERBERT
THE FREE PRESS
JOE DOMINGUEZ &
If you are drowning in bills and feel as if you never have time to do the things you want, don't go jump off that bridge yet. Freeing yourself from debt and escaping from the rat race may be as simple as keeping closer track of your money and learning to get by on less. You can even save the planet in the process.
What is the New Road Map Foundation?
Vicki: We're a non-profit, educational and charitable organization with a staff of 10 volunteers that produces materials to educate people about the issue of global consumption as an environmental issue. We also educate people about personal finances to allow them to stop pouring their lives into a job and release their creativity in some slightly higher function to do with their lives.
What was it that made you reevaluate your own lives and led you to develop the program for financial independence?
Vicki: Well, I was more or less an achievement junkie for most of my life. I spent a couple of years in New York working on a career in film and television because my aspiration was to be a theatrical director and I felt I had to pay my dues in the Big Apple. It was such a seedy scene, with 20 people competing for one possibility of promoting some dumb soap or commercial. It was debasing. I had a history in my life of precipitating change by travelling, so at that time I started to travel and met Joe.
Joe: In the '60s, when I was reaching adulthood, I realized there has got to be more to life than 9-to-5. We've been sold a bill of goods that life is about the white picket fence, the house and the three-car garage. People I saw who had achieved that version of the American dream weren't happy. Because I was educated as an engineer, I'm interested in what works - don't tell me the theory, I want to see what works, and the American scene wasn't working. I started working on Wall Street, of all places, because I knew that I had to make my peace with money. I had to somehow learn about money - not make big bucks, but learn about money so that I could move on with life. The basis for the financial program was my own process of learning about money and applying that knowledge so that I could get out, and I retired by the time I was 30.
And then?
Joe: I went on to find out what was the 'more' that there has to be to life. Ultimately I learned that the 'more', for me, was to serve the larger whole, to serve the planet. For the last 20 years I've been looking for different ways to do that. Interestingly enough, the financial course was never part of it.
The book gave me the impression it sort of happened by accident.
Joe: That's exactly how it evolved. Vicki and I met in a trailer park in Mexico, and she said, "Here it is, the middle of the year and your just wandering around...how do you do that?" So I gave her the program. Like an engineer, I had it all figured out in steps...and she went and applied it. And it worked. And then other people would ask me, and 15 years later there were enough people asking about it that we developed seminars. When that became too popular, we came out with the tape course. When that became outrageously popular, somebody suggested, "Hey! It's time for a book!"
Your program is based on investing enough money to live off of the interest - aren't we talking about a rather large sum of money?
Joe: I live on $6,000 a year. That takes me a capital of about $80,000 to produce. Right now, it would take maybe $100,000 because of lower interest rates. That's it. That's all I need for the rest of my life. Take the average wage in this country - $28,000. If you live on $6,000 and put away $22,000, in 5 years, you're out. That's appalling.
I didn't expect that low a figure.
Joe: That's what I live on...and by the way, it's easy. I'm appalled by people who live on more. How much money can you spend on food, shelter and clothing - the three basics? In fact, I have savings every year. I can't figure out where people spend it...frankly, I don't want to know!
In your book, you discuss our society's rather skewed vision of leisure and recreation...
Vicki: We've been manipulated by the advertising industry and by industrialists. As Henry Ford said, if we can show people that leisure is something they need to buy products for, we're in like flynn. So we're convinced that we need to spend. If you want to ski, go bowling...do anything, the first thing you do is go to a store. If you want to exercise, you join a health club...
Joe: ... and then you drive to the club!
Vicki: What we're saying is that the emperor has no clothes on! This is simply nuts, folks. When I was touring for the book last year, I felt like I was hitting the culture broadside...it was completely undefended against this message because everybody knew it was true.
Joe: As recently as 100 years ago, making money was a means to an end. Now, it's pervasive. And we have a whole mechanism for getting people to spend more, through advertising, or by constantly pulling the other end when we try to get both ends to meet. The street of dreams is the only way to go now. No matter how you look at it, money, and acquiring more of it, has become a very major part of the human existence in this country. And I'm avoiding words like materialism or greed, because I'm talking about basically good people...
Is it security they're after?
Joe: They might not even define it as security. it's just the thing do to.
This obviously goes along really well with the concept of sustainability...
Joe: Our real mission is to wake people up to the way they're desecrating the Earth with their consumption. We're saying that life can actually be more fulfilling if you begin to cut back and enjoy life instead of working to get more money to go to the mall with.
How does the book achieve this?
Joe: The program frees people to begin to think about other things, and it asks them once a month, "Did you get fulfillment [from your purchases]?" "How is this [spending] in alignment with your values?" Pretty innocent stuff like: "How is this extra can of WD-40 in alignment with my values? What the hell are my values?" In a gentle way, it gets people to think about what life is. It isn't spiritual, it's not a philosophy...it's the true American dream. Materialism and three cars in the garage was not what Jefferson was talking about.
Vicki: Cutting back on consumption doesn't mean cutting back on happiness.
Who buys this book? Is there a target audience?
Joe: We have thousands of letters in our files, and there is just as much watermarked paper from CEOs as there is recycled paper with writing on the back. I can't find any pattern. There isn't one particular lifestyle or philosophy for which this program will work. There isn't anything that's vital other than to follow the steps and pay attention to how you use your life. I have to say, in all sincerity, that the market for the book is anybody who earns money or spends money.
Your Money or Your Life is now available in paperback.
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