Peace And Plenty: Finding Your Path To Financial Serenity (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
I've read all of SBB's books and am working through SIMPLE ABUNDANCE for the third or fourth time. However, though I like her books, that's not to say that I don't feel conflicted about them. Sarah, as she comes across in her books, has a very theatrical way about her. This can be entertaining or irritating depending upon the reader's mood. Her books do tend to focus on cheering yourself up by buying stuff--though it may be stuff from a thrift store or garage sale. Like a lot of readers, I've found that the moods of her books strongly reflect what's going on in her life. Hence, SOMETHING MORE had an undercurrent of bitterness and anger. ROMANCING THE ORDINARY was a little calmer and more resigned--Sarah coming to grips with her new single-woman reality. MOVING ON came off as smug..."take THIS, cheating ex-husband, I've found my TRUE love." A dreamy Englishman, no less! The perfect fairytale ending for the woman who ran off to London at a young age hoping to become an actress. Not New York. Not Los Angeles. London. That says a lot about the sort of sensibility we're dealing with. Romantic. Histrionic, even.Then we come to PEACE AND PLENTY. The dream has revealed itself as just that...an illusion. Reality is Sarah camping out in her sister's condo while waiting for the British courts to tell her whether her shattered marriage will leave her with anything to show for nearly two decades of work. Now we learn about the huge designer shoe collection and Marilyn Monroe's (!!!) furs. About Sarah forking over a tidy fortune to sing on stage with Sting. I mean, this is about as far away from the simply abundant treat of sitting in front of a fire with a mug of cocoa topped with REAL whipped cream as you can get. This is Sarah the actress starring in her own Silver Screen extravaganza!Of course it couldn't last. And Sarah details how it all fell apart with admirable candor and humility. She offers some ideas for living on less, but that's really secondary, isn't it? Her fans will read this book to continue tagging along with her through the fascinating, exasperating adventure that is being SBB.Funnily enough, the day I'm writing this (April 9th) is also the date of the essay in SIMPLE ABUNDANCE that sums up my feelings about SBB and her work. In an entry entitled "Affordable Luxury," she declares that her readers are confusing the Simple Abundance path with the Voluntary Simplicity movement which gained popularity in the 90s. This, she said, was far from the truth. Voluntary Simplicity was based on fear and focused on deprivation. She even made what I consider a rather mean-spirited allusion to frugality writer Amy Dacyzyn, making fun of that author's description of how humble dryer lint can be transformed into a child's Halloween costume. The sub-text was clear: this sort of homey project is somehow beneath any woman with a healthy self-esteem. My first reaction upon re-reading this was pretty self-righteous. After meeting her goal of moving to an historic rural home and being a stay-at-home mom to a large family, Amy Dacyzyn is sitting pretty (and presumably still frequenting yard sales) in her Maine farmhouse at a time when many in our country, including SBB, aren't sure where the next mortgage payment is coming from. On further reflection, I can see that this was less about making fun of thrifty people than about Sarah's own fears of admitting that, yes, bad stuff DOES happen, even to women with impeccable fashion sense.So, sure, I enjoyed this book. I liked it so much that, after reading the copy in my library, I bought my own. I like Sarah for laughing at her own foibles. And I want to go along with her as she grows into her own humanity. She still clutches to optimism the way the victim of a shipwreck clings to a piece of floating debris but, come on, it's better than drowning. "If your imagination is blocked... you can't be sighing with pleasure over repurposing your never-used dining room into a cozy library, happily imagining....." xvi"When cataclysmic change arrives, why does there always seem to be rapid and ruthless reckoning required, especially before we even process what has happened? ... But Reader, trust me: This experience is essential. It will make our new life all the more sweet when we find our way back. And we will find our way back." (19)."Our goal is solvency: the return of choice, sanity and personal dignity in the use of money. Money than a positive bank balance, solvency is a balance in our lives as a whole." (93). "The only real security...is the skill and humor and courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace." ~ Audrey Sutherland qtd. p 272"Enchanted places have the power to change us, to germinate and nurture that tiny seed of happiness..that each of us have kept so carefully concealed" p. 283"Darwin taught us that it wasn't the biggest or the strongest of the species who survived, but the ones most adaptable to change." p. 291"Evolution is not short sighted, and neither should be our solvency." p. 291
What do You think about Peace And Plenty: Finding Your Path To Financial Serenity (2010)?
Good book to get you back on track financially.
—mae
