{"product_id":"earn-what-you-deserve-isbn-9780553572223","title":"Earn What You Deserve","description":"\u003cb\u003eAre you always running out of money—or worried that you will? Does your salary never seem to stretch far enough? You can change your life \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003enow\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ewith Jerrold Mundis’s clear, effective program:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is not a system of penny-pinching, working overtime, or taking a job you hate. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. \u003ci\u003eEarn What You Deserve\u003c\/i\u003e is a total approach to changing your relationship with money, designed to bring prosperity and abundance int your life. Jerrold Mundis, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt \u0026amp; Live Prosperously, \u003c\/i\u003eknows this is a program that works. He has used it not only to shop his own habitual underearning, but to help others who want to break free of the pain and stress of making less money than they need.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEarn What You Deserve\u003c\/i\u003e will teach you:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• The common characteristics that indicate a problem with underearning\u003cbr\u003e• The three things \u003ci\u003enot\u003c\/i\u003e to do—starting right now\u003cbr\u003e• The powerful tool that shows you where your money has been going\u003cbr\u003e• The Spending Plan that puts your money where you want it to go\u003cbr\u003e• Special Strategies for couples, families, and single parents\u003cbr\u003e• And much more\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn addition to practical techniques that will increase your earning power, Jerrold Mundis shows you how to transform your thoughts and feelings about money—paving the way for \u003ci\u003elasting\u003c\/i\u003e change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEarn more, live better, feel happier. Let Jerrold Mundis show you how with \u003ci\u003eEarn What You Deserve.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJerrold Mundis\u003c\/b\u003e is a writer, speaker, and counselor. His books have been selected by the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, One Spirit Book Club, and others, and have been translated into a dozen foreign languages. His short work has appeared in such publications as \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Heritage\u003c\/i\u003e. A recovered debtor, he is intimately familiar with the success of the Debtors Anonymous program. Mundis speaks regularly on debt and personal money for clients ranging from the US Customs and Border Protection to the National Education Association, Unity Church, and professional societies and associations. He also works privately with individuals across the United States and in other countries as well, by telephone. Jerrold Mundis lives in New York City.1.\u003cbr\u003e IN ALL ITS GLORY\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e IN THIS CHAPTER, WE’RE GOING TO DEFINE UNDEREARNING, discuss its dynamics, and give an overview of Prospering. First, though, I’d like to amplify slightly on how this book came to be written, to establish a context.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A ROAD WELL TRAVELED\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I first heard Walter say that pain is the messenger in a roomful of people who didn’t drink or take drugs. There was something else Walter used to say: “The lesson will be repeated—until it’s learned.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Both these statements have proved true for me, and valuable; I think they are true for everyone.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Over the next seven years, my life got progressively better. I worked to make it better. When pain came, I listened; I found ways to change, different ways to do things. The first major change I had made was to cease using chemical mood-changers myself. I undertook the next one a year later. I was in terrible, constant pain over my debts, which seemed to me almost insurmountable then. Someone introduced me to a support group for people in debt, and from that day on, one day at a time, I did not incur another new debt in any form.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And my life got better.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Still, something was wrong. Fundamentally wrong, though at first that was not apparent to me.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I didn’t debt, but I kept bottoming-out—running out of money. Each time, I watched the operating fund I had managed to build being depleted, drained away despite all my efforts to prevent that, until there was nothing left. Until I had no money at all. None. The pain, and fear, were excruciating.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I would not debt, was willing to go to any length not to. There was a time when that willingness meant not buying Christmas presents for my sons—a difficult and humbling thing to do. There were times when it meant pulling up the couch cushions and going through my jacket pockets looking for change so I could buy food over the weekend for myself and my youngest son, whom I had down from the country every other weekend.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Being solvent—not incurring any new debt, one day at a time—wasn’t always so grim. I paid off many thousands of dollars of debt during those years, bought clothes, and took vacations. But sooner or later (without being a profligate spender), I would bottom-out once more, get down to zero, have no money left—no matter how hard I worked, what I tried.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I am not lazy. I am not unintelligent. Nor untalented or incapable. And I was willing to do whatever was necessary to free myself from debt and debting. Why, then, did I keep ending up like this?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I think during those years that I somehow always sensed there was another, perhaps even more powerful issue behind debting for me (or one at least as powerful). In meetings focused on recovery from debt I sometimes attended, most people identified themselves as debtors when they spoke: “Hi, I’m Bob, and I’m a debtor.” I didn’t. Certainly I was a debtor (someone who’d had repeated trouble with debt), but I felt that to call myself such would be vaguely inaccurate, somehow insufficient, perhaps even self-misleading. So what I would say was, “Hi, I’m Jerry. I have a long history of incurring debt.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Which was the truth, but which also kept the question open.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Still, there was a pattern here—something was happening, kept happening, that returned me to the very edge of debting, to lack and deprivation again.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e So now, after much thought, I named self-created lack as something with which I had a terrible problem, over which I was powerless, and that was making my life unmanageable. I hoped that by perceiving it thus and by taking appropriate actions (as I had with not-debting), I could begin to free myself from it, too. (This is a tricky concept, which we’ll discuss fully in Chapters 3 and 9.)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e For a while, I tried working with the concept of self-created lack. In the end, it wasn’t right. It was approaching what I needed to find, but wasn’t the thing itself. With regret, I stopped working with the idea. That was not the right name.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I knew something was wrong. But what was it?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And that’s where I was when Jim Roi said to me: “Jerry, do you think—is it possible—could it be—that you are a compulsive underearner?”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e •   •   •\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Over the years I had heard an occasional person in debt recovery refer to himself or herself as an underearner, or temporary underearner, or even—though rarely—compulsive underearner. But no one had ever defined just what that might mean or addressed how one might go about freeing oneself from it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I am a compulsive underearner.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Has a kind of frightening, final ring to it, doesn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Bless you, my child. (And thank God I’m not one, whatever it means!)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Even the simple I am an underearner, without that brutal modifier, is distasteful to most people.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e No wonder no one has wanted to touch the issue. But the paradox is that that very admission—“I am an underearner”—makes liberation possible, makes it unnecessary, one day at a time, to continue underearning.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This time when I began to work with the concept, naming myself a compulsive underearner, the impact was immediate and enormous. I knew I had found the right name at last.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e UNDEREARNING: WHAT IT IS\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e All right. So what is underearning?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e To earn, in its primary dictionary sense, means to gain salary, wages, or other reward for your service, labor, or performance. To earn, then, is to gain income from what you do.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e So, then:\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e To underearn is repeatedly to gain less income than you need, or than would be beneficial—usually for no apparent reason, and despite your desire to do otherwise.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What do we mean by need? And by less than would be beneficial?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e We are defining need here in its most basic sense: an amount that is enough for you to provide yourself with food, shelter, and clothing of decent quality on a regular basis.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e That’s the amount of income you need.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e While owning a co-op on the park, buying a new car every year, or having the money to pay for your daughter’s medical education at Stanford might be pleasurable and even desirable, they are not needs.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Beneficial is more open to interpretation. For our purposes, it means enough for you to meet your basic needs, with some left over to spend on items or quality that exceed those needs, a bit more for recreation or relaxation, and some to put into savings. As a threshold definition, that is what we mean by beneficial.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Underearning is not synonymous with having a low income, though it often involves one. Many people earn a low income who are not underearners. They bring in more than they need to cover their basic expenses, and provide themselves with some pleasure and savings, and they display few of the characteristics common to underearners. (These are discussed in the next chapter.)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Nor is underearning synonymous with underachieving. People can achieve less, even a great deal less, than their potential and still earn more than they need or than is basically beneficial to them.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Nor, finally, is underearning synonymous with underworking. Most underearners, on the contrary, work very hard. They simply make sure, in some way, that what they get back from their effort is either not enough or just marginally enough to get by on.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e So low levels of income achievement, or work—or simply levels lower than one is capable of—while frequently associated with underearning, are not in themselves indicators of underearning.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What, then, are?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Underearning is a self-diagnosed condition—and needs to be. No underearner will ever get free of underearning without first perceiving, or accepting, that he or she is an underearner. Not hearing it from someone else, but perceiving it for himself, herself. Surely, it is sometimes objected, not everyone who has ever had trouble bringing in enough money to meet his needs is an underearner? No, of course not. Just as not everyone who has ever been drunk is an alcoholic.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2 contains detailed discussions of the most common indicators of a difficulty with underearning. Use them to determine how serious your own situation with underearning may or may not be.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Is underearning an illness of some sort? It may be, it may not. Certainly it’s not a physical illness, but the argument can be made that underearning, like other self-damaging behaviors, is a psychological and spiritual illness. (We’ll deal with those aspects as we go along.) But ultimately—is it? For some, it probably is; for others, it isn’t. But what it is, is less important than that it is. There is a condition of underearning, a state of underearning, an ontology of underearning. So whatever it may or may not actually be, it is perfectly fine, I think, to call it an illness, a malady, an affliction, a habit, tendency, mindset, or anything else you might wish.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Whatever underearning may ultimately be, there are basically three kinds of it: Compulsive, Problematic, and Minor.","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304501072101,"sku":"NP9780553572223","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553572223.jpg?v=1767725800","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/earn-what-you-deserve-isbn-9780553572223","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}