After forty years of service, New Road Map Foundation is retiring. Our mission was to steward the information and resources developed by Joe Dominguez through his nine step program for Transforming Your Relationship with Money &Achieving Financial Independence. Forty years ago, stewarding such information required dedicated financial administration staff, a physical library, newsletters and materials mailed in envelopes with stamps, and answering the phone.Forty years later, the program, the community, and the message can exist online freeing up the need for an organization, staff, or boxes of stuff that take up space.

We're taking our own advice and conducting the ultimate decluttering. FinancialIntegrity.org will continue to exist in the ether, offering the 9 steps and related resources to everyone free-of-charge for the foreseeable future. YMOYL, of course, still exists and is being avidly read, and Joe's original audio course Transforming Your Relationship With Money is still being offered by Sounds True. The idea that finances should be managed with integrity and oriented toward the highest human values, for which we were once a lone beacon, has now become a worldwide meme, and we feel confident in trusting to the community to keep this perennial wisdom flowing via their own examples, their own mentorship and teaching of the Financial Integrity Program materials. We know this work can continue to grow via the vibrant social media and in-person networks that result from people recognizing that money -- and the resource flow it represents -- is ultimately about interdependence and collaboration.

As you are hopefully aware, this community (SLF) has been self-supporting in both costs and website administration labor for several years now. NRM has almost always front-loaded the costs, but you all have sent in donations to cover those costs after-the-fact. For the last 2 years we have provided the office-type administration free of charge. So given that, for 2013 and 2014 the SLF annual budget has been about $1000 and breaks out as follows:

$195 through GoDaddy for domain names (bulk purchase of all SLF relateddomains owned to maximize people's ability to find us, but simplelivingforum.net itself is only $20 with hosting storage another $35)
$100 for related email accounts
$400 through URLjet/Host Ventures for use of vBulletin software licenseand maintenance. This is billed semi-annually in May and November.

We estimated an additional <$300 annually for technical support related to hacking, etc. though that has thankfully not been necessary so far this year.

Total expenses to date in 2014: $218, with the bulk of remaining annual expenditures to hit in November with $200 vBulletin renewal, and then~$150 in December domain/storage/email renewal.

We invite the Simple Living Forum to stand on its own. I've asked Alan to facilitate the transition, as he has so ably and dedicatedly stewarded the back-end responsibilities of the site for some time now. It is my hope that this community fully lives its democratic, self-sufficiency values, and people step up to steward its common “home” for the benefit of all. It has been a great pleasure and a delight for us at NRM to be in community with you all!

In solidarity,
Rose
President, New Road Map Foundation