Over the past few years, I’ve always struggled with questions about money:
Should I invest in crypto or the stock market? What about starting a business?Should I make wealth a goal? Will I be satisfied when I get that nice car, house, and all the experiences that come with being rich?
It’s a confusing space of advice. Some say you should work on your passion, while others say you should prioritise money. Some emphasise the importance of saving and investing, yet also suggest spending on your own self development. So after all I’ve read and watched, I believe there’s only one truth about money you need to know:
You’ll only be satisfied with money when you stop caring about it.
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Does money lead to happiness?
If you are homeless, you are clearly not very satisfied with your life. You do not have enough money to live, and thus finance becomes a constant concern. But also imagine the Wall Street trader making six figures who comes home deeply unhappy after chasing money during almost every single waking hour. I’ve outlined two extreme examples of poverty and wealth. Sure, you’d rather be the trader than the homeless man. But both share a deep unhappiness with their life. It’s likely you lie somewhere in between, but you suffer from the same problem as both of them. The millionaire obsessed with money is caught in the same trap as the homeless: We’re unhappy simply because we think about money.
We know that as income rises, both your emotional wellbeing and evaluation of your life also rise. However, as annual income rises beyond $75,000 USD, there is no further increase in emotional wellbeing. As Kahneman and Deaton (2010) conclude, high income does not buy happiness. Money itself does not make you happy.
Yes, wealth is important and we cannot survive in modern society without it. You probably won’t live as a monk without possessions. But you can still live with the same attitude. Once we realise that it’s our thoughts about money that determine our happiness, then we can question our ideas instead of just obsessing over maximising income.
Let go of money
In his song Chant, Macklemore raps the line;
“The money doesn’t buy happiness, that’s facts / ’Til you take what you made and decide to give it back”
Psychological research consistently shows that giving to others makes us happier than spending on ourselves. We are altruistic beings who enjoy helping each other. But more fundamentally, giving money to others teaches us that owning something doesn’t necessarily make us satisfied. Just as Macklemore implies, money brings us happiness only when we let go of it. When we stop thinking about it. When we stop trying to gain more of it.
It’s much easier to give money when we have lots of it. But it’s the attitude that comes before the action. We can choose to view our money as something to let go of. Stop holding your happiness hostage to a future monetary goal. But we know this is much easier said than done. What makes this so hard? Why do we struggle?
What does money represent?
When you see a burger, you naturally droll. In the same way, when a pigeon sees grain pellets, it naturally pecks at them. These are responses which are unconditioned. But when a pigeon learns that a light will predict the dispensing of grain, it will also begin to peck at the light. This observation in classical conditioning is called autoshaping. Take a look here:
The pigeon has been conditioned to associate the food with the light. Thus it begins to treat the light in the same way as the food. By pecking it. Fundamentally, the pigeon has confused a prime for the reward. That is to confuse a representation with what it’s actually representing. You may not uncontrollably drool every time you walk past a McDonalds, but you are confusing money for what it represents.
This confusion with representation may underlie our unhappy relationship with money. Money is the key to many rewarding and satisfying experiences. But do you really need more of it? Could you be satisfied if your income never increased again? Really think, and cut through the social comparisons I’m sure you’re making. Look at your life. You have a few spare minutes to read this article. You are reading this on an electronic device. You are lucky to be alive, not being fired at in an active war zone or begging on the streets.
Available from: https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/blog/2018/09/relative-absolute-poverty/
All the good things around you, this smartphone, the meal you last ate, the bed you slept in, the holiday you went on. Money bought all of it. Your money. The money you previously thought you needed to have. But did you truly enjoy these experiences? How often do you think “I’m so lucky and glad to have this phone” instead of “Ahh dammit the battery dies too quickly”? Were you truly enjoying the opportunity to escape from everyday life and relax in happiness instead of complaining about the cleanliness of the hotel? Your lunch was cooked by a chef. Whether Michelin starred or the local fast food worker, someone put hard work and effort into it. Did you truly appreciate it for what it was? Every mouthful, a gift from the farm to your soul?
These are the goods, experiences and opportunities that more money unlocks. Yet you don’t even enjoy what you have right now. Instead, you choose to delay your happiness until a time when you have more money. You’ve set your eyes on the hope and promise that money represents, instead of what it is already giving you. You think you’ll be content when you have more money, yet this is the exact thought which will keep you forever chasing. Forever unhappy.
Getting money is like the pigeon seeing the light turn on. The reward is the opportunities and experiences wealth unlocks. Stop pecking at the light and start enjoying the grain. The flashing light will never feed you. Enjoy and savor every bite of the grain. You may not get fed often, but when you do, you’ll feel full. Because until you truly live and fully enjoy what you have right now, you have absolutely no right to want more money.