After visiting a college classmate recovering from surgery in her northern California home, I had a nice (long) breakfast with a high school classmate who lived in the neighboring town. As we caught up on our lives since those difficult days of adolescence, we shared stories about lessons learned and classmates encountered in the years since graduation.
When the conversation turned particular classmate, I had in my head a particularly vivid picture of her mother, a cold woman married to a very successful local business executive. She wore an unusual amount of makeup and didn’t strike me as a very happy person.
Perhaps, seeing that woman’s (apparent) misery was the first time it occurred to me that financial well-being does not equate to emotional fulfillment, that is, you don’t need to be rich to be happy. This is not to say that poverty equals happiness. We do need enough to provide for the basic necessities of life — and a little bit extra to pursue our passions.
Even the wealthy face their emotional problems. Recall that one of the richest heiresses in recent years, Christina Onassis, was unhappy throughout much of her adulthood, having attempted suicide. Back in 1897, the American poet Edward Arlington Robinson wrote of Richard Cory, who, although he “richer than a king/. . . .Went home” one day and “put a bullet in his head.”
Perhaps our cultural fascination with superwealthy celebrities like the Kardashians is related to a certain delight in their various misfortunes, reassurance that while they may have more money than Croesus, they still suffer the slings and arrows that most of us do, perhaps even more so.
Recent-ish studies claimed that money provides happiness up to about $75k per year, for a family of four. (May be more like $80-90k now with inflation, e.g. higher cost for food, gas, education and healthcare – thanks Obama!)
Beyond that level, more money means more headaches and so does not add to net happiness. For most people, I mean: occasional freaks like me will enjoy that set of headaches.
Money does not bring happiness, but it can make one’s Hell more decadent; people have their own demons which they must confront or continue to medicate themselves in some form of denial. Happiness does indeed come from within.
I often feel like I’m a slacker compared to many of my college classmates who chose lucrative careers in business, law or medicine. I took the academic route, but I left teaching over a decade ago and now do other work. I’m far from rich, but I am comfortable financially, and while my job could have more responsibility and more interesting challenges, I’m not too ambitious for those things now because one thing this job does provide is a relatively contained schedule which gives me more time for enjoying my life–such as it is, at least.
I wouldn’t want to be super rich. I don’t want a whole lot. Was looking at an ad in the WSJ for a watch that was $7k+ and thought even if I had the money for that, I couldn’t see dropping that kind of bread for a watch.
All I want is to live comfortably without working, the ability to travel when and where I want and to have a nice home for Javi and I. I don’t want a mansion, but a nice custom house where all the bedrooms are master sized, en-suite with plenty of closet space. I’ve always wanted a new Toyota Tundra. You can have the Beemer, Roller or Maybach.
I have no idea how much it would take to live like that, but just enough to cover all that would be all I require. But I sure as hell wouldn’t want some liberal POS telling me how much I need or that I have too much.
And you know, I wouldn’t require fancy clothes either. Anyplace I need to wear a tux (except for weddings) are not the kind of places I want to go to. I have an uncle once-removed who’s a multi-millionaire and when he’s not working, dresses like he shops at WalMart. I don’t care about labels and have always detested dressing up. Can’t tell you the last time I wore a tie.
“…you don’t need to be rich to be happy…”
In and of itself, this is true. However, I know when I get a nice incentive in my paycheck, my mood improves immensely. It’s for 2 reasons – 1 being, obviously, I have some extra cash. Who doesn’t love that?? And, 2, that I created my “wealth” by working my ass off. It wasn’t a hand-out. I think, when people are in charge of how much, (or how little) they make, that’s where the happiness comes in. I think a sense of appropriate pride helps to stoke happiness. Of course, if I were to luckily win the Powerball, I’d probably be really really REALLY HAPPY!!! 😉
All I can say on this is I have turned down job offers that were more remunerative that my present position because they would have meant too much time away from my sons. Wealth isn’t money; wealth is having enough of what matters to you.
Wealth isn’t money; wealth is having enough of what matters to you.
I heartily second this thought.
Agreed. When FDR talked about freedom from want, he was absolutely right in the idea, but not in the execution.
What they didn’t realize was what most spiritual people know: you can be free of want and have nothing, and you can have everything and be utterly enslaved by want.
The statist Obama Party model, as replicated by Hollywood, is that you never have enough. You must always be dissatisfied, always looking at what other people have, and always convinced that it’s “unfair” that they have more than you do.
And people wonder why the United States is a country of neuroses.
Wealth and prosperity are relative terms. Doing what you enjoy doing is happiness and having the financial freedom to buy what you want varies from person to person. As Abraham Lincoln said. ¨a man is as happy as he makes up his mind to be.¨ If a great deal of wealth doesn´t bring happiness, at least you can buy the kind of misery you want.
Maybe where you live $75k is enough…here in New Jersey it’s more like $250k to be “comfortable” with enough for a nice lifestyle without too-much that starts to compromise your happiness.
…And that’s still a very middle-class lifestyle in a not-so-fancy neighborhood and some money left to travel on. Much-less and you can’t even THINK-ABOUT even renting a nice place at the beach…forget owning a place at the beach. Or any private school for the kids….
#11 Which makes me wonder what kind of bread the husbands of The Real Housewives make. And what’s with the orange skin in Jersey?
I like Caroline’s house. I think it would be too big for me and Javi, but I like it just the same.
When I was a 11 or 12, I remember some friends of my parents experiencing a reversal of fortune. Certain choices had to be
made in order to cope with their reduced circumstances and one
choice involved either maintaining their beautiful home in New
Orleans or their less lavish summer home in Maine. They downsized
their New Orleans home without a second thought. At the time it
seem incredulous to me, but in talking to my dad about it, he
explained they chose what made them happy, not what other people
thought, i.e. keeping up appearances. Still, I recall saying it was hard
to believe they would sell their main home and and most of it’s
contents (even at that age, I knew fabulous when I saw it) in order
to keep the home where they summered. Daddy said “Son, don’t evah cry over anything that won’t cry ovah you. Becoming ovah attached to the material things of this world is the road to perdition”.