A few years ago, I read The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferris. Every business book I had read before it talked about how to increase revenues and make more money. The 4-Hour Workweek was different. It talked about making ENOUGH money to live the kind of life you want. Interesting, isn’t it? I never thought there was such thing as enough money. I mean, if you can have more, why would you settle for less, right?
About two weeks later I read an interview in which one of the founders of PayPal -a guy worth tens of millions of dollars- was telling how he sold his Porsche Boxster and replaced it with a much more affordable Toyota Prius. He said that when you have a Boxster, you want a Porsche 911, and once you have the 911, you want a Ferrari. Our minds get used to what we have quickly and, all too soon, what we have isn’t enough. He said he wanted to be a Prius guy, not a Ferrari guy.
Think about it: when you’re a Ferrari person, people have huge expectations about you and you have a lot more pressure on your shoulders than a Prius person. If you’re thinking: “that might be true, but a Ferrari will make me much happier than a Prius”, let me share the results of a research performed by Dan Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness.
He measured the happiness levels of two groups of people:
- Recent lottery winners
- Folks who recently lost both legs
A week after the events (winning the lottery or losing their legs), the lottery group was a lot happier than the other group. But, six months after the events, both groups had equal levels of happiness. This is because, after a while, you get used to your new situation, you accept it and it becomes part of your life. In fact, during periods of my life when I was pretty broke, I wasn’t less happy than I am now.
This doesn’t mean that I didn’t work hard to get out of my financial problems. I saw them as a challenge that I wanted to overcome (and I did). But, I learned a few lessons:
- Happiness doesn’t depend on how much money I make. I know countless happy, poor people and unhappy, rich folks. I bet you do, too.
- There are periods in our life when we feel like getting to the next level, and we should. But, there are also periods when we feel happy where we are and we shouldn’t try to get to the next level just because we can. Enjoying the place we are is a very important part of the equation. If you’re not moving forward, it doesn’t mean you’re moving backward; you’re just in one place and having a good time, and this is a great thing to do.
- Make a list of what you want, figure out how much money you need to get it all. You’ll discover that to live the life of your dreams you need a lot less than you thought.
- Don’t wait until you have a lot of money to do what you want. I wanted to have a lot of money to retire for five years and travel around the world. Once I put together a big pile of cash, I started my trip. I discovered two things: 1) traveling was a lot cheaper than I thought. I could have started my trip a few years before. 2) Being retired is boring! After traveling for six months I couldn’t help myself and I started a new business.
Making money can be a lot of fun, but you can be happy no matter how big your bank account is. (Yeah, I know this is corny, but it’s also very true.)
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Wednesday, 23. June 2010
Your post is not corny at all! In fact, I thought it was pretty inspirational. The fact that you compared people who lost their legs to lottery winners clearly shows this.
In regards to money and happiness, money can only make you just a little more comfortable in life. When it comes to shelter, clothes and food, money would be the item to help you survive. But extraneous wealth is completely unnecessary and would not make the person any happier as you have clearly explained.
I myself have a post that elaborates on money and happiness if you are interested:
http://blog.heaps.co.nz/how-to/how-to-save-money/money-leading-to-happiness/
Cheers,
Wahid
Wednesday, 23. June 2010
Hi Zeke, Yes, it’s true, especially for the point that “you don’t need to have a lot of money to start travelling” start planning the next trip, enjoy new discovery and new life, add fuel to the next biz endeavor, that’s life, that’s just awesome!
Thursday, 24. June 2010
Thank you for sharing, Wahid. I’ll check out your post now.
Zeke
Friday, 25. June 2010
I find it beyond disgusting that both “extremes” in the experiment had NOTHING to do with personal achievement. Winning a lottery does not reflect one’s virtues, just as losing two legs does not reflect one’s failings. It is only natural that money that is not earned or lost through one’s conscious actions (and I am not referring to buying a lottery ticket as a conscious action) will not change the degree of one’s happiness. The source of happiness is deserved self-respect. Money can be (and often is) a manifestation of one’s achievement, but it is not the money per se that makes one happy.
The contrary is also true. Those who hate the rich don’t hate them because they have a lot of money (because the haters do not treat money as evil when they claim they are entitled to government handouts). What they truly hate is the achievement itself.
Sunday, 27. June 2010
Hi,
The example about the lottery winners and people who lost both legs is amazing!
But it’s true: you don’t need to have a substantial amount of money to be happy. You just need to have a minimum $$$ to spend on living. If you’re happy or not, then it’s up to you. For example, you don’t need to think, if I had more money I would had worked less and gone to the beach every day; just go to the beach NOW, and get out of work 2 hours earlier once a week.
It’s more about the experience you make, and less about the things you buy.
my2cents.
Monday, 12. July 2010
Zeke:
Love the the blog! I’m actually going to share this with my wife today! True, as others have said, one needs $$$ to have food, shelter, emergency funds, etc….but when is enough enough? I agree that it’s great to be motivated to move up in your career, but at what cost sometimes? Is making more money always better? Is time away from your family worth certain promotions? I know I have been happy poor, happy not so poor, and hoping to find out about being happy when I’m a bit more well off…but either the way…happiness is a state of mind…again, thanks for the piece.
Tuesday, 13. July 2010
You’re welcome, David. Thank you for the nice words.
Zeke