The more you must spend money to in order to be happy, the more expensive that happiness is. – The Last Safe Investment
Happiness exchange rate is the deciding factor on how much money you need to spend to achieve happiness. The better your happiness exchange rate is the more effectively your spending correlates to your happiness. But it’s not just about observing what things you can buy to make yourself happy.
If you are stuck in a job or a relationship that you find unsatisfying, the more spending you’ll likely do in search of the missing happiness. Yet, it’s not always related to spending cold hard cash.
Being unhappy or feeling unfulfilled can be seen in the unhealthy choices made to numb the level of unhappiness. Actions such as obsessing over food (either not giving crap on what goes down to the food digestion section or giving too much crap and treating the body too much like a temple of holiness), excessive drinking or looking for extramarital affairs can be just few ways people tend to numb themselves with in a life that they are not satisfied and happy with.
Let’s compare two different situations
Josef has a meaningful job at the local morgue. He has a fulfilling relationship with his wife, Mary. They own a dog, Keith, with whom Josef is in love with. Because of these things that give immense levels of contentment to his life, Josef is less likely to seek “happiness” in his life from excessive spending, eating, drinking or affairs.
Then let’s look at the flip side. Most of us know a person or a couple or a family who have “everything” that defines successful life in the western world. Well paying jobs, white Range Rover and a mansion by the sea. To the outsider their life should be a real-life Sesame Street, outrageously happy. Yet they are as miserable as Gollum without The Ring.
One of those people is Jacob. He’s in a bad relationship with an energy sucking vampire, Sally. He feels that his need for purpose is not being filled measuring uranium at the local nuclear plant. Because of the manic amounts of discontent in his days he’s more likely to spend more money to find that happiness somewhere else. Such as visiting the neighborhood chemist to sniff paint. He makes great money but spends most of it buying nonsense that gives him brief moments of fake-happiness for brief periods.
Jacob’s happiness exchange rate therefore is worse than Josef’s. And it is likely that even with all that extra spending Jacob is not getting even close to the happiness that Josef lives with every day. As most of us now, it’s impossible to buy happiness. It’s an expensive and bad replacement for therapy. We have to sort out the basics first.
How to improve the happiness exchange rate
Mood is major influence on happiness. Find things you can do, little and big, that improve your mood. Try meditation, lifting weights, long walks, more sex, associating yourself with people who have similar values, pick up a new hobby… the list is as long as you want it to be. If you love sword fights dressed as Mary Chain, but only spend time with people who wear wigs and love calculus, it won’t be fulfilling.
To have a good happiness exchange rate doesn’t mean that you have to have the perfect job. We all have our up and downs. But if, on a daily bases, you hate your job more than you repel Ramsay Bolton, it might be worth looking around to see what else you can do to increase your happiness. What else can you do to bring more purpose to your life. Maybe you’ll have to keep the job but can find something meaningful to do on the side. Maybe that something on the side will lead to something else that allows you to change jobs. Who knows.
If it’s the financial perks that keeps you clinging to the job you hate, remember this: as your happiness increases with a more meaningful activities, your spending is likely to decrease. One follows the other.
Now the best thing. You don’t need to find work that you are passionate about. Most often passion is overrated anyways. If you love surfing and decide to become a surfing instructor, teaching people every morning at 5.30am during Sydney’s winter, it will start to feel like work and the passion can quickly fade. If you are passionate about music it doesn’t mean that you should drop everything and aim for a career shredding in front of thousands of people.
But what can be done is finding a job that you can enjoy. Then bring your passion to it. Or find a job that serves a purpose. In work and in practicality, purpose dominates passion.
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With each investment you make, with each item you buy, ask yourself “how will this purchase affect my happiness”. This doesn’t mean that we start living like Scrooge McDucks. Buying a coffee and reading a book is money well spent. Going out for a dinner with friends is money well spent (unless your friends are dicks. Also, see the sword fights vs calculus from above). When money is spent to gain experiences and to enjoy life events it’s worth the experience. When money is spent to improve a certain skill or to buy a book on personal development, it’s worth it. When money is spent on improving your health, it’s worth it and might well be the best investment you can make.
But when money is spent to buy things just to impress others the happiness exchange rate doesn’t hold up. Unless the item gives you an access to something that will increase your happiness. Such as buying a Rolex to bribe corrupt officials to get out of a jail in a third world country. If buying a handbag for 10 large or $500 Louis Vutton cap (seriously, saw a person sporting this. And honesty, no idea if they go for $500) is worth asking if the purchase is going to increase your happiness or only worsen your happiness exchange rate.
If the cost for better mood and therefore happiness would cost you thousands of dollars, it is worth it since it will positively affect every other aspect of your life. It’s not spending, it’s investing. No matter what the financial experts will say. The higher your mood, well-being and happiness the more content you will be and end up spending less money on nonsense that won’t bring you any long-term benefit in return.
Improve your happiness exchange rate. Invest in yourself and in others as you go along and you will come up happier on top.
This post was inspired by a wonderful book The Last Safe Investment: Spending Now to Increase Your True Wealth Forever by Bryan Franklin and Michael Ellsberg. I recommend you get yourself a copy to gain an alternative perspective that goes against the conventional wisdom. And if this is too much of a paradigm shift, maybe you can mesh it with the conventional wisdom, as I do.