Thank goodness there’s no specific net worth target or else we would all live in denial and fool ourselves.
As we’ve witnessed with celebrities to fresh grads, rich or poor, happiness is a tough journey we all must keep working at no matter what.
Money will not make it sunny 24/7, 365 days a year. Being able to deal with uncertainty, negativity and the dark days will make you a master of life and most likely a stellar portfolio manager.
One quick tip to increasing your odds of beating the markets:
-Never believe you are smarter than the markets
-Never equate emotions to decisions
-Never fight the Fed
I believe there’s no better feeling than attempting to achieve and feel happiness. We all must work on it ourselves at every income level and have different reasons for what we do.
Some people work till 99 since it provides them a purpose to wake up every morning and spend time with their hard-working colleagues and others retire at 30 preferring happiness to be found in the Bahamas sipping Margaritas at 9am.
We have different priorities and ways of finding joy yet what is constant is that happiness can be an ongoing battle and certainly tougher to find as we get older since we go through more.
The longer we live, the more we experience. Good and bad. No matter if you received an inheritance dump at 20 or 60, you DON’T immediately become happier with more. With more money tied to your name you just have more choices, maybe more financial security, depending on how you spend, more possessions to dust off and typically less meaningful relationships since people are attracted to you for the wrong reasons.
A good example of this is frankly any celebrity specifically Ryan Seacrest. He is a middle-aged dude who’s built up a fortune, lives alone and never had a stable relationship with anyone for more than a few years despite dating dozens of celebrities who are in the same boat.
Is he happy? Who knows but since he’s explicitly discussed looking for a reliable partner and growing a family for the past 20 years on his talk show and every other channel he’s on, it doesn’t seem like it. He fills his life with endless jobs to keep him going and fill that void. That’s the happiness he seeks.
More often than not, you can be happier with less. I’ve experienced this in many occasions throughout my life. Recently I went summer shopping since there were great deals at many of my favorite stores and no, I didn’t just shop because there were deals. I went because I needed to!
This is a classic home-buying mistake these days due to enticing low-mortgage rates! 80%+ of Millennials regret their most recent home purchase from 2020. Never buy just because there’s a sale, buy because you have a legit reason.
Anyway, I found generously a few priced classic staple pieces that I adored and as a frugal minimalist knew I needed. They immediately made me happy for a few days and I wore them daily. Fast forward to today, I’m now riding down the hedonic treadmill. I have no particular interest in them anymore. Lying aimlessly in my closet.
We are creatures of habit. We all do this. We want something we don’t have and once we get it, we want something else that seems better and forget about what we thought we needed in the first place. This is the essence of more money.
We feel unstoppable, able to buy anything until we realize what the money was really there for.
Happiness is a job not a given.
Open-Book
As a personal finance nerd, my friends are used to hearing my money talk. When we first met, they got annoyed and thought I was a text book whiz with no social skills yet a few conversations in they then realized how vital it was to consider the topic especially since the education system neglects it. A few months in of our meetings, they brought home their insights to their parents and they were blown away which eventually lead them to make a change and improve their own financial lives.
That’s the essence of my work and my mission. I’m elated each day to write about this topic for thousands and my closest friends. Education is the greatest propellant towards change and the life you deserve.
My friends are gracious and wise enough to now openly discuss our finances together. We all have some work to do but initiating the conversation and sitting down in a roundtable to ask questions, discuss regrets, future purchases and our dreams has kept all of us better afloat, less stressed and earn more. After all, you are the average of the people you are with so choose wisely who you spend your time with and listen to!
What you put in is what you get out!
I believe monitoring our finances less or more on a monthly basis shouldn’t feel tedious or boring because if it is, then you’ll have money problems down the road. It will become a tough hurdle to combat when attempting to achieve your dream life which most likely is around the corner.
What I’ve realized recently is that our mistakes lie in our weaknesses. I used to dread disabling auto-pay but knew it was vital to make sure all spending on my statements each month were accurate and truthful. By simply disabling auto-pay and checking up on my monthly statements each month, I’ve saved thousands, generated refunds and received borrowed money back.
Is it enjoyable?
Heck no. Nothing rewarding really is but if you put in the work, the work will work for you.
These little tweaks make a huge difference in the long run. They don’t take much time and have helped me save more to build a more fruitful life for myself.
Taking action has lead to true happiness, not the amount saved.
It’s not the fact that I got my hard earned money back that I maybe shouldn’t have spent or loaned out to someone, it’s that I put in the effort to receive something I deserve. I pushed past that grudge and excuse that I didn’t have enough time or didn’t know what to do and just did it to ironically make my life easier.
People rarely sit down and monitor what they deserve, let alone their finances. Fixing one little thing, from cleaning the dishes to disabling auto-pay to see what refunds you deserve, will aid you more than you think.
Compounding works wonders. Not just in a Roth IRA.
Once you realize there’s no set level where happiness will skyrocket, you become happier. The more work you put into yourself, the more is invested into your future and fulfillment.
It’s a tough concept to grasp but gratifying once discovered.
Financial Fulfillment
Everyone’s happiness is on a different scale and bounces around like hormones.
Some find peace for the small things by just being able to wake up every morning and use their senses and others need a bit more to get them going as natural pessimists. They might need an espresso shot or a txt message. Yet expecting things or people to bring you happiness outside of yourself can be dangerous since you may never be satisfied.
It’s the same methodology as if you can’t be comfortable alone how do you expect to be comfortable with others?
Freshman year of college last year I took “The Science of Happiness” course at NYU. It was by far the most intriguing class I’ve ever taken and no, I didn’t enjoy it just because it was easy. In fact it was challenging, mind-blowing and conceptually fun. That class felt as if my brain got a real bootcamp workout every class.
As most students do, at school we don’t remember much but what I do remember from that class is that the quality of your mind is your life.
What you think about, you become. What you consume, you produce. What you eat, you know what happens next and get the point.
If you want to be happy, start with being grateful .
Being grateful leads to joy not the opposite.
Did you know you have a 1 in a billion chance of being born?
Be grateful for that! The small things that cannot be replaced. Believe it or not, someone across the world would die to have your lifestyle. Your trash is someone ele’s treasure.
If you are reading this now, you most likely have enough and are in a fortunate state.
You probably have a Medium membership, unless you somehow got through the paywall, are a decent reader since my writing isn’t superb and own or rent some sort of device. That obviously doesn’t seem like a lot yet to someone else, you have everything you already need.
You can be happy whenever you want. It’s your choice and you can’t take away someone else’s happiness when you’re sad. When you’re down, embrace it because the challenging moments teach us the most.
Being happy is unrealistic 24/7 as well.
The Real Deal
So let’s cut to the chase.
There is countless research that has dove into millions of people’s lifestyles, income levels and their self-reported happiness and there is in fact a ballpark estimate of the income level for peak happiness.
After this amount, your happiness will slowly decline due to hedonic adaption as mentioned earlier. We ride the hedonic treadmill, especially when we generate serotonin and dopamine, feel good pleasurable hormones. You love that pizza in the moment but after a few days, or more like a few hours later, you witness the consequences of digestion, guilt and worst of all, food coma.
Things aren’t as great as they seem and as humans we neglect the future. We want to desperately live in the present so vividly, which don’t get me wrong, isn’t bad just overused and dangerous at times, that we neglect our future feeling!
From overdoses to obesity, millions of lives could be saved by just delaying short-term gratification.
Drum roll please….
Positive emotions peak at incomes over $65k. Your negative emotions are minimized at about $95k and “life satisfaction,” which is a type of measurement on how you view yourself relative to your peers which maxes out at $105,000, a modest amount of money.
At the base happiness level of $65k or so, your basic needs should be met.
It would be ideal if you could have 2+ income sources, 2 parents, possibly a stake in the market if you are savvy and prudent, ideally own a home or at least a sizable mortgage you can realistically management, a loving family, eat nutrient dense food from the ground not factory, be able to enjoy the outdoors and have time to yourself, have a purpose you genuinely enjoy waking up to each morning, aren’t beholden to solely W2 income or dreaded taxes, own a vehicle or take public transit, don’t own too much toxic debt from cars to clothes, have fulfilling relationships, take a moderate amount of vacations per year and most importantly of all, are healthy.
I would never complain after that but truth be told, we always will becuase that’s life! We are never satisfied so realize that and work on your happiness the real way.
Without your health, you have nothing. It is priceless and keeps you being you everyday. Never forget it.
Right away you have to be happy if you are healthy.
More zeros to your bank account won’t flip the switch on your health.
And for the folks grinding all day 24/7 waiting for that lucky breakthrough, remember to not be too busy building a life that you forget to live it.
You only get one shot.
Be happy when you can.
Cheers.
Mia