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In a way having money makes it harder because it makes it harder to blame your unhappiness on your circumstances.
by lisper 2y ago
In a way having money makes it harder because it makes it harder to blame your unhappiness on your circumstances.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- david-gpu 2y agoYeah. When you have to work in order to live, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that you would be happy if only you had money to quit your job and time do the things you want to do. Once you get there, you have to face reality: while being poor leads to unhappiness, being financially independent does not lead to happiness either. Don't believe me? Look at billionaires out there; do all of them look like happy and well-adjusted people to you? Not naming names. And that's why wealthy celebrities repeat again and again that "Money doesn't buy happiness". It's because they know from experience that it really doesn't help all that much.
- scotty79 2y ago> Money doesn't buy happiness Yeah, but it let's you suffer in relative comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for.
- david-gpu 2y ago> suffer in relaive comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for If you have never met a person who is content with their life you may benefit from expanding your social circle. There are sincerely happy people out there.
- scotty79 2y agoNo, thanks. There's really nothing to learn from people with this particular rare flavor of brain chemistry.
- zusammen 2y agoMoney doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either. My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.
- fsckboy 2y agosociety subjects people to artificial misery? society is all we have, it's the most authentic misery you'll ever experience.
- littlecosmic 2y agoMaybe artificial in the way that we hypothetically could do things better if there wasn’t so much inertia to the status quo.
- lazide 2y agoAh, idealism. Truly the root of much of misery of the world.
- david-gpu 2y ago> Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded. Thank you for sharing your own experience.
- madrox 2y agoIt's like that old saying, "where ever you go...there you are."
- david-gpu 2y agoYup. Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote a great book with the same title.
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- giantrobot 2y agoThe much better philosopher Buckaroo Bonzai said it first.
- nox101 2y agoI'm not sure I'm convinced. I guess I haven't had real money. I had > 1m at one point. It was enough not to work. It wasn't enough to experiment with random things without risk. Couldn't buy a house in NYC,SF,LA,Seattle. Would just have to go back to work. Couldn't start a business for a project that required 10-20 people. Couldn't really start co-working space for 20-40 people at current rent prices without feeling like I'd probably just be throwing away a few hundred k. What I could do is travel. Could also live anywhere for a few years. OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more. I might hire people to do them. There are 5 to 10 apps I'd like to see exist. Would be happy to pay some people to make them and make them open source, if I had FU money. Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum the size of at least most major museums in big cities. Would consider funding startups. I have one friend, x-coworker, that picked a different path than me and made lots of $$$ (no idea how much). But, they invest in startups. Goal is to invest $1 million a year. They visit startups and pitch events once or twice a month. They also have a personal project. Otherwise they travel with their S.O. and visit their adult kids around the world.
- david-gpu 2y ago> OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more Sure, there's no lack of things that one can do with money. But would you be substantially happier? That's the issue at hand. Do you look at people with exorbitant wealth and see unlimited happiness? Do they appear to be in a permanent state of contentment and satisfaction?
- vidarh 2y agoWhat I've learned, both in terms of personal experience and from reading up on the psychology, is that to maximize happiness over time you need to optimize for ensuring you can maintain a steady upward trajectory. Win the lottery or sell a company? Invest most of it, and allow yourself a "raise" you can permanently sustain every year. It will do far more for you than raising your expenditure once, as you get used to it and return to near your baseline happiness very quickly.
- 2y ago
- mewpmewp2 2y agoI suppose it depends on a person. I am pretty sure the more money I have started to make throughout my life the happier I have become. Simply because of having more freedom over how I spend my time. I feel like there is almost infinite amount of things to do in this World, I just wish I was able to 24/7 do those things. I don't have enough to not work for rest of my life, but I have been able to buy my own apartment, house, which has given me a lot of confidence in my self and feelings of freedom. I started out with no connections or education though. I am sure it can be different for everyone, people see the World differently.
- jjeaff 2y agoI think that is most people's experience but it only works up to a point. you will get diminishing returns the more money you have until, in some cases, maybe negative returns.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoProbably diminishing returns, but sometimes I think there is also selection bias, with ultra rich getting there because of never ending satisfaction, so it is contingent on the type of the human. Satisified person would stop sooner while never satisfied would naturally become the richest.
- david-gpu 2y agoAll that sounds sadly familiar. Once you cross the threshold of not having to work for a living, the illusion fades away. You are still you, your problems are still there, you are still bound to a slowly decaying body, there's no GAME OVER banner and credit roll proving that you have won the game of life. Because you haven't. Hah. You can of course keep yourself entertained with all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter. Or you can accept that there are still only a handful of things that bring people contentment, and you don't need to be financially independent to do any of them. I'm talking about bland obvious stuff like spending some time with loved ones (including pets and plants), going out for a walk in the park, etc. Unsurprisingly, a ton of retirees do just that. It's not because they are old and can't do anything else, it's because they have finally figured out what works. And it's not like doing five times as much of that stuff is going to make you five times happier, either. Anybody with a full time job can carve out some quality time instead of arguing with strangers online.
- yojo 2y agoWhat research there is suggests money/happiness follows a log-linear relationship.[1] So it kind of does buy happiness, but the rate of increase falls off pretty fast over the range most of us experience. 1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
- mcmcmc 2y agoWhat a load. Only someone who has always had money would say this
- Rodeoclash 2y agoCorrect, because only by having money can most people understand the situation. You've proven this yourself by calling it "a load". Zen monks have attained this understanding without the need to make the money first however.
- mcmcmc 2y agoNo, you cannot make the comparison between having money and not having money if you have never not had money. If you have always had money, you have never known the difficulty of living without it.
- intended 2y agoI never read any of the comments here as belittling what it is to be poor. It reads to me as being critical of the assumption that being rich makes you happy. This is reflected by many people who became rich and self destructive.
- nextlevelwizard 2y agoThat is the entire point. Money removes unhappiness and raises you to a baseline, but after that it doesn't provide extra happiness in and of it self.
- saagarjha 2y agoIt can, if you use it wisely. It's just not that you eat the money yourself, you apply it to things you want to do. That could be buying guitars, or it could be setting up solar panels in Ghana. There's a lot of things you can do with money.
- Rodeoclash 2y ago100% - it takes away your hope. In this case, that by "making it" in the world of startups will fill the void in your life.
- nextlevelwizard 2y agoYep. I am not even rich. In fact compared to US software engineers I am making pennies, but I am hitting above average for where I live. And at times it is hard to find meaning in every day life. I like my job, but realistically I could quit now and just about coast with my savings for the rest of my life. On other hand I could increase my spending and live more luxurious life style, but that isn't for me. I just like to code, play video games, and be alone in peace and quiet.
- Freak_NL 2y agoHonestly, if I ever reach the point where my savings would keep me comfortable with a pension to look forward to pick up the slack at the end, I'd quit my job and just focus on my interests, providing a clean house and having a good meal ready in the evening for my wife and son, and develop some side gigs I can give up if they don't give me fulfilment. As it is, I am acutely aware of my privileges as part of a household with two IT-based incomes and not too many worries, and that the world being what it is right now is giving rise to so many uncertainties that I wouldn't dream of abandoning this unless I had a really big bag of money like the author.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- swiftcoder 2y ago> Honestly, if I ever reach the point where my savings would keep me comfortable ... I'd quit my job and just focus on my interests Pretty much everyone says this, but surprisingly few people actually seem to succeed at it when push-comes-to-shove
- tjr 2y agohttps://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job. So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream." Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals. Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated.
- kamaal 2y agoUnhappy for different reasons is not the same. Being unhappy because you are homeless is not the same being unhappy because some woman doesn't treat you like she would do a man who looks better than you are just two different things.