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"Money Can't Buy Happiness"
That's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, particularly in the various non-mainstream subcultures I've been involved with. The implication, in those groups, is often that it's somehow weird and even unethical to desire financial stability. (In the more dysfunctional variants, such as among the Mage War Idiots, it was apparently considered completely ethical to mooch off of unenlightened relatives. It's easy to rail against The Man from your mother's basement, after all.)
There is a certain logic to this. Money can't buy happiness, and chasing riches (or even chasing a particularly strict idea of financial stability) seems to be the cause for regret for a lot of people. Too many people cling to jobs they hate so that they can afford the creature comforts that make their default stress level sustainable at all, and it becomes a treadmill they cannot depart. So, certainly I agree that the money-chase often has real costs to the other aspects of a person's life.
I also believe that just because something is new and expensive, that doesn't mean it's necessarily better. For example, I could probably devote an entire post to the issue of kids in foster care being given the newest and most expensive anti-psychotics as first-line drugs, and Medicaid picking up the tab for that. (And I will write that post, if people are interested in reading it.)
What money can do when used appropriately is buy peace of mind, which can create the space for happiness - or at least for contentment and lowered stress levels.
Example #1: For almost five years, I held a job that I hated and that didn't even pay particularly well. A senior co-worker regularly made racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic comments - and nobody was willing to do anything about this. Management spent a lot of time "auditing" us to catch the most incredibly trivial mistakes - and some of those "mistakes" really weren't. (My favorite example: Part of the work involved screening for income-based program eligibility. It took me well over a year to convince people that no, really, semi-monthly paychecks and bi-weekly paychecks are not the same thing.) It was not the worst place I've ever worked, but it was pretty darn close.
I made periodic attempts to look for work elsewhere, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. I finally decided to bite the bullet, take out the loans, and go to graduate school full-time. Discovering that I was pregnant made this decision even easier. As a result of that decision, I now hold a job that pays about what![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
invisionary and I earned, combined, before I went back to school. This frees him up to be the primary caregiver of our girls and to work on his own degree.
Example #2: We've recently learned the hard way that accepting the offers from family/friends/neighbors to do various work for us at a "low cost" or even for free is generally unwise. Supposedly, professionals who charge full price are just "ripping you off", they say. (This goes with the original "money can't buy happiness" argument - somehow it's wrong to place a high value on one's labor. It makes you a Bad Person. It makes you into The Man.) The most striking lesson here invovled a remodeling job gone horribly wrong, with the price that was paid being about 150% of the price that was originally agreed on, plus a great deal of additional money (and stress) because the job took longer than it was supposed to and left us without a functional bathroom. It's still not done - just finished to the point that we have sufficient skill to do the rest ourselves. However, we've had similar experiences with child care and with car repairs. If something cannot be given freely as a gift out of friendship or love, these "bargains" are no bargain.
Example #3: Especially if you're stuck with the default grocery options in the Capital District, a lot of cheap food tastes bad, is bad for you, or both. Healthy food is often more expensive. A particularly egregious example at our local Hannaford from about a year ago was whole-wheat English muffins costing double what white ones cost. However, to me it's worth the cost to not feel like crap all the time, since apparently white flour is one of those things that triggers blood sugar weirdness for me.
Brown rice usually costs more than white rice. 95% lean ground beef costs more than 90% lean ground beef. Organic costs more than conventional.invisionary and I used to have a rule of thumb: double cost for quality, double again for ethics. (Of course, if you're fortunate enough to have a Wegmans to shop at, and you're looking for anything above the absolute cheapest bottom of the barrel option possible, you usually won't be stuck with this formula. But I'll let invisionary do the Wegmans evangelizing, since he does it better than I do.)
Example #4: We just bought a brand-new Prius - it literally had two miles on it when we took it for a test-drive, but we had already pretty much settled on that car. Certainly, we negotiated for a fair deal with our usual division of labor -invisionary handles the purchase itself, and I deal with the logistics of how to finance/pay for it. Financing this car will cost a little more than $500 a month over the course of five years. That's a lot of money, yes.
However, our previous car was a 13-year-old Subaru Legacy that had obviously not been cared for properly by its previous owner. It got about 25 MPG on the highway if all the stars were in alignment - a more typical number was 21 MPG. Because we do a lot of traveling and we are a one-car household, we put somewhere around 30,000 miles on our car each year. The Prius will cut our fuel costs by at least half. Our car insurance costs will also be cut in half, which was a pleasant surprise. These two things save us close to $200 a month, which means that the "extra" cost is slightly more than $300 a month. Call it $350.
It would have probably cost no less than $1000 to repair the latest car problem - after recently putting about $1500 into repairs. Spread that out over a year, and that's another $200 a month at least - but paid unpredictably and with no idea when the next major repair bill will hit.
So, all this means, roughly, about a $150 per month increase in what we're actually spending. In exchange, we have the peace of mind of knowing that our car is not going to leave us stranded, and that for at least the next few years our repairs are covered via basic or extended warranty. We also know the car has been properly maintained because we're doing the maintaining, and when it's paid off we'll have a vehicle that's still worth something.
We did run the numbers for a late-model used Prius, as well. Essentially, we'd be making about the same payment (perhaps even slightly higher when all was said and done) for four years instead of five on a two-year-old car. There would be less warranty coverage available. The interest rate I was quoted in my financing pre-approval was about 2% higher for a two-year-old car and 4% higher for anything older than that. A further issue is that a late-model used Prius is a rare find, and we would have had to invest more money and energy upfront in obtaining it.
We also considered other models and other options, but we serious do put enough miles on a car to make a hybrid the most sensible choice - especially since I doubt gas prices will stay down.
We were able to pull this off because I've put some effort into improving my credit over the years, and because I have a stable job and a stable housing situation. (I'm also glad we bought the house before buying a car on payments - that gave us more latitude to pick a house that was right for us, though house payment + car payment is still slightly less than the house payment I was prequalified for when we went house-hunting in 2007.)
So no, money didn't buy me happiness, but it sure made it easier to sleep at night. A lot of my old "friends" probably would view me as a great big sellout, but that's OK. I like my life, and I know what it costs to live it. That's not a lesson most people learn from Mom's Basement or from the latest SO they're having survival sex with so they don't HAVE to live with their parents.
There is a certain logic to this. Money can't buy happiness, and chasing riches (or even chasing a particularly strict idea of financial stability) seems to be the cause for regret for a lot of people. Too many people cling to jobs they hate so that they can afford the creature comforts that make their default stress level sustainable at all, and it becomes a treadmill they cannot depart. So, certainly I agree that the money-chase often has real costs to the other aspects of a person's life.
I also believe that just because something is new and expensive, that doesn't mean it's necessarily better. For example, I could probably devote an entire post to the issue of kids in foster care being given the newest and most expensive anti-psychotics as first-line drugs, and Medicaid picking up the tab for that. (And I will write that post, if people are interested in reading it.)
What money can do when used appropriately is buy peace of mind, which can create the space for happiness - or at least for contentment and lowered stress levels.
Example #1: For almost five years, I held a job that I hated and that didn't even pay particularly well. A senior co-worker regularly made racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic comments - and nobody was willing to do anything about this. Management spent a lot of time "auditing" us to catch the most incredibly trivial mistakes - and some of those "mistakes" really weren't. (My favorite example: Part of the work involved screening for income-based program eligibility. It took me well over a year to convince people that no, really, semi-monthly paychecks and bi-weekly paychecks are not the same thing.) It was not the worst place I've ever worked, but it was pretty darn close.
I made periodic attempts to look for work elsewhere, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. I finally decided to bite the bullet, take out the loans, and go to graduate school full-time. Discovering that I was pregnant made this decision even easier. As a result of that decision, I now hold a job that pays about what
invisionary and I earned, combined, before I went back to school. This frees him up to be the primary caregiver of our girls and to work on his own degree.Example #2: We've recently learned the hard way that accepting the offers from family/friends/neighbors to do various work for us at a "low cost" or even for free is generally unwise. Supposedly, professionals who charge full price are just "ripping you off", they say. (This goes with the original "money can't buy happiness" argument - somehow it's wrong to place a high value on one's labor. It makes you a Bad Person. It makes you into The Man.) The most striking lesson here invovled a remodeling job gone horribly wrong, with the price that was paid being about 150% of the price that was originally agreed on, plus a great deal of additional money (and stress) because the job took longer than it was supposed to and left us without a functional bathroom. It's still not done - just finished to the point that we have sufficient skill to do the rest ourselves. However, we've had similar experiences with child care and with car repairs. If something cannot be given freely as a gift out of friendship or love, these "bargains" are no bargain.
Example #3: Especially if you're stuck with the default grocery options in the Capital District, a lot of cheap food tastes bad, is bad for you, or both. Healthy food is often more expensive. A particularly egregious example at our local Hannaford from about a year ago was whole-wheat English muffins costing double what white ones cost. However, to me it's worth the cost to not feel like crap all the time, since apparently white flour is one of those things that triggers blood sugar weirdness for me.
Brown rice usually costs more than white rice. 95% lean ground beef costs more than 90% lean ground beef. Organic costs more than conventional.
invisionary and I used to have a rule of thumb: double cost for quality, double again for ethics. (Of course, if you're fortunate enough to have a Wegmans to shop at, and you're looking for anything above the absolute cheapest bottom of the barrel option possible, you usually won't be stuck with this formula. But I'll let invisionary do the Wegmans evangelizing, since he does it better than I do.)Example #4: We just bought a brand-new Prius - it literally had two miles on it when we took it for a test-drive, but we had already pretty much settled on that car. Certainly, we negotiated for a fair deal with our usual division of labor -
invisionary handles the purchase itself, and I deal with the logistics of how to finance/pay for it. Financing this car will cost a little more than $500 a month over the course of five years. That's a lot of money, yes. However, our previous car was a 13-year-old Subaru Legacy that had obviously not been cared for properly by its previous owner. It got about 25 MPG on the highway if all the stars were in alignment - a more typical number was 21 MPG. Because we do a lot of traveling and we are a one-car household, we put somewhere around 30,000 miles on our car each year. The Prius will cut our fuel costs by at least half. Our car insurance costs will also be cut in half, which was a pleasant surprise. These two things save us close to $200 a month, which means that the "extra" cost is slightly more than $300 a month. Call it $350.
It would have probably cost no less than $1000 to repair the latest car problem - after recently putting about $1500 into repairs. Spread that out over a year, and that's another $200 a month at least - but paid unpredictably and with no idea when the next major repair bill will hit.
So, all this means, roughly, about a $150 per month increase in what we're actually spending. In exchange, we have the peace of mind of knowing that our car is not going to leave us stranded, and that for at least the next few years our repairs are covered via basic or extended warranty. We also know the car has been properly maintained because we're doing the maintaining, and when it's paid off we'll have a vehicle that's still worth something.
We did run the numbers for a late-model used Prius, as well. Essentially, we'd be making about the same payment (perhaps even slightly higher when all was said and done) for four years instead of five on a two-year-old car. There would be less warranty coverage available. The interest rate I was quoted in my financing pre-approval was about 2% higher for a two-year-old car and 4% higher for anything older than that. A further issue is that a late-model used Prius is a rare find, and we would have had to invest more money and energy upfront in obtaining it.
We also considered other models and other options, but we serious do put enough miles on a car to make a hybrid the most sensible choice - especially since I doubt gas prices will stay down.
We were able to pull this off because I've put some effort into improving my credit over the years, and because I have a stable job and a stable housing situation. (I'm also glad we bought the house before buying a car on payments - that gave us more latitude to pick a house that was right for us, though house payment + car payment is still slightly less than the house payment I was prequalified for when we went house-hunting in 2007.)
So no, money didn't buy me happiness, but it sure made it easier to sleep at night. A lot of my old "friends" probably would view me as a great big sellout, but that's OK. I like my life, and I know what it costs to live it. That's not a lesson most people learn from Mom's Basement or from the latest SO they're having survival sex with so they don't HAVE to live with their parents.
Not a sellout
My family is, comparatively speaking, well off. That means we have a house in good working order, two cars, and two jobs between three people. While I am unemployed, I am continuing to sell books online (yes, via Amazon) and will branch out into calligraphy, both buy-what-you-see and custom. I will be auditioning for two acting jobs in the area. All this and I still plan to look for part-time work.
I've lost count of the number of jobs my dad had and lost over the course of our time in New York. We didn't really have disposable income; we had bills. I've watched my mother gradually lose her mind over our financial plight. In order not to become my mother, I am learning fiscal responsibility.
I'm living at home not because I'm too lazy, but because I know I can't yet afford to live away. I am learning about the price of being; Mum and I are working out a running tab, for example. She took care of some up-front costs. I get to pay her back. Fun-time stuff comes out of my money, not hers. I ask for useful things for birthdays and Yuletides. Goodwill is my friend. So is the ability to patch a hole in a pair of jeans or stitch a seam back together -- both by hand, though I now have a machine.
Life taught me to be thrifty. Not only will I keep those habits intact, I'll pass them on to those who want to learn, and learn more good habits from people like you and my chosen-kin.
Re: Not a sellout
Re: Not a sellout
Re: Not a sellout
Re: Not a sellout
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The lyrics to "Not A Pretty Girl" come to mind...
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What I believe is that the people who say it are trying to home in on the fact that the desire for money is a fairly miserable desire. If it's frustrated, you're unhappy, and even if it's satisfied, you're not necessarily a lot happier because you may have sacrificed too much to get it.
But the lack of money, as you have pointed out, can cause a wide variety of miseries.