Getting Rich

Money isn’t the most important thing in life, except when you truly don’t have enough of it. Nevertheless, virtually everyone at every income level seems to place too much importance on it.

The relationship between money and happiness is well established: money can buy happiness, but it can only buy less than most people think. Beyond a humble middle-class living, study after study shows that people with more money are no happier.

What Money Gets You

Wealth can actually give you three essential things.

Firstly, money can help establish a financial foundation. Money can reduce or eliminate the despair caused by poverty and debt. Once you amass a sufficient amount of wealth, financial troubles will not weigh on you so heavily. Money allows you to not only live a longer and healthier life, but also defend yourself against worry and harm. Further, a sizable wealth can give you independence from the entrapment of having to make money just to make money. Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman and Warren Buffet’s business partner Charlie Munger once said, “Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.”

Secondly, wealth can allow you to have vacations, gatherings, and spend meaningful time with family and friends. Many studies have shown that the tenor of your social life is one of the most significant influences on your emotional wellbeing. Folks with many deep social connections are less likely to experience loneliness, sadness, low self-esteem, and problems with eating, sleeping, and relaxing.

Thirdly, wealth can allow you to invest your time absorbed in activities that you’re passionate about. Happiness research is clear: people are often happier when they spend their money on life experiences rather than on purchasing material goods. We humans seek meaning. Therefore, life experiences—especially those involving other people—make us happy primarily because events often generate vivid memories that we can later recall with pleasure. In contrast, we quickly adapt to material goods we purchase. Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, author of the bestselling Stumbling on Happiness (2006,) explained the pleasure from buying experiences as opposed to material goods in a 2011 paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology:

After devoting days to selecting the perfect hardwood floor to install in a new condo, homebuyers find their once beloved Brazilian cherry floors quickly become nothing more than the unnoticed ground beneath their feet. In contrast, their memory of seeing a baby cheetah at dawn on an African safari continues to provide delight. Over time, {people exhibit} slower adaptation to experiential purchases than to material purchases. One reason why this happens is that people adapt most quickly to that which doesn’t change. Whereas cherry floorboards generally have the same size, shape, and color on the last day of the year as they did on the first, each session of a year-long cooking class is different from the one before.

Another reason why people seem to get more happiness from experiences than things is that they anticipate and remember the former more often than the latter. … Things bring us happiness when we use them, but not so much when we merely think about them. Experiences bring happiness in both cases …. We are more likely to mentally revisit our experiences than our things in part because our experiences are more centrally connected to our identities. …

A final reason why experiences make us happier than things is that experiences are more likely to be shared with other people, and other people … are our greatest source of happiness.

Idea for Impact: You are Rich If You Think You Have Enough

Put the value of money and the pursuit of wealth in perspective.

Money is an opportunity for happiness. Money allows you to do what you please. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that more money and more material goods will unavoidably make you more happy. Even in Ontario’s real estate market, plenty of high-end new condos in Etobicoke are available in a value-oriented price range. A certain amount of money will surely make life easier and satisfied, but more money and more material goods bring more problems.

Feel rich, have a soft spot for certain indulgences, and invest in memorable experiences rather than in material objects.

Don’t get trapped in the spectacle of riches.

Don’t let money own you.

“Work a lot, spend a little, save the difference, invest it wisely, leave it alone. It’s not that hard. We just make it harder than it needs to be. Paying too much attention to the details of markets is a chief culprit.”
— Morgan Housel in Motley Fool

It is amazing that most people just do not seem to accumulate enough wealth despite making a comfortable living. Many live from paycheck to paycheck, even with steadily rising incomes. Borrowers often fall behind on their mortgage payments. Credit card and consumer debt is growing at an alarming pace. Employees in the prime of their lives are not setting aside anything significant for retirement. As a result, many baby boomers cannot stop working at the usual retirement age because they are not ready to fund the rest of their lives.

Every Dollar You Make Equals LESS than a Dollar for You to Spend

Are you sometimes disappointed at not realizing your dreams of building wealth or becoming financially secure? The overwhelming odds are that at the root of your feeling of financial insufficiency is how you tend to spend.

A common folly is to assume that every dollar you make equates to a dollar you can spend. In reality, you need to make much more than a dollar to spend each dollar. Apply the following some simple arithmetic to calculate the true purchasing power of your income.

• Suppose that you are employed in the United States and you are in the 28% tax bracket. If you pay 6.2% in Social Security deductions, 1.45% in Medicare deductions, and your state income tax rate is 4%, then your total deductions are 39.65% of your income. On every $1 you earn, you pay $0.3965 in deductions. Therefore, for every $1 you make, your purchasing power is just $0.6035. In other words, you have to earn $1.65 (1.65 = 1/0.6035) to spend every $1. For instance, you would have to earn $3,811 to buy a 47″ flat screen TV that costs $2,300.
• When you invest your money, you do not pay Social Security or Medicare deductions on dividends and capital gains. If the tax rate on long-term gains and dividends is 15% and your state income tax rate is 4%, you will retain $0.81 of every $1 you make in long-term gains and dividends. Even then, you have to earn $1.23 in dividends and capital gains to spend $1.

Harness Your Purchasing Power

“Anything you do to make yourself more valuable will pay off in real purchasing power.”
—Warren Buffet

There are only two ways to get rich: make more money and spend less. The first method is relatively difficult: it is never easy to get a significant raise or a better job at a better place, win the lottery, take a second job, sustain a secondary source of income, or consistently make sizeable gains in the capital markets. It is easier to build some discipline in your spending habits.

• Track all your expenses for a month. At the end of the month, analyze your cash flow. Scrutinize your expenses in terms of ‘wants’ and ‘needs.’ Happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs. Consider ideas for cutting costs and their consequences. Examine your discretionary spending. Scale down or dispose of unnecessary services or subscriptions, irrelevant utilities and features. Consider reprioritizing your expenditures with a medium- and long-term perspective.
• Examine your spending instincts. Be mindful of the perils of consumerism and materialism. Do not let your rising income fuel increased spending. Simplify your life.
• A one-time windfall, bonus, or tax refund is no excuse for indulgent spending. Be selective in your purchases without abandoning your plans for paying off debt, saving money or funding your retirement account.
• Seek to be disciplined and prudent, not necessarily thrifty or frugal. Cultivate an appropriate financial discipline without hurting the quality of your life. Reward and treat yourself for your achievements. Invest in anything that makes you feel good, happy, or helps you realize your goals.