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The poverty I saw in the Caribbean was heartbreaking. You need enough money to meet your needs and a little extra. One study said people were happier at an income level of 75k/year and additional money didn’t make them happier. However, I can’t remember if they took into consideration the COL because that can make a huge difference.
Ideally kids should have a range of experiences so they can see that free activities can be just as fun as paid ones and sometimes more so. People that give their kids everything do them a disservice. My best memories with my grandparents didn’t involve the times that they spent money on me. It’s all the times we played games, cards, talked and walked in nature. It’s the same for my kids.
As a kid the best memories with my dad were the fun I had going on errands with him and all the long walks in the fields so our beagles could run. We had the best in-depth talks and I was so close to him because of the time we spent together.
The point is that the people who have much more are just as miserable as those who are in relative poverty because of their expectations.
Like those whining about not having a million dollars saved up for retirement by age 40 are just as unhappy as people who live with very little. If they have 500K, they could retire to that 3rd world country right now, yet all they think is doom and despair.
The owners of my company are all just about 60 years old, and they work us like dogs. I mean most of their kids are already through college. But ... it's never enough...
Also, if you're not making any money, you're also not working and you're not flogging people in a corporate office setting. So ... there's that.
I mean, sure people from poor countries dream of living in the states and working a corporate job, but ... they don't know what the reality is.
Money "buys" stability, feeling safe. Anyone who had to worry if they'll be able to pay the bills at the end of a month knows that this feeling is priceless. Now, happiness is much more than that, I agree, but it's difficult to be happy if your children are hungry. So it depends if we're talking about extremes or average examples, I would say.
Money "buys" stability, feeling safe. Anyone who had to worry if they'll be able to pay the bills at the end of a month knows that this feeling is priceless. Now, happiness is much more than that, I agree, but it's difficult to be happy if your children are hungry. So it depends if we're talking about extremes or average examples, I would say.
I don't know, I was a lot happier when I couldn't pay off my credit card balance in full and I really had to check my bank account to make sure I had enough money to take a trip.
To get a little more philosophical here... I used to spend considerable time pondering the nature of money. Tokenized exchange, how it is a reflection of the nature of the human animal to be highly social, intelligent and to specialize. We figured out a very long time ago, that if we need houses built, chickens tended to, clothing and tools crafted, and a herd of sheep or goats looked after...it was gonna work a lot better if we had one person do each of those things, rather than every member of the group trying to do all of the things one after another in each of their days. And having one guy who tended the goats, and another who built the houses, meant that one of them might get really good at one job or another. Then they could all trade the product of their work. But then, we are not little villages anymore, we're massive societies and we have all of this tech and many more things to exchange, to buy and sell...we could never do any of this with a simple barter system.
I thought and I thought, about all of these things.
And then one day when some of my thoughts were coming out of my mouth in the airspace I shared with my long-suffering husband, he stopped me and he said, "I have a question for you. Where does money come from?" I began to launch another spiel of theory when he stopped me once more and said, "No. It's simple. Money comes from other people."
Husband is a very wise man, and he's got a way of taking ideas that I make really complicated and rendering them nice and simple. I love that about him!
So what does that say about money and security and happiness? One might say that it is human nature to be social and cooperative, to specialize and to thrive through using the abilities of the many to benefit all. That we really don't do well as isolated individuals in little bubbles trying to meet all of our own needs by ourselves. Money just represents one's success in persuading other people of the value of something that you are, or you've done, or whatever. Money comes from other people. Do well with other people, and you do well with money.
This also means that other people may have the power to withhold your prosperity and security. And it's not always fair, people can be tricked, scammed.
Have you been to a Third World? I have. There is a lot of begging. They lack hope.
No, and I'm sure it's pretty bad.. but it just seems like the kids there at least appreciate the simple things and don't have as much societal pressure to deal with..
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