I always say to people: "make money now, think about happiness later!"
"Does money buy happiness?," asked economist Richard Easterlin in his famous 1973 essay in The Public Interest. His conclusion was…
reason.com
I was happy those years I didn’t make what I make now but meanwhile my brother was making a lot and going on trips all over the world with the kids. I always paid my bills but I was living month to month. So while I was happy I was like most Americans today, barely getting by. We saw what Americans finances were during corona. Most people couldn’t get by a month.
Anyways, it’s nice to not have to worry abou a lease payment. Instead of worrying about a fusion payment now I have the f150. Not that expensive but before I couldn’t afford that.
in the years I didn’t make shit my friend Dave was a pharma rep and we live on a lake. Thank god dave had a boat because I couldn’t afford one. It’s nice having my own boat and not cry when storing it cost me $1000. My how far I’ve come.
Does money make you happier? **** yes
I get what you're saying or at least I think I do.
I've been dead broke and I've had times when I had more month than money but I always saved as much as I could, didn't run up debt, drove an old car rather than make pymts.
Drive around town and you see mostly new vehicles. I live in a red state, very poor people, higher unemployment now and I wonder how people are getting by, feeding their kids, driving a new-ish car and so on.
Now, I'm comfortable with no financial worries ahead. We've travelled, which has been very important to us both. Our son is a cancer researcher in Boston. He was previously researching viruses but switched and he's doing extremely well. Like you, we live on a lake, gorgeous and have a very nice, comfortable home. We just sub-divided our land so we could sell a second house on it. Realtor commented that he seldom sees sellers that aren't "motivated". We told him we could aford to wait for a higher price and we did get what we were asking.
We have family on both sides that are hurting right now. We've helped then in the past but frankly, we're fed up with the right wingers who can't get ahead, have consumer debt, enormous car payments, which we both think is just stupid. We'll keep helping them though because they're family.
I've always been a happy person but money makes everything better. Buying what we need and want without counting every penny - yeah, much better than living poor.
And about your boat - we had several but sold a big expensive speed boat and we were talking about selling a collector's item type wooden boat. One day, knock on the door, guy wanted to know if we wanted to sell it and how much did we want. We really didn't care and told him to make a $500 donation to the local animal shelter and he could have it so that's who we "sold" the boat. Now have 3 left and will sell them too. Nothing that's worth anything but we don't want them.
