Children who come from affluent families are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse than those who come from less affluent families, research shows. More money, more wants. More money, more isolation. As we move up the income ladder, we often become more isolated.
More money, more work. Because of this, many Americans spend their lives striving for more money and possessions—but find that this materialism makes them less happy. These problems all stem from one issue: lack of control. By taking charge of your finances, you can get rid of many of these stressors and be happier.
Wealth gives you options and makes it easier to focus on things that can make you content. This book will teach you specific ways to gain control of your finances. The first step to leading a rich life is learning how to set priorities. In their book Happiness , Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener talk about the happiness formula , their attempt to quantify all this psychological stuff about money and well-being.
They found that a larger income generally makes people happier—but not always. You might say that happiness is equal to what you have divided by what you want. On paper, that sounds like a lot of money, but if you yearn for expensive luxuries and experiences, you may actually feel poor.
This is why frugality is so important. Chapter 5 is chock-full of tips for spending less. Living richly means figuring out what to spend your time, money, and energy on—and what to ignore. By living below your means and avoiding debt, you can gain some financial control over your life. True wealth comes from relationships, not from dollars and cents.
Wealthy or poor, people with five or more close friends are more apt to describe themselves as happy than those with fewer. A long-term, loving partnership goes hand in hand with this.
As explained in the Note on How Money Affects Happiness , memories tend to grow more positive with time, but Stuff usually drops in value—both actual value and perceived value.
Remember these three pillars of happiness and you can build a rich life even on a limited income. Spend on the things that make you happiest. For another way to prioritize, see the box on Living a Rich Life.
Stay healthy. Eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep Your Body: The Missing Manual has loads of tips on how to do all those things. Financially, psychologically, and socially, keeping up with the Joneses is a trap. Focus on your own life and goals. Limit media exposure. Studies have found that watching lots of TV can influence your levels of materialism—how much you think you need to be happy.
The average Joe believes that materialism is the path to happiness—but the average Joe is wrong. Research shows that materialism actually leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Help others. Altruism is one of the best ways to boost your happiness. It may seem counter-intuitive and maybe even a little self-serving , but donating to your church or favorite charity is a proven method for brightening your day.
Embrace routine. In Happier McGraw-Hill, , Tal Ben-Shahar recommends building routines around the things you love: reading, walking, gaming, knitting, whatever. Because it can be difficult to make the time for these activities, he argues that we should make rituals out of them. If you enjoy biking, make a ritual out of riding to the park every evening, for example. See the box below for tips on finding time for what you love. Pursue meaningful goals. But for a goal to be worthwhile, it has to be related to your values and interests—it has to add something to your life.
Chapter 2 will help you decide what goals to set. You lead a busy life. There never seems to be enough time to do the things you really want, like doing yoga, running, or having a weekly night out with your sweetie. If so, how much money do you need to be happy? And what is happiness anyway? Harvard Business School researchers Grant E. Donnelly and Norton reviewed the literature and found that money contributes to happiness to meet basic needs -- but above a certain level, more money does not yield much more happiness.
What made their research unique was their survey of 4, millionaires who are clients of a financial institution -- such a survey had never been done on people with that exalted level of wealth.
But not all decamillionaires are equally happy. The one factor that makes some of them happier than their equally wealthy peers comes as no surprise -- making the money themselves instead of inheriting or marrying into it.
The Harvard researchers say that their findings have an important implication for the wealthiest -- they should give it away. The novelist Gary Shteyngart also has firsthand experience seeing how rich people think about their wealth. One thing Shteyngart noticed after spending time with this crowd was how competitive they were. Shteyngart speculates that underneath this competitiveness is a need to seem smarter and more capable than their peers: Managers of hedge funds can sometimes get rich from making one or two bets that had more to do with luck than anything else, which might make them feel like their intelligence is in question even if their money stands as evidence of their professional success.
What we have is this—the number at the end of the day. The whole experience did not leave Shteyngart feeling good.
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