Manage Your Money Like a Grownup by Sam Beckbessinger

Author:Sam Beckbessinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781776190331
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2020-07-17T10:53:51+00:00

MONEY AND HAPPINESS

You know how people say that money can’t buy happiness? I’m going to say something controversial: those people are wrong! There is a clear relationship between how much money you have and how happy you are. But that relationship is more complicated than you may think.

Researchers have spent a lot of time studying whether money makes us happy.40 They affirm that money definitely does make you happier, but the relationship looks like this:

Not having enough money is very stressful. If you don’t have enough money, you can’t buy food, you can’t access good healthcare, you can’t find a safe and comfortable place to live. So, if you give an extra R1 000 a month to someone who’s poor, that’s going to make a huge difference in their life. Give the same R1 000 to someone who’s rich, and it will barely register.

And beyond a certain level, more money doesn’t really make you noticeably happier. In South Africa, I calculate that number to be about R45 000 a month before tax.41 But that’s right at the top of the curve, where more money makes basically NO difference. Even below that number, if you’re earning R20 000 or R25 000 a month, other things start to matter far more than money, like your health, relationships and a sense of purpose.

Money can buy some happiness, or to be more specific: NOT having enough money increases the chances that you’ll be stressed and worried. But there’s also a real limit to how much happiness money can buy.

So what this means is: your goal in life DOES NOT need for you to be the richest person on the block. That goal is going to make it difficult to do some of the things you might really want to do (and it will make you a pretty boring person). Your goal can be more modest – to make as much as you need to live freely, and a little bit more if you want to. And this target really is something that you can achieve, as an adult – but only if you get into the right habits now, while you are young.

Some kids are literally researching which jobs make the most money, and then basing future study and work plans on that. I don’t think that’s a great way to live a happy life. What I think is, sure, find out what you can expect to earn in different careers,42 and be realistic about the careers that will make it hard for you to earn enough money. Choose a career that will give you financial stability as well as joy and meaning, and try to learn some well-paid skills as a backup.43 But don’t discard a possibility just because it earns less. Rather ask, can I earn enough? As long as you earn enough, and save, you are on your path to wealth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.