What Makes You Happy?

A good life is having everything you need and some of what you want. If you have everything you want, you appreciate none of what you have.

Here are some of the keys to a richer life:

• Spend less than you make.
• Let your money quietly compound.
• Money should serve you, not the other way around.
• No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are.
• Independence is wealth.
• Health is wealth.
• Aim to be a good ancestor.
• Love your family.

Your Money and Your Kids

Values, hard work, support, and the opposite of being spoiled.

John D. Rockefeller, then the richest man in the world, once walked into the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. He needed a room while his home was being remodeled.

He asked the hotel agent for the cheapest room available.

The agent said, “Mr. Rockefeller, surely we can get you something better. When your son stays here, he takes the Presidential Suite.”

Rockefeller responded, “Yes, but my son has something I’ve never had: a rich father.”

Managing money and raising children is difficult. And this isn’t a topic that applies only to the very wealthy. Nearly 60 percent of American parents with children between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four have supported their kids financially in the past year.

Middle-class families grapple with weekly allowances, how much financial support to offer when their children leave for college, and the question of inheritance.

But, like so much about money, this isn’t simply a financial spreadsheet. It’s psychology, sociology, and emotion. Money and children might actually be among the most emotional financial problems of all. I’ve yet to meet a parent who is completely unemotional about their children’s financial future.

What Money Can’t Buy

I once heard a story from a priest that I’ll never forget.

This priest spent decades delivering last rites in hospitals. It’s the kind of experience that puts you in a unique position: You become familiar with how people say goodbye to their loved ones.

When a parent is dying, their children often go to the priest with a sense of despair.

How do I say goodbye to a parent who was so instrumental in my life? How can I possibly tell them how much they meant to me?

The priest’s advice is to go into the room, one by one, and thank the dying parent for the one thing they’re most grateful for.

“In families that I know have had a lot of problems—strained relationships—the child will often thank the parent for something that cost money,” he said. “Thank you for putting me through college. Thank you for putting food on the table. Thank you for buying me a car.”

“In the best families, the ones I know have solid relationships,” he said, “the kids say the same thing every time.”

“Thank you for believing in me.”

The Most Valuable Financial Asset Is Not Needing to Impress Anyone

The ability to not need to prove yourself to strangers is priceless.

Not needing to impress other people, especially strangers, is an asset on your personal balance sheet that can be more valuable than anything else.

When you don’t feel the need to impress other people, your desires fall. When your desires fall, your satisfaction with what you already have grows.

It’s really that simple.

There are always two benchmarks by which to measure how well you’re doing in life: internal and external. The first is how happy you are with yourself. The other is what other people think of you.

It’s astounding to see how agonizing life can become when someone focuses too much on the external benchmark. And it’s thrilling to witness someone whose only goal is to meet their internal benchmarks.

It’s hard to become truly depressed until your dreams come true. Once your dreams come true and you realize you feel the same way you did before, you can begin to feel hopeless.

Housel elaborates:

“I think we mistakenly think that some kind of outward success is going to change something in us. And it does not. It may make life more comfortable. But it doesn’t change who we are. And any hole in ourselves that we’re hoping to fill does not get filled.

“And let’s say you spend 20 years of your life working towards something that’s going to solve everything, and then you finally achieve what you’ve been trying to do for 20 years, toiling away, and nothing changes. That’s when you get hopeless.”

This happens so often when people reach a financial goal or buy a new toy. What you thought would change your life and turn you into a walking ball of happiness very likely does not. That realization can be agonizing.

Everything You Don’t See

Happiness is complicated, but if you simplify it into things like a loving family, health, friendship, eight hours of sleep, well-balanced children, and being part of something bigger than yourself, you begin to realize how limited money’s role can be.

It’s not that money has no role. It’s simply smaller than you may have assumed.

Of course, you can be poor and miserable or rich and happy. But those who have gained significant wealth are often the ones who understand how tenuous that relationship can be.

Gaining money probably didn’t fix your marriage, make you more attractive, make your friends like you more, or make you more fulfilled—not nearly as much as you assumed it would.

The comforting optimism about what money could do for you is eventually replaced by the stark reality of what it can’t.

Sometimes the dream is what feels good. Once you’ve achieved it, the dream is gone, and you may actually become depressed.

Malcolm Forbes said, “By the time we’ve made it, we’ve had it.”

Reading Books

Reading becomes a chore if you insist on finishing every book you begin, because the majority of books are either adequately summarized in the introduction or simply aren’t for you.

Insisting on finishing every book can be a slog. It can be boring, unfulfilling, and a waste of time. Once you begin to see reading through that lens, your willingness to pick up another book wanes.

This, I’ve come to believe, is why some polls show that half of Americans don’t read books at all.

Which, of course, is tragic.

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them,” said Mark Twain.

Every smart person I know is a voracious reader. There are so few exceptions to this rule.

There are more than four million books for sale in the English language. If you only pick up books you know with certainty you’re going to enjoy—reading the same authors, genres, or topics—you miss out on so many potentially life-changing books you never realized you might enjoy.

The conflict between these two ideas—that most books don’t need to be read to the end, but some books can surprisingly change your life—means you need two things to make the most of reading: lots of inputs and a strong filter.

You should be willing to start reading any book that looks even mildly interesting. Anything. Even the faintest tickle of interest should be enough to make the cut.

Fiction, nonfiction, romance, military history—try all of it. You want the widest funnel possible, exploring as many new ideas as you can.

Try Something New

But then you need a strong filter.

If the book isn’t working for you, move on quickly.

The filter should be ruthless, taking no prisoners and offering no mercy. Similar to dating, a book you’re not into after ten minutes of attention has little chance of a happy ending.

You should feel no shame or guilt for failing to finish a book, even if you quit after the first few pages.

There are so many good books out there. Go find a new one.

Since I started using this strategy, I’ve found so many amazing books I never knew I would enjoy. I never liked fiction until I forced myself to try ten different fiction books and found one I loved.

The same was true of history, which felt like the worst high school lecture until I finally found a few topics I couldn’t get enough of.

Some books with bad reviews I loved. Other books with stellar reviews I couldn’t make it past the first page.

What I learned: It’s impossible to know what you’re going to like until you try it, so you have to try everything. But the only way to try a million new things is to have a strong filter that immediately rejects what isn’t for you.

And, boy, that is also so true of spending money.

There are so many different ways to spend money that are right for one person but crazy for another.

Some people live for international travel. Others can’t stand being away from home for any reason. For some, nice restaurants are a pleasure. Others don’t understand the appeal and prefer something simpler.

Copycats

A parable:

A teacher stands before her class and says, “Here’s a math problem. There are ten sheep on a farm. One sheep runs away. How many sheep are left?”

A student raises his hand and says, “Zero. There are no sheep left.”

“It appears you don’t understand math,” the teacher says.

“No, it appears you don’t understand sheep,” replies the boy.

The urge to watch other people and copy what they’re doing without asking questions is so powerful, so pervasive, and explains so much of modern life.