Money has never been terribly important to me in the sense it made me do things I didn’t really want to do or put my passion aside in its pursuit…
However, having recently come across some rich folks for some slight reason, I’m feeling very poor…I use to think if I had 1 million in the bank (which i don’t) that would be “rich” per se…but after meeting some multi multi millionaires and guys who were not yet 30 but making millions (through skill I believe and not luck) it has seriously changed my outlook and I’m not liking it…
Dude, I feel poor as sh*t right now. Definitely causing me to look around for ways I can make more money.
That being said, one of the things I’ve disliked about NYC and Vegas in the past is that those places in particular can quickly serve to remind you how poor you are relative to other high rollers. I think Taleb or Malcom or one of those guys had a section in their book about how living among lower income people rather than moving upward into developments that fit your new pay bracket will greatly increase your overall level of happiness.
I presume If it takes multi millionaires to make you feel insecure…you are not doing that badly…look at the occupy movement!..Incidentally, the occupy movemement around the world just stressed income disparity…if they looked at total wealth, it will be more than just 99% vs 1%…
I read some books about the founding of Google. Man, those make you feel like shit. The story is about how people in their late 20s/early 30s become billionaires, change the world, create a new public good, etc.
For our own psychological health, it’s probably important to put things in perspective. That is, either 1) don’t care about other people, as long as your life is comfortable, or 2) treat the top 0.00001% as outliers, and feel better by comparing yourself to median people.
It’s when the very wealthy communicate the presumption that “everyone can live this way, or at least everyone worth knowing,” that you can start to feel that way. Many wealthy play games with each other by trying to force others to spend more than they can afford in order just to keep up with them and slowly wear them down.
Once you truly accept that your real worth is not measured by your net worth, it’s easier to accept that there will always be someone with more, and be ok with that.
The trick is to understand that just because lack of money causes unhappiness and stifles your personal progress does not mean that excess of money will make you always happier or worthier of respect. The very wealthy often suffer by not knowing who their friends really are, and who is around them to eat crumbs off their plate. By associating only with other rich people, they sometimes eliminate that fear, but then get lured into p!ssing matches with each other about who has the bigger house, the nicer private jet, the hotter trophy wife (or husband), etc…
Ultimately, decide on what you want to do with your life, then find the way to finance it. If you go for money because you don’t know what you want to accomplish, you will always find yourself lacking (only one person in 7+ billion can be the richest person on the planet), and even if you do get the money, it will very likely lure you into empty victories, alcoholism, drugs, etc. if you don’t have some external compass for how to use it. (Witness the collapse of actor/actress careers in Hollywood, for example).
I remember a quote, probably from one of those guys, that goes something like “rich is having an income that is one dollar higher than your neighbor” and I think that feels right for most people.
After we have enough money for food, health and the like, I think money serves as somewhat of a score to motivate us. But luck has a lot to do with how much money we’ll have (Taleb thinks so and it makes a lot of sense to me) and for most of us there will always be somebody richer, so we gotta strive to find that psychological balance somehow.
edit: Just noticed that much better replies were written above, so… yeah, what those guys said.
its a wierd feeling of envy i’m having…i have never felt much envy in my life (ok, maybe the dudes hitting KimK but that’s understandable)…this is a poor feeling to have…charlie munger warned me about this…being envious is detrimental to investment returns as well…gotta shake the feeling…
^ volunteer at a homeless shelter for a couple of months and I’m sure you’ll be feeling pretty good about your situation. Heck, you might even find that you enjoy helping the people out and stick with it for a long time.
“The true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions” - Benjamin Graham
I’ve volunteered by preparing and serving food to homeless people. It feels good to actually be of service to the community/society, but it’s also depressing at the same time. What are the chances of these folks breaking out of homelessness? Very slim in my opinion. I think the whole OWS movement hit the nail on the head regarding inequality, but I still think they’re a bunch of extremists.
The obvious answer is to make more money. Volunteering at a soup kitchen isn’t going to cure your envy. Perhaps it’ll serve as motivation.
I’m surprised the common theme of this thread is to look to the less fortunate to make yourself feel better. I thought we were more ambitious than that.
Now, if you (the royal you, not anyone specific) are pulling down $700k a year and still feel insignificant around guys that are pulling in $15mm a quarter then you’re just insecure. Everyone here can easily make several hundred thousand dollars a year. Maybe not yacht money, but enough to be very comfortable.
Yeah I’ve always thought about it as ‘the law of diminishing returns’. After 100k I stopped caring about money and focused on other things. Figured if 100k/yr didn’t make things awesome 200k wasn’t gonna either.