Winning $20 M Won't Make You Happy

GRULSTMRNN said:
Understood, you share a sample size of 1. Well, thanks for sharing your experience. I feel sorry if this is the whole lesson you learned from being poor. For me it's the opposite. I grew up in a pretty wealthy family. My parents house had over 6 floors and more than 25 rooms. They had RVs, boats, we were taken 3 times per year to lavish vacations. Yet my dad did not spend a single day in his life to take me fishing. All I remember was that during frequent weekend outings he had to abandon the rest of the family because work called him back to his clinic. I left home when I was 18, studied at the farthest imaginable place from home and felt free for the first time in my life. I never took a penny from my parents for college or grad school. I worked my butt up from the bottom as I rejected any assistance of my family nor use my dad's influence. Not a single letter of recommendation or other help. I made it completely by myself. When I landed very well paying jobs in trading positions at banks and hedge funds I spent at most 10% of my income on rent and other expenses. Even today I spend a max 5% of my net income on anything other than savings. 10% of my gross goes to tithes and offerings and another 10% to other volunteer and contribution efforts. I despise anything that remotely smells of luxury, no fancy cars, no fancy house (I still rent because I love the freedom and flexibility of being able to move at any time and knowing I can rent for the rest of my life without financial worries, but also because for a majority of my life as employed I was paid housing by my employers and frequently moved between financial centers). I despise any sort of luxury life style, clothing, or anything that reaks of money. It gives me zero satisfaction or happiness. I completely derive my happiness from my faith and friendships and relationships with loved ones, from helping those in need and see them pass on efforts to help others in turn.

Am I wealthy? I don't know and I don't care. Neither do I care what others think of me. What I know is that no amount of money in life can buy me happiness. And I work less and less in life (am transitioning from years as employed professional trader, to self employed trader, to now longer and longer holding periods that qualify more as investments than trading positions).

I feel sorry for anyone, wealthy or poor, who overvalue the importance of money. My monthly spending is probably on the level of those who earn 50k a year or so. In many ways even less. I don't need more. And I don't want to spend more. Not because I cling onto my savings but because I don't value what more spending could buy. For example, I attach zero value to restaurants and eateries. I have eaten some of the most lavish multi course meals in private clubs and hotel restaurants in the world but prefer the home cooking of my Japanese wife. She is a master at what she cooks, regardless of which ethnic cuisine she puts her hands on.

I cannot say whether I would live the same life style now had I not experienced wealth and lavish life styles early on in my life. But I know that money does not buy happiness that is for sure.
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Money has certainly bought you freedom to work on the problems that interest you and not some other person's or company's problems. I got a taste of that this past year and it made me very happy! But I already have a mostly happy attitude. The problem for the lottery winner is they come across an amount of money that they and their personal and family relationships are not prepared to handle.
 
GRULSTMRNN said:
Understood, you share a sample size of 1. Well, thanks for sharing your experience. I feel sorry if this is the whole lesson you learned from being poor. For me it's the opposite. I grew up in a pretty wealthy family. My parents house had over 6 floors and more than 25 rooms. They had RVs, boats, we were taken 3 times per year to lavish vacations. Yet my dad did not spend a single day in his life to take me fishing. All I remember was that during frequent weekend outings he had to abandon the rest of the family because work called him back to his clinic. I left home when I was 18, studied at the farthest imaginable place from home and felt free for the first time in my life. I never took a penny from my parents for college or grad school. I worked my butt up from the bottom as I rejected any assistance of my family nor use my dad's influence. Not a single letter of recommendation or other help. I made it completely by myself. When I landed very well paying jobs in trading positions at banks and hedge funds I spent at most 10% of my income on rent and other expenses. Even today I spend a max 5% of my net income on anything other than savings. 10% of my gross goes to tithes and offerings and another 10% to other volunteer and contribution efforts. I despise anything that remotely smells of luxury, no fancy cars, no fancy house (I still rent because I love the freedom and flexibility of being able to move at any time and knowing I can rent for the rest of my life without financial worries, but also because for a majority of my life as employed I was paid housing by my employers and frequently moved between financial centers). I despise any sort of luxury life style, clothing, or anything that reaks of money. It gives me zero satisfaction or happiness. I completely derive my happiness from my faith and friendships and relationships with loved ones, from helping those in need and see them pass on efforts to help others in turn.

Am I wealthy? I don't know and I don't care. Neither do I care what others think of me. What I know is that no amount of money in life can buy me happiness. And I work less and less in life (am transitioning from years as employed professional trader, to self employed trader, to now longer and longer holding periods that qualify more as investments than trading positions).

I feel sorry for anyone, wealthy or poor, who overvalue the importance of money. My monthly spending is probably on the level of those who earn 50k a year or so. In many ways even less. I don't need more. And I don't want to spend more. Not because I cling onto my savings but because I don't value what more spending could buy. For example, I attach zero value to restaurants and eateries. I have eaten some of the most lavish multi course meals in private clubs and hotel restaurants in the world but prefer the home cooking of my Japanese wife. She is a master at what she cooks, regardless of which ethnic cuisine she puts her hands on.

I cannot say whether I would live the same life style now had I not experienced wealth and lavish life styles early on in my life. But I know that money does not buy happiness that is for sure.
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This comes off to me as a pretty obnoxious humble brag and virtue signal. I could be wrong but it sounds like you are super out of touch and have no clue what it's like to be poor. oh wow you only spend as much as someone who makes 50k (an income that would put you firmly in the top 1% of the world, by the way) even though you make way more is that supposed to make you a good person? Hate to break it to you but you most definitely ARE living a luxury lifestyle. Being able to move whenever/wherever you want, not having financial worries, not having to trade the best hours of your life every day for money, are all luxuries that most people will never know.
 
LS1Z28 said:
Money might not make you happy, but not having money for things you need will definitely make you unhappy.
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Sorry didn't read the whole thread, several have been made on the same topic before, it seems studies have shown at least in the developed world, there is a certain amount of income up to which one gets proportionally happier. it is not really much but like 70/90k usd a year. it makes sense that struggling for necessities makes one life harsh. After that the relationship between money and happiness is no longer obvious. This number should change quite a bit depending on where one lives, I suspect it is lower in countries with a strong social safety net and public health insurance system.
Yet I remember some psyshologist (Khaneman ?) also claimed there's another satisfaction coming from money which keeps on increasing with one's income, it is more linked to how one compares himself to his neighbors and peers than dealing with necessity but according to him it is still noticeable.

Besides 20million rings a bell here, when I started being able to stack more than a few 1 dollar notes together 20mil was the benchmark to be considered Ultra High Net Worth Individual, but now reading around that number seems to be 30mil. It's easy to still feel like a pauper nowadays with 20 million. Tough world indeed.
 
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Well, if you define spending a monthly pocket money amount of around 400 USD (excluding food, rent, extraordinary purchases) in the most expensive city in the world a lavish life style then I believe it is you who is out of touch. True, I never experienced the life of someone being truly poor or homeless. But I never claimed to have experienced such and the point of this thread was not how it feels to be truly poor. The point of the thread was that lots of money is not a guarantor to make one happy. I shared stories of others who are truly wealthy and what they shared their regrets are and I also shared from personal experience that money in itself did not provide any happiness. Take it from there any way you like, I honestly could not care less.

cruisecontrol said:
This comes off to me as a pretty obnoxious humble brag and virtue signal. I could be wrong but it sounds like you are super out of touch and have no clue what it's like to be poor. oh wow you only spend as much as someone who makes 50k (an income that would put you firmly in the top 1% of the world, by the way) even though you make way more is that supposed to make you a good person? Hate to break it to you but you most definitely ARE living a luxury lifestyle. Being able to move whenever/wherever you want, not having financial worries, not having to trade the best hours of your life every day for money, are all luxuries that most people will never know.
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The situation I am in truly makes me happy because I worked very hard but also made many sacrifices to be in a situation where I perform the job that I love so much that I would do it even if I was not paid at all. But it comes with tradeoffs and sacrifices, I don't have a safety net other than my own savings that I can provide for my family. Nobody provides any health insurance to my family other than me providing it for them. I can't just get off my desk at 5 or 6pm and go home and not care. I have no 401k or pension account, I and my family lives or dies with my providing for them and myself. That is a risk most people can't tolerate. It has nothing to do with the money I already have. Even if I had nothing at all I would do the exact same thing as I do now. My wife knows that and she knew that when she married me. She took an immense risk with me and stood by me in good and bad times (I lost my job and my entire stake and equity in the bank that I worked at and which went bankrupt in 2008). To me that is the purest definition of love and trust that she knows that I bust my butt and bend over backward to ensure that bread is on the table at the end of the day and that trust and love to each other to a large degree provides happiness. Even if I failed or she failed at what she does we would never get divorced or give up on each other. That is true happiness and has nothing whatsoever to do with money. If someone really was dependent on money for happiness then by definition they must be lacking everything else that money does not buy and that generally provides happiness, even in the absence of money. I volunteer and teach children programming by flying down to a city in the Philippines twice a year and I witness each single time that some of the poorest in the world withough even 2 meals a day are still genuinely happy.

Here is my bottom line. Each person has influence over some base character traits. Is someone self confident or inconfident? Is someone attempting their best at everything they do or not? Is someone content and can be patient as long as one does his best or does one constantly look at others who got more? Is someone a perpetual taker or giver? Does someone always just look out for his own advantage or does someone look to help others succeed as well? The answers to those questions determine whether someone is essentially happy or not. If not then no matter you give them a lot of money or not they won't be happy. Someone who is happy you can give a lot of money or not and they are still happy. Most of the wealthy but very inconfident people are almost by definition extremely unhappy. Someone who is driven and confident and does his best and wants others to succeed as well is almost by definition happy. Give them a lot of money and that individual is still happy. Take all their money away and they are still happy. I find it extremely problematic whenever I hear someone linking up money and happiness. Not saying you did.

fan27 said:
Money has certainly bought you freedom to work on the problems that interest you and not some other person's or company's problems. I got a taste of that this past year and it made me very happy! But I already have a mostly happy attitude. The problem for the lottery winner is they come across an amount of money that they and their personal and family relationships are not prepared to handle.
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Stockolio said:
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I worked at biltmore securities a sister broker dealer to Stratton oakmont back in the early 90s. Where some kids were making $50-$80k a month with the bigger producers topping some months at $250k . I put out the Steve Madden ipo, harmony holdings, octagon. I saw a kid named (big block) Mike make a stick on a 500,000 share order a f**cking stick. I met Jordan Belford at a strip club in ft Lauderdale tossing hundreds to the dancers on stage, Danny Porush, all big swinging D$$ks, Richard Bronson, etc. I sat in the pump up meetings every morning and close of market. I can tell you 100% without a shadow of a doubt no way Jose money does not bring you happiness and I’ve been on both sides. Happiness is unconditional or should be to attain true value, at least after your basic needs are met. Everything else is noise to pump up your ego lol. On a side note I learned more there than any other job I ever had. How to ask for big money when all I had was nickels.

Happiness to me is more about purpose, giving more than you take, lifting others.
 
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