If you're not taking 3-5% of your monthly income and just blowing it on something fun (it doesn't have to be material things, trips, fancy dinners, and financially helping friends have the same effect here), you're missing out on life. It's a conscious decision which may not maximize your earnings across your entire life, but I've found that it significantly increases your enjoyment of your entire life.
The goal of the monetary view is still to increase your enjoyment. If you have fun doing something, it won't tell you to stop. It only steps in to say "If this is an unfun obligation, maybe you should treat it like a job."
You're not going to miss out on much of life that way.
I think if you read the post a different way, what you will find is that the writer had an emotional connection to success and to doing something interesting, and I think he valued that more than the money he got, because as he said, his boss was dropping 50 thousand dollar checks on his desk while he was coding something.
You can see it when he speaks about the media companies paying attention and trying out all his ideas, both of those are measures of respect and acknowledgment that his/their ideas were useful and a positive contribution to society.
If anything, I read this as a warning that "life isn't just about stacking bills" and that money is a means to accomplishing the goals you set before yourself. If you short circuit the fun you are having for money, you either will find something else that makes you happy, or you will pine for the meaning in your life that you lost, and write this article.
Not on their deathbed, but before that, having money can help you have more fun, if not while working, then at least in your free time. It doesn't have to be obscene amounts of money, but if you're constantly broke and can't afford anything, that's definitely not fun either...
> However, if your version of getting ahead is to have a loving family, or to spend time on the hobbies you like or traveling or <insert other non-monetary thing here> then you can (and sometimes even have to) spend less effort on the game.
Money – and thus at least understanding the game enough – is often a precursor to getting enjoyment out of those things though, to various degrees. Probably less so with family, if the dynmaics are healthy, but definitely more needed for certain hobbies and travel.
In some sense, enjoying life is hard when you have lots of money. It gives you lots of options, and you cannot do all you would ever want to do.
Say, you are a programmer, and you are enjoying your work. Would you enjoy yourself more riding a Ferrari today? Sitting on some Caribbean beach? Following your favourite NBA team by going to all their games? Study medicine? Start a charity? How do you know you would stay happy doing that? Would you feel guilty spending your life lying on a beach, where you might have written some useful software instead?
Most people would shrug of those ideas or not even think about them because "that's life". If you have a hundred million in the bank, though, all of these are realistic options.
If money is no objection, some feel that they really are themselves to blame if they aren't happy for a minute or don't accomplish anything they feel valuable in the rest of their lives.
> "Money allows people to live longer and healthier lives, to buffer themselves against worry and harm, to have leisure time to spend with friends and family, and to control the nature of their daily activities". These are very much necessary preconditions to be happy.
Yes, but money isn't the only way to achieve them.
There's an apocryphal story about a guy who goes on a fishing trip and tells the guide that he enjoyed it so much that he's going to go home and make a lot of money so he can go fishing every day. The take-away being that the fishing guide is doing just that. (Yes, there's more to being a guide than fishing, but a fishing-bum lifestyle doesn't cost that much.)
"Life" has a burn-rate. Is yours going for things that matter to you?
Meaning, they are not a good life goal and a poor substitute for very basic things like socialization, enjoying nature, enjoying time with yourself, accomplishing goals, and exercising. Money and what it can buy are a means to pass time between the parts of life that are “really” worth it.
Of course I may be wrong here but it sure doesn’t feel like that; I’ve had the blessing to be able to compare my life with a lot of money closely with my life with very little money.
> "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money.
Well if money was key to happiness, why would people with money say that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite? The reality is money helps with lots of things in life, but it's never more than a means to an end. You should always be striving to enjoy what you can in life as you go, because cultivating a happy life requires being present. Otherwise you'll blow right by the stuff around you, and by the time you get the money you were seeking you may be on an island. That's all people mean when they make that statement.
I always disliked that saying, because i'm never in it for the money. Money often follows, through paths I could not imagine when starting the adventure, but it was never the goal.
Following your interests and going on weird adventures/side-tracks outside your comfort-zone won't make you very rich, but you'll always have enough, and a life that is fun.
It helps if you don't care to much about collecting useless stuff: Travel light!
I disagree. I've watched three members of my family save and save and ultimately die of cancer with a pile of cash which consumed their life obtaining. I'd rather live for the moment.
Obtaining money takes far too much time when you could be having fun (fun rarely involves much expenditure).
> Except that the literature has shown that people generally find greater happiness using their money to buy experiences rather than things.
Yes, but a) travelling is not the only way to buy experiences by any means, b) Actually doing/ creating things or experiences is infinitely more rewarding than consumption[1]. Programming, making music, painting, woodworking, cooking, gardening, whatever tickles your fancy. All those studies still only are about buying.
The guys in the article had fun, doing what they did.
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