Happy New Year!! We hope you had a fantastic holiday season. Now, it’s on to 2019 with planning and resolutions for the New Year. What are your goals? More money? More Happiness? More Joy? As you tackle these huge questions of money and meaning, we’d like to offer you some ideas.
Does money buy happiness? King Midas was rich, but his gold didn’t bring him happiness. That’s because there’s a difference between being rich and being wealthy. Brian Portnoy, in his book, “The Geometry of Wealth,” articulates this well: “Being rich is having ‘more.’ The push for more is a treadmill of which satisfaction is typically fleeting. Wealth, by contrast, is funded contentment. It is the ability to underwrite a meaningful life- however one chooses to define that.”
Money, of course, is a huge part of our daily lives. Our life cycle with money includes earning, spending, saving and investing. Our first paycheck shows us our ability to earn and sustain ourselves. Next, where do we spend the money and how much do we save? Lastly, as we accumulate money, we choose to put our financial capital at risk to grow at a higher rate of return than cash. Money is like the oil in your car; without it, the car grinds to a halt, but with it, YOU still have to steer the car in the right direction.
Sonja Lyubomirsky in “Pursuing Happiness,” identifies three factors which determine happiness/human fulfillment. These are disposition (who you are), circumstances (what you face) and intentions (what you do). Her research shows that outcomes are impacted as follows: 50% comes from disposition, 40% from intentions and 10% from circumstances. The good news is that we can control our intentions; which, of course, is our review, planning, implementation and monitoring of our life planning.
As Daniel Kahneman (featured in earlier DWM blogs) has proven, how well we handle our intentions and planning has a lot to do with “Thinking Fast and Slow.” The fast brain is the home of impressions, impulse, and feelings. The slow brain is engaged when we are deliberately thinking and making informed choices. The two systems work together; the key is using our slow brain as we shape a life of money and meaning. The process of building and executing a plan can be, in itself, a source of happiness.
In 2015, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu met and discussed life; recapped in “The Book of Joy.” They separated happiness into two categories; one, experienced happiness, which comes and goes with daily pleasures, and, two, reflective happiness, the achievement of joy, which takes work. Dr. Portnoy identifies the four pillars of joy:
- Connection-the need to belong
- Control-the need to direct one’s own destiny
- Competence-the need to be good at something worthwhile
- Context-need for a purpose outside of one’s self
These “Four C’s” are at the heart of funded contentment. And while contentment can be achieved by all, including those in lower levels of income, money helps.
Dr. Kahneman found in his research that happiness directly increases as income increases. However, after about $75,000 of annual income (per person), experienced happiness levels out. The concept is that good and bad moods come and go at the same pace for someone making $100,000 per year as compared to someone making $1 million per year. However, reflective happiness, or funded contentment, does increase with higher incomes for many people. This is because at higher levels of income, money, allocated wisely, can underwrite the Four C’s, which constitute reflective happiness. Money can be used for both experienced and reflective happiness and, by using both our fast brain and our slow brain, we can achieve both.
In our crazy, chaotic world, it’s important not to let our fast brain guide all of our intentions. We need to have a plan and a process and be ready to adapt it as the world changes. True happiness takes work. Our goal, as wealth managers, is to assist you with a process not only to protect and grow your money, but also to help you achieve “funded contentment”- the ability to underwrite a meaningful life- however you choose to define that.
Good luck on your planning for 2019. Please let us know if you would like us to help.