Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Friday was our first “Boston Day” since February of 2020. Boston Day is an annual event where we take current upperclassmen from my program and head down to a Boston hospital to meet with Boston-area alumni. This year our host was Rebecca Froncki, Director of Project Management at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. It was a small event, but it was great to be back in person. We spent the afternoon listening to young alumni and “seasoned” alumni talk about their experiences and give advice. Don’t you love that euphemism? Some of us are more “seasoned” than others. And one way I could demonstrate that was by trying to take a selfie with the group. A couple of them got up to help the old man manage the technology. It was pretty funny.
Daughter #3 cooked dinner for herself, my wife, and I last night, so I pitched in with her favorite dessert - molten lava cakes (recipe courtesy of Paula Dean - you know if Paula is involved, it is going to both taste good and give you type II diabetes). This is a super easy recipe if you, too, like chocolatey chocolate.
All around, yesterday was a good day. Well, except for the fact that I had a crown started in the morning before we left for Boston. But setting that aside, it was a really good day. Fellowship and community, followed by food and family - it’s really hard to top that. And the great thing about those things is they are, in the grand scheme of things, very inexpensive in monetary terms. Happiness has relatively little to do with money and a whole lot to do with meaning (Meaning = Competence x Contribution x Connection). That doesn’t mean that money has nothing to do with happiness. Money, and the effective earning, conserving, and husbanding of resources, is a part of Competence. But money only provides a baseline of security. Once you have enough to feel secure, more does very little to make you happier.
Because I was trained as an economist, I am obligated to include a graph whenever I talk about money. As you can see from the graphic above, there is a diminishing effect on happiness as one accumulates mo’ money. There’s a quantity of money, M, that meets our needs for comfort and security. Amounts of money beyond Enough don’t actually add significantly to happiness. I recently read a very good book given to me by my college friend Randy F. called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and the idea of enough is central to the Housel’s thesis. The author quotes a poem by Kurt Vonnegut -
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
(you can find an online copy here)
Much of my young adulthood was spent worrying about success and financial security. I often fretted over both things, and wondered if the choices I was making were the right ones. I remember distinctly when the voice that shouted behind me that I didn’t have enough finally went silent. It was in 2017. I had been retired from the Army for about two years, and was early in my pursuit of tenure here at UNH. I was sitting, looking out the window at the backyard gardens here at the LHH when I took stock of things: I realized two of my three children had graduated from high school, and one was very close, the two eldest were most of the way through college and were going to be ok, and we had enough money saved to put the third through college. Between my retirement and my salary at UNH I could provide for my wife and I a modest life. We had a modest house in a nice community. I had found cheap hobbies that had very little marginal cost (kayaking, photography). If I were to be run over by a bus or struck by lightning the next day, we had enough saved and enough insurance that my wife would be financially secure. If things didn’t work out at UNH (happily they did), I could easily replace my UNH salary by either going back to industry or finding another teaching role (sadly, my UNH salary is very easy to replace…). In other words, I had fulfilled all of my financial obligations. I was 47 and it gave me a sense of peace that allowed me to focus on other things. I had arrived at M = enough. Not wealthy, but comfortable.
Housel makes an important point about enough - “The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving” (p. 41). The goalpost - where M = enough - is always in danger of shifting right and requiring more - mo’ money. If you see your neighbor has a new car, or your friend has a new house, or someone, anyone, has a new kayak - suddenly you feel like you need something more than what you have. Now with kayaks, the rule is different, as you can see from the graph below:
I have three kayaks, a canoe, and two paddleboards. How many kayaks is enough? My wife will tell you that I think my happiness function with respect to kayaks is linear - I always want another one. With a linear function, there is never enough - for me more is always better. But in reality, this is an illusion. There are diminishing returns to all material things, even kayaks. In reality, that happiness line bends down. My weakness is kayaks - yours is probably something else. But I’m willing to bet you have something that you covet, that your heart refuses to acknowledge also obeys the law of diminishing returns to stuff. You have to fight that urge to let the goal posts shift - to have that one more thing - because if you just had a little more, imagine how much more happy you would be. When the goal posts shift right, when M = enough becomes a bigger number, you have to spend more time chasing money instead of paddling or gardening or just spending time with your friends and family. (just to be clear: the kayak graph is a joke. It’s an economist joke, so don’t feel bad if you don’t get it. It’s probably actually not funny.)
Housel cites a study of more than 1,000 elderly people who were asked what they valued:
No one - not a single person out of a thousand - said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want… What did value were things like quality friendships, being part of something bigger than themselves, and spending quality, unstructured time with their children. (p. 89)
What they valued was meaning: connection and contribution.
Without enough, it is hard to achieve meaning. If you spend most of your time afraid of not having enough, it is hard to think about much of anything other than getting to enough. I think poverty is far too often romanticized. Poverty makes people hard through fear and frustration. For most of my childhood, money was an issue for my family. It shaped my attitudes toward money and created a level of anxiety that lasted well into middle age. After my epiphany about having reached enough, I believe I have become more generous, and more relaxed.
For me, M = enough is defined by some general rules. You have enough if:
You can provide basic subsistence for yourself and the people you are responsible for (spouse, children).
If you die or are disabled, you have contingency plans in place to provide for the people you are responsible for.
You have set aside enough for retirement. This is really taking care of your future you, for whom you are primarily responsible.
You have found cheap hobbies and pass-times.
You have enough to occasionally splurge. Splurge occasionally on whatever you enjoy - new toys, travel, kayaks, etc.
What this looks like depends on your upbringing and expectations. The more modest your expectations, the easier it is to get to enough. I know not everyone is willing to drive a 19-year old mini van, like I do. I know not everyone likes to cook or kayak or walk in the woods or take pictures. But the more you can simplify your life, and the less you must have. You can shift M = enough to the left and spend more time on connections and contributions, the other essential components of meaning.
I’ll be back Wednesday with links. As usual, willing good for all of you! Happy Sunday!
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