I Tried To Buy Happiness, But My Card Declined.

“See, with money though, yo, it can't bring us happiness, but it will bring the things we'd be happy with (Indeed)”. 360. Throw It Away. Falling & Flying.

Hello again, my friend.

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and wanted to share something with you.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about money, and the fact that I’ve never really had any financial goals. Yet over the past 10 years I’ve worked 6-7 days a week at the detriment of my social life. Has all that money made me happy? Not really.

You know, In my best months of skydiving I earned over ten thousand dollars. But you know what’s crazy? This was also one of the lowest points in my life in terms of my mental health. In reality I was burnt-out, depressed and unfulfilled. Picture this, I was living in a high rise apartment, eating at restaurants almost every night and buying any toys that I wanted, but I was truly miserable. I was working 6 or 7 days per week, my longest stint being 45 days straight! I didn’t leave myself much time for anything else. I was doing my laundry at night, missing all the social gatherings I was invited to and at night I was usually too tired to do anything besides play PlayStation. I guess I was stuck on the hedonic treadmill, just focused on making money. The sad thing is, when all I did was work I felt the need to buy shit all the time. It was my way of filling the void of not having a social life I guess. And yes, I get that telling someone that ten thousand dollars a month won’t make them happy, but hear me out.

You know the saying “money doesn’t buy happiness”? Well I feel like it’s only a half-truth. It’s a bit more complicated than that. I mean if you can’t afford to pay your rent then that’s going to cause a lot of stress in your life right? I’ve been there, and in this case having more money will almost definitely make you happier. But once you can comfortably support yourself and don’t have to check your bank account all the time, more money doesn’t equal more happiness. But how much is enough?

I’ve read a lot of articles about this now, and the actual number varies greatly depending on which one you read. It also depends on where in the world you live, but I’ve heard $75,000USD a year (or around $100k a year for us Aussies) thrown around as the level of income where the happiness returns begin to diminish, and quite rapidly I might add. I know, money isn’t everything and is only one small part of the puzzle. But it’s a good place to start, right?.

See it took me getting severely burnt out and depressed to finally quit my job. When I did I blew all my savings travelling and am now looking to start something new and restructure my life. I don’t want to work 7 days a week ever again, but I don’t want to be broke either. I’m also trying to change careers. But outside of skydiving I don’t have a lot of other skills, besides making coffee, so I’ll be starting on basically minimum wage. All I want is enough money to cover my freedom number. What’s that you ask? good question. A “freedom number” is the exact amount of money you need to earn per week to cover all of life’s expenses. Once you’ve got that you’re free to do whatever you want. This means rent, bills, petrol etc. This will probably sound simple to you, but I’ve never really had a budget before so this is all new to me!.

Pretty much what I’ve done is break it down into 10 categories: Savings, Rent , Bills, Phone, Gym, Groceries, Petrol, Car maintenance & registration, Spending and Subscriptions. The last one has caught me out so many times. All those free trials I forgot about!

Seems simple right? Easy in theory, hard in practice. See when I first wrote out my budget, I realised there was a big gap between what I thought I was spending and what I was actually spending. It took me hours, but I went back through all my past bank statements and made a spreadsheet of every dollar I’ve spent in the last year. I’ve been using Notion to track it all, have you heard of it? It’s awesome. I also realised that I’d rather have my parents look through my search history than my bank statements. Totally opposite to how it used to be! Anyway, I realised I can’t just assume how much I will spend, I have to look at the data. Now that I have my budget mapped out I’ve been checking my bank account and tracking my spending every day. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass but it’s really helping. I won’t track every dollar forever, just until I get on track. It’s that whole ‘simplicity on the far side of complexity’ thing I always talk about. Apparently just by checking your bank account every day you’re more likely to save money, same as how people who weigh themselves every day are more likely to lose weight. If I can stick to this budget, then maybe I can use my weekends to have a social life and to put more effort into this writing thing. I haven’t had weekends free for the last 10 years, and even now the allure of the extra money keeps tapping me on the shoulder. Especially since I can earn in a day skydiving what I’d earn in a week at a normal job. I may still work weekends initially, but just until I can save up a decent amount to have a buffer, in case I crash my car or something.

You know, before I turned 30 I’d never even thought about this stuff. Maybe I’m finally becoming an adult? haha.

Let me know if you found this interesting, or have any questions. I’d be happy to talk about it more.

Until then, I miss you and really hope you’re doing well.

Big hugs,

Ben