Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about solving the happiness money conundrum in five moves or less So if you live in America or you live in Canada or developed European country or Hong Kong Singapore, Australia you got more money than the large majority of the world's population and Yet you might not be very happy And I think the reason why you might not be very happy is because you're spending too much time Focusing on money power and prestige and not enough time on everything else So I don't think money makes up more than 40% of what makes us happy The other stuff is just much more important, but we neglect that other stuff Which I'm going to talk about in this episode and I think these are the things that will really make us happy So after a tense 14 to 12 softball victory, I'm in this weekly law league softball League and it's funny because I'm not a lawyer.

I just decided to play because someone invited me The six of us went to a nearby brewery for some beers oysters burgers and so forth and we were just elated because the team was really really good and we got some clutch hits and I ended up sitting next to this guy really big guy six feet five inches tall Crushes the ball 300 plus feet and he's our cleanup hitter and let's call him Biff and in high school Biff said he was a pretty popular guy.

He played varsity baseball varsity basketball But he also admitted he was a little bit cruel cruel to the smaller kids most kids were smaller than him and then cruel to the exchange students and I asked him why was he so cruel and he said well I was Because I was immature and because I could and he told me he wasn't proud of his actions And he wished he could apologize to them today and I see a lot of Biffs nowadays in the real world and in the online world where you know They were just kind of cruel and bullies when they're in school and they turned out to be bullied Bullies and really really kind of nasty people as adults So anyway after the financial crisis hit in 2008 Biff fell into a deep depression The house he had bought when he was 27 years old ended up losing half its value He was told he couldn't lose and that real estate was the surefire way to riches Not only had he lost all his equity, but he also owed more than the house was worth in just one year So Biff proceeded to gain over a hundred pounds as he literally locked himself within his rapidly depreciating prison at age 30 He was morbidly obese broke and Girlfriendless life had no more meaning to him and he definitely contemplated suicide But good thing he didn't because one day out of the blue the state of Florida threw him a lifeline by offering him a free $75,000 to pay off some of his mortgage if he promised to keep up with the regular payments he took advantage of the taxpayers money and fulfilled his side of the deal and Despite feeling a little bit guilty for taking the bailout money Biff started gaining positive momentum in his life again over the ensuing two years.

He lost about 70 pounds he got a promotion at work and Finally at the age of 32 found a girlfriend He also very importantly Stopped hating on anybody and everybody who seemed to be doing better than him because he was finally in a better place himself The first step to him feeling happy was to make sure his finances were no longer going in reverse.

They had stabilized and Once they had stabilized Biff's happiness grew because he found someone who loved him despite all his flaws Today, they're married and they have a daughter and he's happy being rich didn't matter any more to Biff Making progress did oh and being able to win a softball game by crushing it over the fence 300 plus feet Makes him really really happy and I tell you the story because I truly believe that money is not the primary driver to happiness At most 40% in my opinion if you look at the post on the polls 50% is at most according to about 700 votes if you look at the annual world happiness report So the latest one comes out Came out recently and Finland Norway and Denmark are in the top three and the the reality is that these countries are always in the top five to top ten and The report highlighted six significant factors which contributed to happiness GDP per capita social support life expectancy freedom to make life choices Generosity and corruption levels and if you look at the United States, it's ranked 18 So it's kind of weird because we have by far the largest GDP in the world, you know, but being 18 there's kind of some kind of disconnect and It's just such a conundrum that I think and the report attributed several reasons as to why Americans are not happier They include wealth and inequality obesity right like my friend Biff substance abuse and Depression and all of these things seem to kind of go hand in hand together The United States on a GDP per capita basis ranks only about 19.

So that's pretty much in line with the happiness ranking however GDP per capita alone doesn't neatly explain why more of the wealthiest countries aren't in the top ten For example, Singapore has a GDP per capita of about ninety four thousand and that is number seven but yet it's ranked only 34th in the world for happiness and My my hypothesis is that's just too damn hot and humid out there in Singapore So I used to live in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia for four years, but gotta say food in Singapore is top three in the world So I wanted to figure out What are the things we should spend more of our time on?

To make us more happy and I want to do some reflection because I think this is really important ultimately financial samurai is A site to help get your finances, right? So you're no longer going in reverse You've stabilized you're going forward and you can spend the majority of your time not worrying about money Really because the money is making money for you and it's going to be there for you, but you can spend more of your time Optimizing for the other things that hopefully will make your life more meaningful So there are five things that I think are really important.

The first one is independence Independence grows over time the first taste of independence usually comes when you're able to live on your own without parental assistance Perhaps it's going away to school or landing your first job Independence continues to grow once you start gaining respect and mastery at your job the better you are at your job Generally the more leeway you're gonna be given to do what you want You might eventually get promoted to run a team or a department giving you even more independence You finally gain maximum independence when you no longer have to report to anybody Most think retirement is the ultimate goal, but based on my experience After being away from the workforce for seven years Retirement isn't a cure-all for happiness.

There's plenty of negatives. You got to deal with as well, which again means money is not Money is not the main point for making people happy. Some people believe that entrepreneurship leads to maximum independence Instead entrepreneurship can lead to tremendous dependence if you hire workers and take in investors What people really want is a profitable bootstrapped solo business or the financial independence to do whatever without caring about money In my case, I was pretty happy to have a job right out of college, even though they worked me like a dog But after about I don't know three to six months that happiness really begin that began to fade Because it's just too stressful and too arduous.

So my happiness level is probably around a six It was only until I moved to San Francisco and got some more Independence covering West Coast clowns and feeling like I was in a more entrepreneurial Office environment did my happiness take a tick up? But then the financial crisis hit and then I was feeling a little bit miserable again and so it was only after I negotiated a severance in 2012 did my happiness level creep up to about an eight out of ten and Has remained at roughly this level with temporary spikes to ten and then obviously temporary spikes to like five or six So for those of you who want happiness Try your best to figure out an occupation or something that will give you as much independence as possible Independence has been I think the most important factor in consistently keeping me Happier at a higher level.

So to Family no matter how much of a knucklehead you are most family members will provide unconditional love and forgiveness They will support you no matter what it is estimated that average friendship lasts only seven years Because life gets in the way maybe a job relocate someone you just maybe you lose interest or you have a family Whatever it is while friends come and go family members last for much much longer We must make an effort to regularly keep in touch with our parents and siblings in my situation I messed up a lot in high school and in grade school gotten you know suspensions because of fights Did some other bad things and I think in retrospect man.

I think I gave my parents a lot of Headache and anxiety so sorry guys I'm gonna try to do better. Well, it's actually too late So I'm gonna try to teach my kids to do a little bit better But they've always been supportive whether you know when I got suspended from school or when I decided to change jobs They're like no the money's probably not gonna be worth their misery going to New York City And when I decided to leave work for good in 2012 at 34, they never had any pushback.

They were just like well That's interesting. Let's talk about the pros and cons and what you want to do just really supportive and even when I Decided to get married. They were also so welcoming to my wife So I really really appreciate my parental support and I would say I'd give them eight out of ten They've always been there They haven't been like super lovey-dovey like you see in the movies and stuff, but they've always picked up my calls and been supportive three Your own family.

I think this is pretty important for happiness as well If you're lucky enough to find a life partner, there's nobody you will love more in this world If you want to have children, and if you do have children the amount of joy you will experience is beyond anything you can ever imagine I Understand that not everybody wants children.

In fact about 10 11 percent of you in my survey of over a thousand Said you do not want children and that's absolutely fine Having a family made up of just you and your soulmate is incredibly powerful So much freedom so much joy make it your mission to find someone who loves you as much as you love them In my situation, I got really really lucky.

I met my wife when I was a senior in college and she was a freshman Because I met my wife so early. I've always had this minimum elevated level of contentment I knew that worst case if I could only make minimum wage working at McDonald's At least I'd have her in my life and we'd make things work and she felt the same way It didn't really matter how much money we had You know what we did is just like well we have each other So we'll figure it out and when you have some partner that will always support you and allow you to figure things out as you go Along, it's incredibly incredibly powerful.

And when we finally had our boy in 2017 my happiness Temporarily rocketed to a 10 10 plus. I don't know maybe a 15 is it was like unlocking a feeling I had never known before and nobody really kind of tells you that for some reason But I'm telling you guys who want kids or thinking about kids.

There's this unlocked feeling that you have when you have your own But as many first-time stay-at-home parents know taking care of a kid is tremendously difficult Some more than others right? I have a boy. He's very strong-willed. He knows what he wants. Like us what he wants Maybe he's kind of like me pretty Spool-headed and his temper tantrums are out of control at 26 months old And so that kind of doesn't make me happy that kind of makes me miserable sometimes But I wouldn't trade it for the world for The ability to stand up for yourself I don't hear about this much, but I think this is very very important One of the worst feelings is getting bullied and not being able to do anything about it in school You might get picked on by a bigger kid.

You want to fight back, but you're afraid of getting your face punched in So you rationalize? Okay better to give him my lunch money and starve than face his wrath At work, you might get tormented by a senior colleague You want to tell her stop look just leave me alone.

Why are you always making fun of me in public? Why are you making me look bad? Why are you throwing me under the bus? But you're afraid of standing up for yourself because you might afraid you might get a bad review from her You need the money Because I don't know you're raising a family.

You bought a house. You bought a car, whatever it is online You're afraid to say what you truly think out of fear of getting ridiculed As a result you keep quiet and you might even join a mob that bullies others for thinking differently The fear of standing up for yourself and others is one of the reasons why bad things stay bad for a very very long time It's amazing how people aren't willing to step up and stand up for what they believe in or defend someone Who's you know being bullied or whatever because they're afraid of getting bullied or mobbed themselves.

It's kind of sad so my situation ever since Elementary school for some reason must be DNA. I've had the courage to fight back and stand up for myself. I Hated bullies and I never never let them push me around or call me names and if they did They would feel my fist of fury and this was me as an elementary school kid And what I learned since I was a kid while standing up for yourself is that even if you take a few blows The bullies eventually stop some start respecting you some may even apologize The repercussions were plenty frankly Suspensions multiple trips to the principal's office and a few bruises But it always felt great to defend my honor.

So I've been going through this since at least five years old I can remember so many altercations from five years old through college frankly I've carried this attitude of standing up for myself my entire adult life when there was BS happening at work I spoke up often to my own detriment I didn't appreciate nepotism and nepotism is very very strong in the corporate workplace The higher you go the higher you ascend in the ranks the more it's about who you know And not what you do and I often challenge senior employees whom I did not respect And this is terrible terrible career strategy Don't do what I do if you want to send the corporate ranks and get like that network of support Because when my big bosses who are in my corner were eventually pushed out I was left with few backers and this caused me not to be able to ascend to managing director Among other things right financial crisis and having to relocate to a headquarter office yada yada yada But for me, I knew my career was over at this firm.

I had made too many enemies or just ruffled too many feathers It's because I didn't it's just I just called out so much BS. It was just whatever and Then online financial samurai has grown large enough to attract Unfortunately some hateful comments every week from people like the old Biff We're talking racist comments just really offensive comments and you know tons and tons of spam is just kind of crazy you guys have no idea and Even if only 0.1 percent of the people hate your guts however, that's 1,000 people a month if you receive 1 million visitors a month and that's what financial samurai receives about 1 million visitors a month And actually it's not point 1% It's probably more like point 001 percent but still even if you have like 10 haters every single month leaving you nasty stuff It's kind of annoying and kind of perturbing I generally delete 99% but if someone is stupid enough to try to come at me someone who doesn't rely on money to live who doesn't have a job to live and If you're stupid enough to still come after someone in this situation and you yourself need a job Well, there's probably something bad's gonna happen to you because I'm gonna stand up for myself Too many people too many people kind of ruin their their careers frankly Because they do something stupid online social media or whatever.

So just really think twice or thrice if you need money to survive Before you write anything nasty or you come to someone's house and hate on them. It's just not worth it So this is really one of the biggest benefits of being unemployed is not being able to get fired So standing up for yourself can feel initially scary but the more you practice I promise you the easier it'll get and Then finally the final thing that I think will make people happy or happier is doing work that is helpful to others One of the reasons why 70% of people are disengaged at work is because they know what they do is probably not very helpful to society Think about the workers who work at PepsiCo Their entire goal is to sell sugary drinks and process foods that get people addicted and fat and sick That can't feel very good and then imagine working at Juul Their goal is to get adults and teenagers hooked on vaporized nicotine.

I mean, how do you feel good about that? How do you feel good about getting people addicted and hooked to something that's poisonous? It's just beyond me It doesn't feel good. And I think deep down Every single employee knows this and that's why again 70% of people are disengaged But if you create or do something that's helpful to others, you will feel extremely extremely wealthy talk to veteran nurses Teachers firefighters and social workers really listen to them You will hear many of them glow about their rewarding careers Sure, they'll have issues just like everybody else pay office politics and so forth, but it's really a big difference In my situation before 9/11 happened.

It felt great working in finance in New York City After 9/11, I felt a tremendous amount of sadness Deep sadness suddenly nothing I did at work mattered anymore compared to what the brave First responders did to try and rescue the people trapped in the World Trade Centers I wanted to join the US Foreign Service to actually serve my country and do something more productive like my parents But I was neither smart enough or motivated enough to pass those exams It took at least three years to get over my disillusionment of working in finance During this time.

I went to business school part-time Partly to see if I could gain some knowledge to do something else just kind of explore That's what you do when you go to business school but part of the deal of having my tuition paid for was to continue working at my firm for at least two years after graduation and During this time, unfortunately, the financial crisis had hit in 2008 and there was nowhere I could go The best I could do was hold on tight for my employment life as I had just taken out a 1.1 Million dollar mortgage in 2006 when I was 28 years old I mean that was everything I had after the town payment and that's scary stuff so it wasn't until about 2011 That I decided that my biggest joy was writing and helping people get their finances straight I started financial samurai in 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis and That was a period where I had to really reassess what I wanted to do with my life and by 2012 2011 all I could think about was financial samurai.

So That's what I did. I finally said goodbye to my employer then and the thing that has kept me going for so long I mean 10 years. It's just kind of crazy Three to four times a week of writing something commenting producing things It's man. It's just tiring thinking about it But what has kept me going for so long has been the consistent positive feedback that I get from readers that outnumber the negative feedback Probably 200 to 1 Over the past 10 years.

I've witnessed readers eradicate their debt fix their spending habits buy their first homes Leave toxic work environments negotiate amazing severances create thriving side hustles build substantial retirement portfolios start families and so much more It's been really a wonderful journey and an honor and a treat to hear from each and every one of you.

So, thank you Before you reach financial independence, you might get tricked into believing that money is the main reason why people are happy It's easy to lose sight of all the things on your quest for greater wealth However, you can be the richest person in the world but if you have nobody to share your fortune with I Doubt you'll be happier than someone making 40,000 a year in a job in which he or she loves And who has a loving partner and supportive friends in real life For the sake of happiness.

I think it's worth staying fit finding people in real life who love you as much as we love them and Doing something that's helpful to others and who knows you might even reach a point where you're so happy That money starts pouring in as a byproduct So I'd love to hear from all of you on what you think the proper percentages are for money family Purpose.

I really think we need to focus more much more on everything else besides money Let's get our money, right? Let's keep it from going in reverse. Let's keep it safe Let's keep the money productive so that it can free up Tremendous amount of time to spend on things that truly matter.

Thanks so much everyone