There are no guaranteed ways to achieve happiness. If you believe incorrectly that X will make you happy, you may spend time and energy pursuing X only to find out it didn’t work. But even then, if you achieve your X’s faster, you get more attempts.
Advantages of money:
Less time and energy spent paying your bills, which means more time and energy available to do X. If you need to buy something, you can. If you need other people’s help, you can pay them to help you.
Disadvantages of money:
You attract all kinds of people who want to extract money from you: fake friends, scammers, extortionists. (In theory, this is only a problem when other people know you have money. In practice, I suspect there are fake friends / scammers / extortionists who specialize on finding rich people who try to be inconspicuous, so you never know.) You need lawyers and bodyguards to deflect occassional attacks; certain things are more dangerous for you than for average people. You generally can’t trust people and their feedback, which is a problem when you need to actually learn something.
I believe that a lot of what you have said is accurate but does not discount the original post. If realistically looked at, it is still a truth that money does buy more opportunities to find happiness. Whether its giving to others, or the ability to have more free time, etc. It does not mean you will find personal happiness. Nor does it mean that every person needs the $ at all. Over all its a mindset I guess, but if money was not an issue at all, and nobody knew about your wealth at all for instance wouldn’t half your concerns disappear? What if nobody was aware of your wealth?
Sure, I would prefer to deal with problems of having too much money, rather than not having enough money. At least, with too much money you can hire people to help you, and you have enough free time to focus on the problems.
I don’t think there is a reliable way to keep wealth secret. If it is legally obtained, you need to declare it in your tax form… and I don’t trust the government’s ability to keep secrets. You buy something expensive, people may notice. Heck, you stop having a daily job, people may notice. But there could be a sweet spot somewhere between “being an average person” and “being so rich that criminals start paying attention”.
It also depends on what lifestyle you want. I suppose that rich people have all kinds of activities where they signal their wealth to each other, and maintain social contact with each other—you cannot do this and keep your wealth secret at the same time. However, you could go for something like “middle class, except with extra options, and all inconvenience removed”.
Probably a good way to achieve it would be to create a shell company… and get employed by it. Which would make you your own boss, except no outsider would know. You do whatever you want, whenever you want, and if people ask you about your job, you have a boring answer. If you need to spend big money, officially the company pays it, not you. You could even keep the secret from your friends and your partners (because they sometimes become ex-friends and ex-partners).
Sounds like I have a plan, now all I need is the money. :D
There are no guaranteed ways to achieve happiness. If you believe incorrectly that X will make you happy, you may spend time and energy pursuing X only to find out it didn’t work. But even then, if you achieve your X’s faster, you get more attempts.
Advantages of money:
Less time and energy spent paying your bills, which means more time and energy available to do X. If you need to buy something, you can. If you need other people’s help, you can pay them to help you.
Disadvantages of money:
You attract all kinds of people who want to extract money from you: fake friends, scammers, extortionists. (In theory, this is only a problem when other people know you have money. In practice, I suspect there are fake friends / scammers / extortionists who specialize on finding rich people who try to be inconspicuous, so you never know.) You need lawyers and bodyguards to deflect occassional attacks; certain things are more dangerous for you than for average people. You generally can’t trust people and their feedback, which is a problem when you need to actually learn something.
I believe that a lot of what you have said is accurate but does not discount the original post. If realistically looked at, it is still a truth that money does buy more opportunities to find happiness. Whether its giving to others, or the ability to have more free time, etc. It does not mean you will find personal happiness. Nor does it mean that every person needs the $ at all. Over all its a mindset I guess, but if money was not an issue at all, and nobody knew about your wealth at all for instance wouldn’t half your concerns disappear? What if nobody was aware of your wealth?
Sure, I would prefer to deal with problems of having too much money, rather than not having enough money. At least, with too much money you can hire people to help you, and you have enough free time to focus on the problems.
I don’t think there is a reliable way to keep wealth secret. If it is legally obtained, you need to declare it in your tax form… and I don’t trust the government’s ability to keep secrets. You buy something expensive, people may notice. Heck, you stop having a daily job, people may notice. But there could be a sweet spot somewhere between “being an average person” and “being so rich that criminals start paying attention”.
It also depends on what lifestyle you want. I suppose that rich people have all kinds of activities where they signal their wealth to each other, and maintain social contact with each other—you cannot do this and keep your wealth secret at the same time. However, you could go for something like “middle class, except with extra options, and all inconvenience removed”.
Probably a good way to achieve it would be to create a shell company… and get employed by it. Which would make you your own boss, except no outsider would know. You do whatever you want, whenever you want, and if people ask you about your job, you have a boring answer. If you need to spend big money, officially the company pays it, not you. You could even keep the secret from your friends and your partners (because they sometimes become ex-friends and ex-partners).
Sounds like I have a plan, now all I need is the money. :D