Money and Wealth are tricky customers
Hi little one,
I know I stopped writing for quite sometime, but that was partly due to work and partly due to your old man being lazy. I hope you grow up to be industrious unlike your Slacker No1 dad here.
Today, I wanted to write about a very interesting and nuanced part of our lives - wealth. It has been on my mind for quite sometime and I am gathering my thoughts here. Wealth and the pursuit of it seems to be quite a fundamental goal in our lives once we turn adults. Often, this goal takes precedence over a lot of other things in life - peace, happiness and comfort to name a few. Whether, wealth accumulation or any of these other goals come first is a very personal question. We can think about it in the following angles.
1. A minimum amount of wealth is necessary, always. A safety net is a must and this take precedence over comfort, I would say.
2. What can wealth get us that would make us happy ? Many people love wealth for wealth's sake, I do not know how. But what are the things that wealth can get us that would make us truly happy - A home ? A new piece of furniture ? A perfume ? Think about these things before pursuing wealth blindly.
3. Follow up question - What if those things require an extraordinary amount of wealth ? Well, then let's think about our happiness-it-brings vs wealth curve. On the x axis, plot the amount of money required, which is an objective amount. Now, we need to measure the amount of happiness, that particular thing would give us. To help us in measuring, think about the happiness that known things give us and place it on the y axis, then think about what half and then double the amount of wealth can fetch you and how happy that would make you. This can make our heads clearer about the happiness vs wealth equation.
4. Wealth is an opportunity cost for doing something else.
4. Wealth and time - Wealth is security for the future. A rough estimate of how much you would need is absolutely essential.
5. Think about how our life would be measure beyond what we own, did we talk well ? Did we dance well ? Did we do something good for people ? These measures are important, because pursuing activities which wealth cannot buy is priceless. Nobody can help you become a better tennis player or a violin player by gifting you a million dollars.
Yours always,
Dad
P.S - Think of everything which money cannot buy, many of them are priceless and you should have them in your life.