Money | Raam Dev

Posts Tagged: Money

The more we have, the less we appreciate

This post started as a comment in response to Colin Wright’s post on Your Money or Your Life. The comment grew long enough that I decided to turn my response into this post.

There are two things that cannot be bought with money: Time and Happiness.

Sure, you might be able to “buy” someone’s time, but you cannot buy back time that has already been spent! Therefore time is an invaluable resource. Likewise, happiness cannot be bought. You can buy things that you think will make you happy, but the happiness itself will always come from somewhere inside. You really don’t need anything external to obtain it!

I find it amazing how many people go through their entire lives thinking that more money equals more happiness. They get stressed and unhappy due to the absence of money and naturally they assume having more of it will reverse the effect. In reality, what’s making them unhappy are the choices they’ve made; the little luxuries they’ve decided are absolutely necessary to live their life (cable TV, cars, expensive foods, tobacco, alcohol, big house, movies, etc.).

All of those things provide a very temporary and unsustainable happiness. As a result, their life becomes a snowballing roller coaster of wanting more and more. The more they want, the more money they convince themselves they need. The more money they need, the more stressed out and unhappy they become. Where does it end? Sadly, for most people it ends with death.

I come from a middle class family. While my perspective is not the same as someone from a lower class family, I can see that the same patterns emerge from one class to the next. The things everyone truly cares about are pretty much the same. One persons’ poor, is another persons’ rich. The family we’re born into often defines the living standard by which we judge and perceive the world around us. But how different is the rich person from the poor person? Do they experience a different kind of happiness? A different kind of sadness? A different kind of love? How about hunger? Do rich and poor people get different feelings from laughter?

I speak as a single guy, with very few true responsibilities. I have no kids to take care of or family that needs to be looked after. I understand that my perspective and ideas may not apply to other situations. Nevertheless, there are many very happy families living with far less than the average family in the United States. Do they experience a lower quality happiness? When their kids laugh and play together, do they experience a lower quality joy? True happiness isn’t something that can be bought with money.

We’re all human. If we really want to be happy we need to look deep inside ourselves for happiness. It’s there. Everyone has it. No one person has less happiness-making-capacity than the next. It’s really tough to forget that all the material stuff around us, regardless of how much importance we place on it, really has nothing to do with our true happiness. That’s a tough pill to swallow when some of us work day and night to afford the stuff.

So what better way to find the true source of happiness than to strip yourself of all things material? I grew up in a relatively rural area, a small town in New Hampshire with a forest and a lake for a backyard. I was home schooled and spent most of my childhood outside exploring nature. When friends would visit for the first time, their impression would always be one of amazement. I never understood that. At least not until I moved away and lived in the city for two years. When I visited my parents on the weekends, I started to feel something I never felt before. Visiting my parents house, the very place I grew up, started to feel like going on vacation! I felt so much appreciation for the place.

That experience made me realize how the little things we take for granted can spoil our entire life. Have you ever come back from a camping trip and felt a little more grateful for having a shower? How about when the power comes back on after being out for more than a day? We should feel that way every minute of every day for the life we have. For working legs, eyes, hands, ears, and mouth. We should be grateful for every second that passes; for each beat of our heart, and each breath we take.

Take a deep breath of air right now. Close your eyes and fill your chest with life-giving air. Appreciate it a little more than you did the previous breath. Do it right now. I’ll wait.

Didn’t that feel good? You take an average of 20,000 of those every single day. That’s a lot to be grateful for!

I’ve decided to get rid of nearly all my material possessions because I know it will make me feel more grateful. I know it will enable me to see more clearly. We humans (yes, even modern ones) don’t need very much to survive. Food and shelter. That’s it. Most of us are fortunate enough to have working feet to help us travel, yet so few of us use them for real commuting. What about money? When we remove all modern-day comforts and really drill down to the bare necessities, we don’t need very much of that either. Of course how much money will differ depending on where we’re living, but most of us live way above necessity.

Find something you own that you haven’t used in over a month. Now find someone that you can give it to. Don’t worry about how much it cost you or why you originally bought it. You haven’t used it in over a month and you most likely won’t use it for the foreseeable future. Just find something and give it away. By giving it away you’ll not only build good karma, you’ll also feel a little more appreciative of all the stuff you currently have.

The more we have, the less we appreciate. The less we have, the more we appreciate. Do you want to appreciate more or less of life?

This entry was posted on August 8th, 2009 and has 9 comments. Join the discussion!

Making Money vs Spending Money

It’s so easy to spend money. So easy in fact that I catch myself thinking of new ways to spend money that I don’t even have. I won’t actually spend it, but I’ll plan what I would do if I had the money to spend.

I realized I was doing that today when I was trying to justify spending $60 a month for a wireless Sprint card to use on my laptop. When I realized what I was doing, I asked myself, “If it’s so easy to think of new ways to spend money that I don’t have, then why don’t I think of ways to make money I don’t need?”

What is it that makes spending money so easy and “fun” while making money is so difficult and boring? Is it because we associate the action of spending money with a feeling of contentment, while the action of making money is associated with hard work and frustration?

I often find myself wondering what the point of making money is if not to spend it. Perhaps I’m living too much in the moment and not planning for the future — maybe because I expect to be able to handle whatever the future throws at me.

Then I’ll do something that immobilizes me to the point where I cannot run, jump, or do anything physically strenuous. I’ll watch a snowboarding commercial and get a glimpse of what it must feel like to be paralyzed for life; to know you’ll never be able to do certain things that others take for granted. I realize how important being financially stable with money set aside would help me live a better life. In that moment I make a promise to myself that I will be more grateful for life when I get better, only to later forget that feeling altogether and go back to being arrogantly confident that I’m invincible and that I will live forever.

What an idiot.

Money should not be thought of as an object that allows us to obtain something we don’t already have but rather as a resource which grants us certain freedoms and privileges. The more money we owe others (debts), the more they own us (assets). The more they own us, the less freedom we are privileged to.

Most of us maintain the misconception that we must spend money to make money. We believe that we must first sacrifice some of our own money before we can collect and take from others what they have. This just isn’t true.

When you work for someone, they give you money because you’re giving them something in return that is more valuable to them than the money they’re giving you (and when that ceases to be the case, you get fired). Making money isn’t about taking. Making money is about giving. The choices you make with your time and the ways in which you choose to give all determine the money you make.

So, how have you given today?

This entry was posted on February 25th, 2008 and has 3 comments. Join the discussion!

My Naked Body and Money

We all need it. Some of us need more than others because we refuse to live a lifestyle less than what we’ve already become accustomed to — usually a lifestyle we were born into. What does it take to change your lifestyle to one that requires less? You’d think it would be rather simple, right? It should be simple — how many different “things” do you actually use on a daily basis? Take a minute to think about it and add them up in your head: everything you use during an average day.

OK, now think about everything you own; down to the pen on your desk, toothbrush in your bathroom, even the clothes you’re wearing, stuff in your closet and that shoe box under your table. Imagine your body stripped naked and piled next to you is all the stuff that belongs to you; clothes, electronics, cars, houses, tools, food, everything.

I don’t know about you, but wow, that’s a pretty big pile next to me! Holy crap. How much of that stuff do I really use? I mean, if I were to actually use each thing for 1 minute, it would probably take me a couple of weeks, if not months, to use them all! There are several things, namely services, I couldn’t even include in that pile: my cable TV service, Internet service, propane gas, auto gas, cell phone service, email and web hosting services — the list goes on! If I were to take all of the physical infrastructure required for my services to exist and add them to that pile, the size of the pile would grow exponentially!

So I think I’ve made my point: there’s a lot of stuff we own, and clutter our life with, that we don’t actually need. OK, so that’s not going to change overnight. I justify a lot of what I own by telling myself it would be stupid to sell it all at a loss, when the smarter choice would be to reduce what’s unnecessary and maintain the rest. My three investment properties are a good example. As much of a struggle as it is to keep them, I know that in the long run they will solidify my financial future. Selling them now would cause me to loose money and I’d gain nothing in the long run (besides maybe some peace of mind, but that’s a whole other post in and of itself).

My recent (or rather continuing) financial troubles have made me rethink a lot about what I own and what I need to live. I have observed how habits are what cause much of the unnecessary spending (Starbucks) and discovered that breaking those habits can be incredibly difficult. Instead of breaking them, simply reducing their frequency seems to be the best solution. I feel that my spending habits have reached a turning point, a roller coaster resting at the crest of a track, inching towards the long drop into the trough.

When I’m in a tight spot and I don’t have enough money to pay bills, I’m constantly thinking about what I can do make more money. I’ve been brainstorming for the past few months about what could be done in my spare time to bring in extra cash. I ask myself, what makes a successful person and what have they done to become successful? I know for a fact that hard work makes people successful. But in this world of changing technologies and “work” that doesn’t require any physical labor, there is something to be said about those who simply outsmart the masses — who use their brains and figure out how to make money by using the tools technology has created; namely the Internet.

A friend of mine, who is several years younger than I, has come up with a business model that works very well. He’s making 2x – 3x as much money as I, working only a few hours a week. Compare that to my 75+ hour work weeks and you’ll probably be dying to know what he’s doing. Without going too much into detail, I can say that his business model works on a simple principle: bridging the technological generation gap between those who grew up without the Internet and those who use it for almost every aspect of their lives. There’s a generation of people whose only source of news comes from the daily newspaper. And then there’s the generation who uses the Internet on a daily basis and has possibly never bought a newspaper. The latter being a generation whose lives move at the speed of light, with information in many different forms, pouring in from every direction.

At the end of the day, I don’t take any money with me to bed. I don’t go to sleep with my car, computer, food, auto gas, or for that matter my house. I sleep in my house, but might I might as well be sleeping in a cardboard box. When I wake up, I wake up with nothing but the skin on my bones. I need a safe shelter to sleep in, yes, but even shelter is a lifestyle item we’ve grown accustomed to having. I know many people who could not live in a basement — I do, and I have no problem with it. For the past 6 years I have lived in either a basement or an attic, mainly because I don’t see the point in wasting money on a full size apartment when I can save money in something smaller (living at my parents house would simply be taking advantage of those to whom I already owe my very existence, so that’s out of the question).

When I was sitting in the 2 bedroom apartment of one of my rental units, I felt for a moment a sense of luxury. There was nothing luxurious about the place (luxurious, that is, to the average person living in the USA), but I felt as if that small 2 bedroom apartment was so beautiful, with all the light coming through the full size windows, high ceilings that I wasn’t able to reach up and touch, and a full size living room with separate, closed off bedrooms. I then realized it felt so luxurious to me because I’ve been living a lifestyle which doesn’t have those luxuries. Instead, I have learned to live with the open style basement or attic apartments, with low ceilings and few windows. I finally understood how grateful the people who actually have to live in cardboard boxes feel about simply having a solid roof above their heads.

The more I understand the driving force behind money, the more disgusted I become with myself and all that is wasted. If a human life is the standard with which we measure the value of material things, where does that leave the person who consumes the equivalent of 100 humans? Does that make the person morally obligated to support the very existence of that number of people? And if he doesn’t directly support them does that mean he is committing, on a daily basis, one of the worst crimes known to man — murder?

This entry was posted on February 20th, 2007 and has no comments. Start a discussion!