Money & Happiness

Money & Happiness

  • Understand how to have a higher quality of life without spending more money. You must understand yourself and what makes you happy.
  • “You spend money, I spend freedom. I think about how I can spend freedom on travel, entertainment, invention.” -MDB
  • “Reducing consumption reduces pressure on you and thereby increases peace.”

                                                                 -Marquett Davon Burton

Old Definition: Success and power are equated with spending money.

New Definition: “I challenge that success and power result from organizing or being a member in a supportive organization.” -MDB

1) Can I borrow or rent the item to see how often I’ll use it?

2) Have I waited a few weeks to see if the need for the item keeps coming up?

Mantra: Can I afford this? Remember this is different from: Can I buy this?

Buy = I can get it.

Afford = I can acquire it and remain comfortable and totally without worry. If I burned the money instead of spending it on this item I would not be bothered for more than a few days.

Unnecessary Spending

I do not own:

  • Dining Table
  • Nearly nothing on my walls
    • All art put up by female
  • I don’t WASTE on fast food  

Instead of spending 30 seconds opening a can of tomatoes with a traditional can opener, it’s now possible to spend 30 minutes working to pay for an electric can opener that will open the can in the same amount of time.

Old but typically fully functioning items are discarded. You get the new iPhone? (Why?)

Endless working and paying is called “making a living,” yet people are so busy “making a living” that they have no time for living.

Western Consumerist Solution to Feeling Down:  “Buy yourself something nice. Treat yourself. Try a little retail therapy.” People don’t seem to realize that this attempt to feel good is exactly what propagates the problem.  

Wage slave – not only trapped by loans, bills, rent and other obligations, but also mentally bound by an inability to accept that there are alternative ways to live.

Is spending your most capable years of your life chained to the job market to collect a lot of rarely used stuff that gathers dust in the closet or takes up space in junkyards wise?

No Credit Cards.

To speed up consumption, you can acquire credit cards and spend money that’s yet to be earned. This obligates one to work in the future, a possible commitment of up to 30 years to repay—plus interest.

The most virtuous in this culture are those with the highest credit scores. They are revered for being better at being in debt.

  • “A man should not have anything that he does not use at least monthly , unless it is a clapper or winter clothes.”
  • “Reduce the number of unnecessary belongings to reducing the amount of necessary work.” -MDB
  • Work to keep busy with good things. Live on business or investment income.
  • Living on the economy, rather than in the economy.

Share this way with your woman.