Financial Happiness (What Is Really Important)

Worries about financial issues can cause us sleepless nights, no matter how much money we have or make. Yet, this doesn't have to be the case. We can find financial freedom from worries when we better understand money's true importance (or lack of importance) regarding our happiness.

(Please note this is talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the happiness podcast.

I'm dr.

Robert Puff There's a lot of things that keep us from being happy But probably one of the biggest struggles that we deal with is our finances How do we handle paying our bills getting by doing what we want?

Finding work that we love and still being happy for many of us getting by financially is Quite challenging and when we wake up at 3 in the morning and can't sleep often.

It's because we're worried about our finances Probably one of the most difficult experiences I ever had with getting by is when I was much younger I was in a very difficult and precarious financial situation and I was able to get a job and Thankfully I had someone pay my rent for a month So I was okay there for one month and I was gonna get paid in two weeks So I went and bought a huge bag of pancake mix We just added water and a bag of sugar and believe it or not I lived on that every night for supper after I got home from work That's what I had to live on and at the end of those two weeks I went out and bought a lot of good food because I was excited I had some money And I went bought some food and the place I was living that had a common fridge in his storage place And when I went back to eat my food that night it had all been stolen So for the next two weeks,

I lived on that pancake mix with sugar Just adding water for the next two weeks every night and I don't think after that I could eat pancakes for years Though thankfully I developed a taste for them years later But the truth of it is we can go through difficult times we may be going through difficult times or difficult times may be ahead of us and When it's financial they can be scary So let's talk about how do we live well with our finances?

Most of us listening to this podcast probably aren't going hungry right now But we can still worry no matter how much we have The worries can be there and it can stress us out and it can definitely take away from our happiness So let's talk about being happy financially Probably the first and most important thing that we need to consider when dealing with our finances is living within our means Going into debt,

Overspending will cause stress Because when we have that debt It's just something that weighs on us.

It's like carrying a backpack That's with us all the time and that weighing those fears those worries about finances causes a lot of stress So let's start with making sure we're doing our best to living within our means But what does that mean to live within our means?

In many ways it's very simple that we need to be happy It's simple that we spend what we make after we make it or whatever income we have We make sure we're living on that amount of income not more And also trying to put a little bit aside for fun things that we enjoy doing Now you may say Dr.

Puff,

There's no money for fun Again,

When you don't have much it's amazing how creative we can be I remember again when I was younger and I was a student for a very long time I was on an extremely tight budget and my indulgence was eating out at a fast-food restaurant once a week That's all I could afford but it wasn't that I was suffering again.

I was studying.

I was working part-time I was spending time with friends and the universities that I went to had a lot of things that you could do They were extremely inexpensive and often free and I would do them because I've always liked doing things I've always been adventuresome Well,

I remember when I was at graduate school at Princeton,

They had a beautiful very high-class theater There were plays are put on and performances.

Well,

I had no money to go to those plays But what a best friend of mine and I discovered was if we were ushers,

We didn't get paid But if we help people find their seats before the play started when the play started if there were any seats left Then there always were we were allowed to sit in them for free and watch the performances I watched so many wonderful great plays and performances when I was there and I never spent a dime It was truly wonderful All I had to do was volunteer my time and help out for an hour before the play started A few years later when I came out to California to finish up my PhD In clinical psychology.

I again was on a very tight budget But California is beautiful and they have this most beautiful mountain range called the Sierra Nevada mountains And they truly are spectacular Well,

I got into backpacking got some equipment low cost But I got into some equipment and I got into backpacking with friends of mine and other people It was wonderful.

It was actually I discovered Less expensive for me to go backpacking for a week up in the Sierras than it was to stay home because it's free And you just eat food that you bring and that was cheaper than me being home and doing things And yet it was wonderful of all the travels i've done throughout the world I would say my backpacking experiences up in the Sierras is equal to any of them and again,

It was free So my examples i'm giving are to show us that we can always find wonderful things to do Even when we're on a very tight budget,

But the key is to live on that budget as well So we don't have the stress of credit card debt or extreme debt And at the same time enjoying life,

It's the balance between the two living within our means and enjoying life at the same time The next thing that is important when it comes to financial happiness Is our work?

We do a lot of our work What I mean by that is we spend often 40 hours a week at work for decades Even if we stay home and raise kids,

That's our job for 10 20 years and that too is a lot of work So it's important that we like what we do and not just do it to pay the bills I believe that's the path of suffering.

I've talked about this often on this podcast That liking what we do every day Is important now we may not be able to change what we're doing overnight But we do need to move in the direction Of making our job enjoyable and I believe we can make any job enjoyable for us We may not want to be a mechanic,

But we might like serving people customer service and helping people solve problems I think there's a fit for every single person out there And what we need to do is work towards slowly But work towards finding that really good niche for us and then perhaps as we get older we'll change and do something else But we spend a lot of time at work And I would encourage all of us to do what we love.

Don't do it for the money.

It's not worth it I mean,

I know we have to pay bills,

Of course But I'm hoping with time we really begin to see the importance Of enjoying the journey of life and that includes our work.

We're not just going to work to pay our bills We're going to work because we're happy about it as much as possible.

I know there's days Where we don't feel like going to work and that's where work-like balance is so helpful If we live within our means if we keep our expenses down Then we have time to take vacations or even unpaid vacations because we are living within our means And we can do things on the weekends and periodically throughout the year where we're really enjoying life We're enjoying a work But we're balancing that with enjoying life right now Because we really don't know what the future holds And delayed gratification meaning I'll work really hard until I'm 65 or whatever age we want to retire And live happily ever after That may not come I really advocate instead Enjoying each day well And again,

I know sometimes our jobs And what we do is difficult but working towards making them better can be so helpful The little things we can do can really help us The little things we can do can really make a difference like just bringing our favorite food to work Or going for a walk during our breaks or bringing in pictures of our family when we're at work or Fill in the blank.

There's so many different things we can do to make our life better when it comes to our work And then when we balance that with enjoying our time when we're at work because we're not working too much We're not putting in 80-hour weeks Those are not good for our soul and said we're saying okay This is the day I have I don't know what the future holds so i'm going to enjoy my time when i'm at work I'm going to enjoy my free time and use that well,

Too But i'm really sucking the marrow out of life and having the experience that I can remember For the rest of my life,

However long that will be And here's something I think that can really help with living within our means and living well financially and that's Not buying things to impress others Or not caring about what people think about what we have.

I want to share a couple stories to really illustrate that There's a couple I knew many years ago.

They were professors And they did okay,

But they just loved to travel.

I mean they traveled like crazy And so all their money went towards that and the car they drove was a very junky car and the home they had Was not anything impressive at all because they loved to travel And they didn't care what people thought about what the car they had or what people thought about where they lived Their passion was traveling and they made that a priority they taught and they traveled and they loved their life Another time I met a woman who had moved here from the midwest where I came from And in the midwest we tend to keep cars for a very long time until they break Well,

She had had that philosophy,

But when she moved here,

She realized that people had very nice cars And for the first time in her life She felt embarrassed about her car because everyone else had such nice cars here And it put pressure on her to buy something more more than she could afford or felt comfortable spending her money on Because she could feel that other people were judging her for what she drove And that's not a good reason to buy things Especially if it's going to cause us financial trouble or if we have to get a second job to pay for that car payment now I know people that actually do that.

It's very sad They're missing out on life because they care what other people think And the truth of it is even if people are impressed by what we have it's incredibly fleeting A lot of times that impression is jealousy.

They don't even like you for having nice things They're jealous of you and think poorly of you and yet you do impress them.

So it's like a catch-22 I want to impress others and then i'll be happy but impressing others is fleeting and it doesn't work at all If it did every movie star would be very happy and we know they're not So that isn't the path of happiness Impressing others with what we have if we want something because we truly want it that makes sense like getting an suv truck Because we like to go out in the wilderness that makes sense Maybe we'll buy a used one to keep the cost down if we need to but the key of it is Getting things because we need them not to impress others and realizing every financial choice Particularly the big ones like the vehicle we drive and where we live Will have a big impact on what we can do with our free time Mind you we can always do fun things with very little or no money But it is easier to do more and perhaps more enjoyable things when we have a little bit more money And also seeing that buying that car or getting that house may keep us from doing other things that we'd much rather do like travel Or have experiences or taking a class on the side because now we have expendable income When we don't care about what people think It is so freeing when we do what we want because we just want to do it We don't do it because we're trying to impress others Again,

It is so freeing Be careful of social media because there's a lot of comparing and contrasting on social media It's far better just to focus on okay.

What do I make each month?

Maybe I can work on making more but what do I have to live on this month?

How do I live within my means?

How do I make sure I don't work too much?

And then how do I do fun things within the amount that I have left over?

There's just always enjoyable things that we can do We can truly have a beautiful relationship with money But we have to be careful because it's a balancing act It's a balancing act between working at something that we love not to make money It's a balancing act of buying what we need not to impress others It's a balancing act of spending within our means but at the same time doing things that we love We can do both We can do all these things If we're careful and we realize the money in and of itself is actually irrelevant when it comes to our happiness What is relevant is living within our means Realizing that no matter how little or how much we have we can be happy And then we focus on that We focus on each day waking up and say How can I make this a good day?

What are things that I can do to make work a little bit better?

What are things I could do that bring my heart joy and peace and happiness that don't need money to have them happen?

We're just doing things for the sake of doing them and money is almost pretty much irrelevant And when we start embracing that it isn't that we won't be doing things that may cost money but we realize that if money isn't there tomorrow we're okay And so the most wonderful thing about this is when we wake up in the middle of the night we can just go back to sleep because we're not worried about money anymore Because if there are difficult times ahead we're going to do well with them We're going to make sure that our lives are good no matter what And that we don't need things We don't need financial freedom to be free We're free already We just need to embrace life whatever it brings and say thank you so that when we do put our head down at the end of the day we look back and say that was a good day And if perhaps it's our last day we can say I lived well Life is only a financial burden when we create it in our minds When we let it go and we free ourselves from those mental burdens then our lives becomes a beautiful adventure where each and every day is precious is beautiful and one that we are so thankful for Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast Until next time Accept what is Love what is

Reviews

So many things you said really helped. Work life balance is so important. Spending is the way that I make myself feel better and then I kick myself. Time to forgive and move on and heal.

Great, thank you 🙏🙏

Thank you, great reminders and insights. We can still be happy without money.

Wonderful and inspiring message !! Thank you 😊

Dr Puff I always look forward to your talks! They are so uplifting & true to everyday life. Have a great day!🌷

Love your messages, thank you! 😊

Great advice as always! Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Thank you 🙏

Thank you so much Dr. Puff! Most helpful!