Money and Happiness

Most people can define what money is to them.  And when we ask them, they generally define money as freedom, the root of all evil, a way to get things, etc.  We like to think of money differently at Waypoint. We like to define money as life energy.  This idea began with Vicki Robin and Joe Diminguez in their book Your Money or Your Life.  In this book, the authors explain a few basic principles that can help you think about your life and retirement.  The first point is that you can get to a point where you have "enough."  This is the point where having the nicer things isn't worth giving up the life energy necessary to have those things.  Many people unfortunately identify happiness and self worth with the amount of things they have in their garage or the amount of money they have in the bank.  Finding the optimal (not maximum) amount of wealth is extremely important to long term happiness because it allows you to have the time to do the other things in life.  The second principle in the book is that "X" really does mark the spot when it comes to financial independence and retirement.  The authors really believe that financial independence is attainable if people do the necessary things to make it possible.  It can happen because if you work at improving yourself and making yourself more valuable, then your monthly income should trend up over time.  And, at the same time, if you constantly monitor your expenditures, your expenses should trend down over time.  Everything in the gap between your monthly income and you monthly expenses should be available to invest.  Once the interest from your investments is more than your monthly expenses, you are working because you want to and not because you have to.  We hope these two principles can help you get more focused on your retirement and future.

Matt Coakley