A funny thing happened the other day that really showcased life full circle and gave me some perspective on how we view ourselves, money and happiness. It got me to thinking about what it is that we are chasing, who we surround ourselves with, jobs, career, money and life.
My day started talking to a wealth advisory team which was showcasing a tool they used to track their clients wealth, income, insurance and overall budget. The tool itself was mildly interesting and good compared to others that I had seen but that wasn’t the interesting part. What was interesting was when they talked about how often clients checked their tool and their net worth.
It’s worth knowing that these advisors don’t take clients with a net worth of less than $5 million, so these aren’t clients who have just changed their habits and are monitoring their progress on a budget. These are folks that have more than enough money to live comfortably and not work, a few worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the team explained some of them checked their net worth 4-5 times a day, watching how it fluctuates as the markets went up and down.
In contrast, there were other clients who only checked their net worth on the tool about once a year. What is it that compels some people to check their net worth so obsessively while others barely bother? If we zoom out to look at humanity in totality, these clients fall in the top 0.1% of humans on the planet in terms of wealth. Their immediate needs as well as long term needs are taken care of. Yet they were fixated on their net worth numbers as if their survival depended on it. I couldn’t help but think of the irony of this given their position in the world.
What do You Want?
It’s worth remembering that the fact that myself or those reading this even have the time to think about such philosophical matters is an extreme luxury. Much of the world is just doing what they have to do to get by, it’s the instinct to survive. We go to work earn money in order to feed and clothe ourselves and if we have families, to take care of them. A very popular dream for folks nowadays is to fantasize: what would my life be like if I didn’t have to do this anymore? We create a fantasy in our heads of an easy life where every immediate need is taken care of and we don’t have the worries we have now.
Yet as the observation of the wealthy clients shows, money can help some things but it can reveal other problems as well. This myth of being rich and happy is ingrained in American culture. There are songs about it, books about it, people have devoted their entire lives to making sure people become wealthy. Yet few people talk about what happens when you do finally reach that mountaintop of wealth. Will the myth then become reality? Will all your problems suddenly dissolve away and you permanently reach a state of constant bliss? Do we ever stop to think of this myth of being rich and these expectations have any basis in reality?
Riches and Fame
A few years ago, a band whose members grew up near where I’m from achieved some commercial success and notoriety. They went to awards shows, they played concerts to thousands of people and they hob nobbed with celebrities and were featured in gossip and tabloid columns. As usually happens with bands, the media gravitated its focus on one particular member, who in this case was the lead singer and rapper Travie McCoy.
The band was called Gym Class Heroes and they had been playing together since high school. The leas singer was named Travie McCoy.
McCoy founded his band in the late 90’s with a high school friend. The group self released their debut album in 2001 but their breakthrough came when they were discovered by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz. In 2006 they released an album produced by the front man of Fall Out Boy which produced a number of radio hits such as “Cupid’s Chokehold“ which is where many first heard of the band. At their height, Gym Class Heroes headlined the Warped Tour and McCoy became the face of the band. He even dated singer Katy Perry from 2006 to 2008.
In 2010, McCoy went solo and produced an album which featured the hit “Billionaire” the theme of what one would do if they were rich resonated with people, even if it was in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it offered another jingle to the cultural narrative that money will solve so many of our problems.
Yet the pressures of fame and success didn’t lead to happiness. Fame involves everyone knowing your name, everyone having an opinion on you and if you are black in America, a healthy dose of trolls and racism. McCoy was arrested for hitting an audience member who shouted racial slurs at him. 2008 and in 2010 for tagging the Berlin Wall in Germany. He also coped with his struggles like many of us do, through drugs.
After tearing an ACL, MCL and meniscus, he was given OxyContin to which he became addicted. His life at the time spiraled into addiction and he reached a point where he felt he had to make a choice between dying and sobering up, he chose to get sober. His journey included brief snarky media glimpses on the way. The public remembered him as a cheerful pop rapper but when pictures of him emerged of him in 2018 looking emaciated, they went viral and many potties his “fall” from grace.
Reality is different from the myths and the narratives we make around reality. Despite his journey, Travie talked in this interview about how he needed to be busy and have many projects going or else he would get sad. Many of us are doing that right now with work, kids and personal projects but as we saw during the pandemic, when left alone with ourselves and our families, many find that they need to deal with the pain, depression or fill the void with drugs and alcohol. Those rich and famous aren’t so different. Taking away the stresses of day to day work and money worries left them with new problems: who am I? What am I doing here? What makes me happy? What does life mean when everything is set?
That takes me back to the wealthy clients checking their net worth 5 times a day. Checking it may provide a dopamine hit, similar to what social media does for many of us, it’s like seeing that you have more likes or comments on a post. Yet relying on factors outside of your control for happiness won’t work. For someone depending on social media feedback for their happiness, only getting 1 like may ruin their day, likewise a 20% fall in the market may have some wealthy people sleepless at night.
There will always be someone more popular, wealthier, fitter, sexier, more tan and more funny. Being so money obsessed in our culture, many of us tend to look at money as the scoreboard for life, especially when we are young and middle aged. We dream of a time when we can be comfortable and not have our daily drama, yet if you ask many older people, many of them would happily give up their money to become young again. Many of us may be worrying ourselves right through some great times in our lives.
When the Day Does a 180
Within the same day I spoke with the wealth team, I saw the other side of the coin. While browsing for toys for my step kids’ birthdays, I happened across an old acquaintance I hadn’t seen in 10 years who is a stand up comic and worked in the toy store.
His job was simply to demonstrate toys and I noticed him because he was whipping foam boomerangs around the store which would fly back to him in tight circles while narrowly avoiding hitting the customers. When I recognized him, he immediately recognized me even after 10 years and was overjoyed. He took me by the arm and showcased me to his colleagues who would listen and explained to them that I was one of the first people he met early in his comedy career. I assured him I would go to one of his weekly shows and when I stepped away, observed him re-engage with the kids and put them in awe of his boomerang skills.
His candor and demeanor was completely the opposite of the reserved, number crunching and stressed out individuals I tend to deal with on a daily basis in finance. It made me think how often people around me size each other up in terms of earnings and money. Yet this store clerk and stand up comic was living his dream for 10 years and couldn’t seem happier. It made me think, who would most of us rather be at the end of the day, a person with less means doing what they love or the dopamine starved multimillionaire checking their net worth scoreboard versus everyone else 5 times a day? Personally I would take the toy store.
My Own Rule
When I worked at another financial institution, I worked until I was laid off after 9 years. Such is the life in banking, the market moves and you find a new role. Yet when I was unemployed, I had time to reflect on my time there, what I got out of it and what I wanted.
I realized that I spent more time there than I probably should have. At one point, I was doing exactly what those wealth clients were doing, I was checking my 401k 4-5 times a day to remind myself why I was working there. I was looking at my daily scoreboard for that dopamine hit. After being stressed all day with ornery and grumpy workers, I would escape my pain at the bar by drinking every day.
When I had the chance to step away and evaluate things objectively, I realized I was stressed from all the demands of trying to get the world to bend for me and was dealing with that through drinking, which is common in the financial and law professions. The money and the scoreboard kept me coming back, even though I seemed to hate it. In a way, some of us in these professions realize that our behavior is not that disimular to addicts either.
I was happy to find another role after 9 months being unemployed and have something to do every day. I vowed that if I ever went back to checking my 401k every day like those wealth clients, it was time to do something new.
People approach the wealthy, the connected and what we perceive as successful, and assume that they are content and that their lives are where we should be aiming to go. Yet as motivational speaker Tony Robbins often says, many of these people are just as unhappy as you and I in their day to day. Remember, there is always someone with more money or more fame. Even the wealthy and famous are comparing their wealth or attention to the next person that has more, and it’s making them unhappy.
Happiness can come whether you are rich or poor as can depression and drug use. It takes looking inside ourselves to ask what is it that we want and what makes us happy. Often those things are found outside of ourselves and outside of the score board. For me, it may be writing and feeling content with the volumes I have produced, for others it may be making people laugh and for others, it may be knowing that their work will benefit others.
Despite a moment of questioning why I am doing what I’m doing if it doesn’t make me happy, I had to stop and think and connect it to my why. I have 3 kids to support. They need health insurance and to see their parents earn a living and show them how to get by. Once I connected what I do with a why, the stress of work left.
No amount of money can tell anyone their why. It’s up to each of us to identify it.
And remember that comment I made about the old wanting to be young again? A study a few years ago found that’s not actually true. In fact some of the most unhappy people are in their early 20’s to middle age. If we chart happiness by age, we see it actually is shaped like a smile throughout the course of our lives. Happy as kids, falling and then as we get older, increasing again. Despite media, culture and society holding youth in such high regard, in terms of happiness, that period of our lives is kind of trash. Remember this next time you are down.
