MONEY

Rich People: Money Can’t Buy Happiness

Poor people know better

Imagine a line that separates the people who are financially struggling and the people who are doing OK. I’ve trudged that line my whole life, and I feel the difference in my bones each time I shift above or below it.

If you have enough money, having more probably won’t affect your happiness much in the long run. But if you don’t have enough money, financial security will absolutely make you happier.

And yet I can’t bring myself to chase money

I majored in journalism, knowing full well I’d never make much money in that profession. I worked in newspapers for 30 years, until the industry imploded. By then, I was too old to start over in another field, the people who would not hire me made clear, so I started writing books, doing freelance work and publishing on Medium and Substack.

Looking back, I can see now that I ought to have ditched newspapers years before they ditched me. But I was in a hot love affair with newspapers and found it hard to believe they would really dump me after I’d given them so much of my love and devotion. I was like a wife in denial about her failing marriage.

On one hand, I knew what was coming — anybody could see it and I had a front-row seat to the industry’s decline, so I started applying to other jobs even before I was laid off.

But I didn’t put nearly enough effort into switching careers while I still could. Part of it was that I still loved what I was doing and didn’t want to do anything else, and another part of it was that my 60-hour work weeks didn’t leave me much energy for a serious job search.

I want to live in a world where money doesn’t matter

Although that’s not the world we’re in, I’ve tried to live that way, concentrating on being thrifty and resourceful and living a simple life. Materialism sucks, right?

But even if you build a cabin in the woods and grow or hunt for all your food, and even if you chop wood for heating and cooking and dig a well for free water, you’ve still gotta have money. For one thing, you have to buy and pay property taxes on your land. For another, at some point you’re going to need medical care, and that means getting a job with health insurance.

Once you get a full-time job, you’re going to have a lot of trouble keeping up your homestead because that is in itself a full-time job.

Your full-time job will eat up a lot of your time — probably a lot more than 40 hours per week — and will force out a lot of things you’d rather be doing. It might prevent you from doing a lot of things you’d like to do to save money.

My husband and I do everything possible for ourselves — home repairs, dog grooming, lawn care, food preparation, housekeeping — but there’s a reason so many people pay someone to clean their house or mow their yard, and that reason is that they are exhausted after working long hours.

I’ve had wealthy friends

They always say their money doesn’t make them happy because they still have problems. It’s true that wealthy people still lose loved ones, endure bad breakups and face scary medical diagnoses just like the rest of us.

They don’t, however, have to worry about paying for the funeral or losing their home in the divorce or not being able to pay their hospital bill.

I’ve never forgotten what my very nice friend *Jane said, even though she and I lost touch years ago. Jane was married to an executive at a Fortune 500 company, and she cried as she told me another friend of hers had hurt her by suggesting that Jane’s life was easier than hers because she was wealthy.

I don’t remember what I said — probably something trite — but I do remember what I secretly thought — that of course Jane’s life was easier. Jane had no idea what it’s like when you don’t have enough money to meet your basic needs.

I don’t think people who have never had to worry about money understand how pervasive money worries are for others.

It’s always in the background

You know how if you have a bad headache, even if you’re at a great party, you can’t stop thinking about your headache? Or if someone you love has just died, you feel sorrow every waking second even if you’re outwardly going about your business? Do you know what it is to wait for potentially terrifying test results?

These are bad feelings and probably all of us have experienced something like them. Most of us, thankfully, will not live our lives in such shadows all the time. You can remind yourself that things will get better.

But if you’ve never been able to manage financial security, at some point you realize this is just how your life is going to be. The “Will I Be OK Show” plays at a low volume in the back of your mind just about all the time.

It’s a long-running series with new episodes offered every night when you should be sleeping.

My parents married young

We lived in a trailer until I was in junior high. I have lots of memories of bologna sandwiches, hand-me-down clothing and taking dirty clothes to the laundromat. But about the time my younger sister started school, my dad went on strike and my mom entered the workforce.

She started as a grocery store cashier, but kept getting better jobs and eventually worked for a food brokerage company. I don’t know what she made, but they provided her with a company car and she wore suits to work.

I had grown up and moved out by then, though. The kind of financial life you’re living in your formative years marks you forever. I always assume that when better-off people meet me, they can sense that I didn’t grow up like they did even if I’m dressed well.

I’m not greedy

I don’t covet designer handbags, which strike me as stupid, and I can’t understand why anybody cares what kind of car they drive as long as it always starts. I have all the household stuff I need.

So the one luxury I crave is freedom from money worries.

Maybe a miracle will occur and The Trailer Park Rules will sell millions of copies. Maybe it’ll be made into a movie or Netflix will buy the rights (call me, Netflix!) and turn it into six highly watched seasons.

You only need one dream

In Chapter 18 of The Trailer Park Rules, Jonesy, the newspaper reporter who is a lot like me if I were a single guy living in a trailer park, expresses the same thing:

He had one dream left, and that was his sci-fi novel he was writing. He didn’t often have the juice after writing about other things — the school district’s finances, a local nursing home being fined following a resident’s choking death, one of the grocery stores having a grand re-opening after its remodel were among this week’s disposable compositions — but on days when he did have juice, he’d write as if someone were holding a gun to his head.

He understood that the chances of this novel making him any money were slim, but writing the book fed his last dream.

He only needed one dream to keep him alive.

As we all do.

How’s your character?

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe. I also write a Substack called Untrickled, about income inequality, and have a new book, The Trailer Park Rules.