5 Reasons Money Can Buy Happiness
#2. "The Best Hobbies Don't Cost a Thing!"
In that inspirational email forward about the investment banker and the Mexican fisherman, they made sure to portray the fisherman as playing the guitar in his spare time. In Titanic, when Rose leaves the stuffy rich people (quietly sipping their brandy and smoking their cigars) she goes below deck to find the poor passengers rocking out with their crude instruments:
Via Titanicmovie.com
Likewise, Phoebe in Friends was the poorest of the group (and was homeless in the past) but that's OK, because she had her guitar to keep her sane. The message is the same every time, of course: It doesn't matter how poor you are, nothing is stopping you from singing a song or writing a poem or sculpting some meaningful shit out of clay.
But I've Been Poor, and ...
First of all, there's the time issue. I write for a living now, obviously, but when I was trying to do it as a hobby? Yeah, ask me how much I felt like writing after 12 hours of work/commute and then all the other time spent doing home shit after that (eat, shower, tend to the kids, etc). Unless you wanted an article on "6 Ways I'd Like to Fucking Punch All the Truck Drivers in the Cock," all you'd get out of me is some low moans about my aching back while I stared sleepily at some Internet boobs. Creativity takes energy. Energy that a waitress or roofer or warehouse worker isn't going to have at the end of the day.
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"Man, I can't wait to get home and do more shit."
And that's assuming that your hobby is the sort that doesn't require supplies. My fiancee loves to paint, but when we were living in that funk, paint and canvas were luxuries that we could only justify as a birthday gift. Most people don't make their own paint by extracting pigment from berries and squids, and a nice set of oil paint will run you several hundred dollars.
But Add in Some Money ...
I've written more in the last six months than in the entire 36 previous years of my life. Why? Because I got a fucking paycheck for doing it. Not because creativity requires money, but because time costs money -- the paycheck allowed me to drop the non-writing work so I would actually have time and energy to put into the writing.
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"What are 182 other words for 'cock'?"
And even though you think of writing as one of those free hobbies, it's sure as fuck not if you want people to actually read it. That requires an Internet connection and Web hosting, both of which were at the bottom of the priority list when it came time to decide what utility we were going to get turned off this month. You can talk about how money is a bad motivation for creativity and how commercialism ruins art, but all I know is now I don't have to choose between expressing myself and what flavor of Ramen Noodles I'll be serving for every meal this week.
#1. "Money Can't Buy Love!"
In Titanic, the hero was poor, the villain was rich and whenever there are two dudes competing for a woman, we're supposed to be rooting for the poor guy (also see: Dirty Dancing, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pretty in Pink and a shitload of others). The message is always the same: When it comes to love, money doesn't matter. Right, Bon Jovi?
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But I've Been Poor, and ...
Let's start with the obvious: The less you're able to take care of yourself, the harder it is to find someone who will accept you into their lives, romantically. I'm not talking about gold diggers or materialistic assholes here, either -- I'm talking about the common sense that scares us away from somebody in a constant state of financial insecurity. Being poor obviously doesn't take you out of the running, but it does make it harder, as you're removing a part of that equation and relying on the rest of you to reel them in. Looks, personality, charisma, etc. Let's face it, you can't pay for dinner with a sweet crotch bulge.
But then you just have the practical matter that if your lover doesn't live in the same town as you, it fucking costs money to get close enough to them to touch their boobs. This comes up all the time now in the Internet age -- like millions of couples, my fiance and I met online and I found out she lived a few states away.
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And also, she is a polar bear.
Shit, there was a time in my life when I couldn't even have afforded the webcam or Internet connection to do video chat with her. Bus and train rides are a couple hundred bucks over that distance, on top of sucking days out of your work schedule, and don't even mention flying -- when you're poor, you might as well be suggesting I just buy a helicopter.
But Add in Some Money ...
... and you can simply pay a whore.
Or, in my case, when my fiancee and I decided to live together, it meant her coming to a state where I was the only person she knew. That meant she had no job, which in turn meant I had to support both of us until she got one. That quite simply wouldn't have been possible before we started climbing out of the poverty dungeon.
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Careful. Before we left, we shit all over the place.
No, money can't buy you the actual state of being in love. But a lack of money can most certainly fucking prevent it. It can keep you physically separated, and the unfortunate truth is that the overwhelming majority of long distance relationships don't last terribly long, for obvious reasons. So forget the romantic movies, forget the love songs about how no obstacle can stand between us. Bringing us to the same physical location required a shitload of cash.
I understand why those songs and movie plots exist. They're written by people with money to remind other people with money that money can't solve 100 percent of their problems. But they have nothing to say to people like us. Because even if you're a deep, thoughtful soul who appreciates all of the simple pleasures in life, money still fucking matters.
For more Cheese, check out 5 Internet Life Lessons Parents Need to Start Teaching Kids and 5 Reasons You Don't Miss Your 20s When They're Over.
Money can buy happiness
ReplyJust ask your friendly neighbourhood prostitute and drug-dealer
What makes the article great is the realism in it, life ain't f*****g sunshine and rainbows but I guess if you take emails, facebook quotes or movies as your reference then, your perception in life is skewed. I do wish every school teaches us on how to survive life on the toughest level.
ReplyPolar bears are cool!
ReplyI actually never thought about #1. I never realized being poor could prevent the person you are in love with from loving you back.
ReplyIt does when they realize moving in with you or supporting you can be costy and they start to balance out what's important; having your own slice of Romance, or having your own slice of food.
Eventually they'll come to ask; "If he's so great, then why can't he keep himself up", not that that might be entirely YOUR fault, but when that thought gets into mind, it's a pain in the ass to get out, I hear.
Money the only thing more motivating than love, boobs, nationalism and instinct combined, and more powerful. And those darn Commies want to abolish it, ¡Jajajajajaja!
ReplySo much truth in this article.
Replythis became more relevent by the fact that I've had to spend £1700 in the last 5 days. With more coming out of my account within the next week, and I'm seriously considering missing my sisters birthday because I work on the other side of the country (England). Do I spend £50 on petrol, or do I save that and use that money to pay for my electricity bill.
ReplyIt cost 50 pounds to go from on side of england to another? thats insane
yeah, i'm poor, i'm cool
ReplyPeople keep asking me what I want to become in my life, profession, what I want to do for living, I always keep telling them as long as it pays good, that's the first thing that pops in my head, im just 16 btw, but gotta start making choices ... ^^
ReplyThe easiest way to make money working? Figure out something you would do in your spare time with no one paying you, then figure out a job where someone will pay you to do that.
If you like drawing, become a graphic artist, if you like whacking off, go into porn.
The point is that if you do something you love doing anyway, you'll go a *LOT* farther than someone who's doing it just because "it pays good".
Money isn't the only thing that brings happiness, because there are other ways to be unhappy except being poor.
ReplyReally good article, but come on... Fight Club was a terrible choice for illustrating your point.
ReplyI can understand someone missing that Fight Club condemns being a badass loner who smokes cigarettes and lives off the grid. The movie glamorizes it up to a point then takes it through its terrible, logical conclusions. That part of the plot development in subtle. Even Ebert missed it in his initial review, and he's a fairly intelligent guy who does nothing but review films.
However... claiming Fight Club says you can get a good night's sleep if [any words you can think of] is absurd. It is impossible to recall that movie and hold any idea about sleep being improved by anything that happened in that movie.
Why? Because there is no sleeping in Fight Club. None. It doesn't happen.
It's impossible to miss that the Narrator is a severe insomniac who has gone completely off-the-rails insane from insomnia. They actually flat-out tell you, several times, that he can't sleep. "What about the handful of scenes where he's sleeping?" you ask. Later in the film, you find out that all of the times you saw him sleeping were what he imagined he'd done when, in fact, he had blacked out and gone on autopilot. This isn't hinted at; you're told exactly that using unambiguous dialog by the Narrator's autopilot.
All of the Narrator's problems (insomnia, health, and dental) actually got worse the further from society (and luxuries) he got. Using Fight Club as an example of a movie that claims you're better off without money is like using Big Trouble In Little China as an example of movies glamorizing working-class Americans as natural super soldiers.
Despite the film (and book) demonstrating that the "epiphany" the Narrator experienced turned out to actually be a further descent into insanity, you can't deny that many people glamorize it. Maybe they miss the point, but there are lots of folks who see the total crazy and think, "whooooa, that's cool." He's not saying the movie itself glamorizes poverty so much as many of the fans.
I'd read "6 Ways I'd Like to f*****g Punch All the Truck Drivers in the Cock"
ReplyMe too. I'd love to see such an article.
yes times infinity
I hate you, Cheese.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt's nothing to do with this article.
Or any of your articles.
To be honest, I barely ever read them.
I just really, really hate you.
If I met you, I would be perfectly polite.
But I would hate you.
And somehow, you'd know.
You'd know.
Is someone a Truck driver?
Chop chop, nobot. I need those adult diapers in Seattle by six in the morning, Pacific time.
Translation: "I hate someone that I've never met and know almost nothing about because I'm an idi----look, shiny!
double
ReplyShould have been a list of five awesome expensive things, fo realz the social commentary is getting a little heavy
ReplyAmen, brother. As someone who spent the first 6 years of his life lower class, the next 8 military class (which is like being poor but with European medical benefits), 6 middle class and the rest 20-something class (broke without the worry of homelessness), I can say that money is definitely needed for damn near everything that produces happiness.
ReplyNormally I'm down for Cheese's (???) down to earth home grown wisdom but this was either too depressing or not funny enough. I"ve been poor, like really poor, most of this stuff is true (hell all of it is) but...I don't know rich people aren't any happier, they are just less fucked up. I don't know if that makes sense. They have less bad stuff not more good stuff. Thats my opinion anyway.
ReplyIt is certainly news to me and the tabloid media that rich people are any less fucked up than the rest of us.
another insightful article by mr. cheese. reading it, i can´t help thinking that the USA seriously needs to rethink its social security/health care policies (the latter has happened, i hear). hailing from germany with state-financed system (you might remember us as the bad "socialist" example in tea-party rants). it´s no fun being poor over here, too, but for example there is a pretty good public transport system (where poor people get big discounts or even ride for free) and nobody has to think about being able to afford to the doctor´s/hospital. the principle of solidary works well for a people, i feel.
ReplySays the man hailing from a country the size of ONE of the states in the US. The fact of the matter is that the US is larger than all of Europe put together so we literally CAN'T use the same systems that the Europeans seem to want us to use.
For instance, I don't see the EU (not individual countries) being able to provide universal healthcare or a social security system any time soon.
Each of the member states of the EU provides healthcare to its citizens. Therefore, the EU already has universal healthcare and their total GDP is about the same as ours. We could certainly afford, but we choose not to.
Apparently, John Cheese sucks at being poor. Then again, it took me about 7 years living that way, a 2 year hiatus of NOT being poor, and then going back to being poor again to really get the hang of it.
ReplyAlso, you can totally buy happiness. As in, chemical substances that will keep you happy all the time :D
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesWinning
Drugs do have a down.
Generic ritalin only costs $4/month at Wal-Mart.
A more exact way to put it is 'happy for a couple months, then feeling like complete and utter s**t should you not keep going.'