On Not Having Enough Money

Indulgence is about excess; pleasure is about savoring what you have

Money influences happiness, but some experiences can show you that these two things overlap less than you think. For example, company matters more than circumstances. A 10-hour flight enhanced with snotty children and pale, microwaved food isn’t so bad when you’re sitting next to the love of your life. In contrast, a night at the Ritz Paris with your worst enemy can turn the suite into a gladiator pit.

Now, it’s unlikely for wealth to make one miserable. My point here isn’t that money is unimportant; it’s that if we have money without love, freedom, and a well-understood life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we can never be truly unhappy. It’s nice to have an expensive watch, but the watch will never be enough — feel enough — without having someone who will make you lose track of time.

We’re drawn to expensive things even when they don’t bring us joy because luxuries are good at pretending to feed our psychological hunger in the material dimension. Like the ancient doctors who would relieve migraines and mania by drilling holes in the head, we make the same error of finding the wrong cures to our emotional malaises. We buy lambskin oxfords when it’s honor and admiration we crave. We purchase aperitifs when we’re actually looking for friends we can share jokes and secrets with.

This confusion isn’t difficult to unravel: a large part of our identity exists in the perception of other people. Like cotton candy touching the tongue — pastel and fluffy one second, then gone the next — self-esteem can deflate into a pathetic particle of artificial nothingness upon contact with an idle opinion. Our need to give off a good image is not really a “need,” especially when compared to, say, a warm meal, but status is nonetheless something we innately care about. And, of course, it is in the interest of commercial enterprises to skew our priorities, highlighting the material ones while pushing the unsaleable ones out of sight. Most luxury brands are not selling luxury, but desire, taking advantage of our tendency to covet. According to retailers, we never have “enough.”

French philosopher Denis Diderot once wrote about material consumption as a form of psychological contamination: after being gifted a beautiful scarlet gown, it began to irritate him that the rest of his possessions did not live up to the same level of elegance. He replaced his old straw chair with an armchair of Moroccan leather, his old desk with an expensive writing table, his formerly beloved prints with showier ones, and so on. “I was absolute master of my old dressing gown”, Diderot wrote, “but I have become a slave to my new one.” Happiness, for Diderot, became harder to capture the more money he spent.

When we can’t identify unconditional happiness among the million little things that money can buy, or when we can’t tell the difference between pleasure and indulgence, the things we own end up owning us.¹ As Chuck Palahniuk voices in F*ght Club, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” This is how we let the opinions of others become the shape of who we allow ourselves to be.

While indulgence is about excess, pleasure is the gentle savoring of life’s offerings.² Luxury can be a measure of wealth, but past a relative amount, we realize that it’s just a state of mind (for example, you find mom’s cooking to be much more delightful than a Michelin dinner after living alone for a long time). How much money do you “need”? Enough to realize that money won’t ever be enough. The aroma of freshly baked bread, a walk in the park wrapped in a thick scarf, being hypnotized by a good book — these are petits luxuries that enrich the soul at very little cost.

Unlike indulgence, pleasure is found in simplicity. Simplicity doesn’t mean something is minimal or frugal, it means paying attention to fewer things in a panorama that can extend infinitely in all directions. Like chocolates hidden behind tiny cardboard windows on an advent calendar, your ability to find the joy hidden in each present moment is a skill that doesn’t need much money at all. Choose genuineness over pretense; quality over quantity. How much you can appreciate what you have is more important than how much you can spend.

Get my book!

1. “Your ownership pattern is an expression of your values.” From: Clean Up, Let Go, & Move On.

2. A liking for pleasure is easily misunderstood as lust. Pleasure only becomes debauchery when we desire it like Gollum wants the Ring. Lust is not about enjoying nice things but uncontrollably coveting something (and it’s not exclusive to sex). Read this in: The Subtle Art of Giving a F*ck.