The longer I am in this field of wealth management and financial planning, the more I have to concur to this fact:
Making a good living/standard of living contributes a lot to one’s quality of life.
Basically, Money = Good Life. The other factors are not as important.
…
BULLSHIT.
…
Unless you’ve thought it through, I’d caution anyone from adopting such a simplistic viewpoint.
Material comfort isn’t the only factor in determining one’s quality of life.
Think of these 9 other factors superseding material comfort:
1) Having people who care for you and love you unconditionally (family members) — I’d think think this is of the utmost IMPORTANCE. And hopefully, you are not a psycho who are not able to reciprocate that love.
2) The legal and social freedom to pursue what you love in life or live the life you want (think Saudi Arabia vs. the US, both are rich countries, yet…)
3) Unique life stories and experiences, especially those shared with friends and family and lovers
4) Having a sane, educated mind and knowing different languages — it will allow you access to so much more that the world has to offer;
5) Merely being 100% healthy and looking sexy/beautiful/handsome/attractive — like I said, looks will produce dividends in many areas of your life (tremendous spill-over effects);
6) Having a varied and vibrant and/or fulfilling dating life — having someone of the opposite sex who genuinely appreciates YOU AS A PERSON, not your money or status, is godsend;
7) Just plain old fucking FREE TIME is an underrated, overlooked factor — is money really that valuable if you have to spend innumerable hours of your rapidly-depreciating lifespan in an office cubicle? You made some money (nothing life-changing, really), but AT WHAT COST?
8) Critical thinking, obviously something money can’t buy, but can we really argue that a non-thinking person is living a “better” life than a thinking one? If you aren’t thinking CRITICALLY, are you even thinking? Think of some of the people who you worked with – those living zombies.
9) Respect and admiration, because it’s human nature to crave approval and validation from others… it’s Maslow hierarchy of needs. You might think money buys this, but all it buys is envy, a form of hate, which is the opposite of admiration.
Does that mean that money isn’t important in determining one’s quality of life?
Of course not.
But we must analyze more critically what material comfort really is: a “threshold” factor.
What that means is that, once a certain material comfort threshold is met, more and more comfort will not improve your quality of life significantly…
…unless all your goals and aspirations in life are material ones, in which case you should really take a step back and re-evaluate your sad, meaningless life.
Of course, before you attain that threshold, material comfort is VERY IMPORTANT — yet still it isn’t the most important, try health or physical liberty — in determining your quality of life.
After that, not so much…
In the end, there are many things more important than just mere financial assets in determining how happy one can live his life.
Otherwise, why would you think Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington, with a reported net worth of USD 30 million, killed himself?
Ironically, the lyrics for one of his famous song sounded like this:
I tried so hard and got so far
But in the end, it doesn’t even matter
I had to fall to lose it all
But in the end, it doesn’t even matter
*Modified from write-up originally posted by Alvin Tan on his now-banned FB page.