Some people on Steemit just want to be read, and see money as a nice side perk; others are here 100% to try to cash in. Either way, everyone is here at least to some small degree to make money. So it seems to me that this is the perfect platform to discuss the real value of money, and especially the accumulation of wealth.
I mentioned in my intro post that I used to work at Honda. The company treats its employees very well. I made over $40k with raises and bonuses every year, and there were also great insurance and retirement benefits. Yeah, yeah, good for me, right? But after two years, I quit.
Like many life philosophies, the cliché "money can't buy happiness" is something people say to children, then roll their eyes at once those children reach adulthood. Quitting was considered foolish by many people, from my parents to friends my own age. Some older folks at the company took me aside and tried to explain to me how fortunate I had been to have my position at my age and how a stable job is hard to find. Very sensible, yeah?
It wasn't the work -- not mostly, anyway. It was the location. I lived in a town entire states away from people I could connect with. There was nothing but a couple of parks, a cluster of bars, and a few cafes for over 60 miles. If I had stayed with the company, I would have lived in a place like that forever. I would have paid off my student loans quickly and been able to save up money -- but every vacation using that money would have been a desperate escape. Living there was depressing me. Even if I'd had $100k in my bank account, would that have changed that I hated the place I lived, or that I was living for the weekends?
So I left. I put in my notice well ahead of time, sold my things or threw them out at the dump, found a place to stay at my destination, and drove across countless state lines to live where I could be happy.
I struggled to pay rent, working part-time doing door-to-door campaigning while testing the freelance translation waters. After about half a year, I felt confident enough to quit the campaigning and go totally freelance. I'd estimate that I make about half of what I made before. Instead of my own place, I live in a house with multiple other people my age. Nobody's putting money towards my retirement for me. Nobody's paying for insurance for me. On the surface, this was a bad move.
And I feel absolutely no regret.
Here, there are people I connect with, places to go, and things to do. Since I work freelance, I decide when to work, when to wake up, and when to go to sleep. I'm not depressed anymore. I enjoy my life.
Now, I'm not necessarily advocating completely foolhardy moves. I also know that not everyone has these kinds of options. When I quit, I was as careful as I could be. I had plans B and C. But still, I was able to go, I went, and I'm glad.
Too often, we focus on retirement. Everyone constantly asks younger people, what will happen to you in the future? But they don't usually mean ten, twenty years from now. They mean when that person is 60 or older. Live for the weekend, save up money, and at long last, when you're 65 or so, you can enjoy yourself.
The average life expectancy is just shy of 80 in the US, and this advice is given to people in their 20s and 30s. In other words, young people are encouraged to sacrifice at least 30 years of the prime of their life to 20 years as a senior citizen. What's worse, people who haven't enjoyed themselves for 30 years are likely to have all sorts of resentment and unhappiness built up that won't just disappear because they retired. So even if you make it to 70 or older with a fat retirement fund, who's to say whether you can really enjoy it? Is your present self really worth that gamble?
My conclusion is that the best way to enjoy life is to cultivate enjoyment of life, and find the things that will make me happy now. I'm focusing on my perspective, identity, relationships, and skills over material earnings. I'm learning to value walking in a national park over having a fancy dinner. I'm not making a lot of money, but I'm also not making myself unhappy. I'm not ignoring the future, but I also don't intend to run myself into the ground for the majority of my life so that I can gaze at the Eiffel Tower or the melted icecaps of Alaska in my old age. Like this post, I might not make as much money as people who target money alone, but I'm enjoying myself. Maybe back in the 50's, when a family with two kids and a picket fence was the American Dream, all of this sacrifice made sense. And it's been pounded into our heads as the rational way. But now, for many people (not all), doing a job you don't enjoy for good pay is surprisingly and increasingly illogical.
