# Happiness Through Subtraction

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Mad Fientist
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie2C5A_h4D8
- **Дата:** 17.06.2024
- **Длительность:** 7:57
- **Просмотры:** 2,199
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/45851

## Описание

Although financial independence isn’t the answer to all your problems and won’t bring complete happiness, it can increase happiness through subtraction.

If you want to use money to make you happier, stop thinking about what you can buy with it.  

Instead, think about how you can use it to remove the things in your life that make you unhappy.

FULL ARTICLE

https://www.madfientist.com/happiness-through-subtraction/

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

I'm hey what's up everybody Welcome to the financial Independence podcast the podcast that usually gets inside the brains of the best and brightest in personal finance to find out how they achieved Financial Independence but today's episode's going to be a bit different I have been thinking about a lot of my old content lately and there's stuff out there that's maybe 10 or 12 years old that probably 90% of you haven't ever even heard of let alone read I don't blame you for not wanting to go read a 10-year-old article but I figured if I read it out loud on the podcast that's definitely something I'd be more interested in listening to rather than yeah like I said going to read an old article and a lot of it still applies just as much today as it did back then and today's episode is exactly that I'm revisiting one of my old posts I'm going to read it to you and in reading it I want to mentally process it myself because I was just on the mind on money podcast and I was talking about how I'm trying to see money these days as more of a tool to improve our lives because I'm trying to get out of that old autopilot savings mode where I just keep chucking it onto the pile and I was thinking about how to use the money to improve our quality of life and Mindy mentioned like actually looking into ways to use money to remove things that are negatively affecting your life and I told her that I wrote a post long ago called Happiness through subtraction and I told her that even though I wrote that post I did not even consider that over the last few years as I've been trying to figure out how to use our money to improve our lives and I said I was going to go back and reread that post because I obviously needed a refresher because I didn't even think to do that so while I'm reading it I might as well read it to you so if you like this type of thing send me an email let me know if you don't like it but this is a little experiment and I hope you enjoy it so this post is called Happiness through subtraction Financial Independence isn't the answer to all your problems and it won't be the source of all your happiness in fact Financial Independence is just another shiny object a new car the latest smartphone it's all the same we scoff at normal consumers when they try to find happiness by buying things but are we any better I know I wasn't I thought that all my problems would be solved and complete happiness would arrive as soon as I hit my magic number after all why wouldn't it once I reached my fi Target I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted there would be nothing holding me back from true happiness so I decided to do everything I could to get there as quickly as possible big mistake darkness and pursuit when Joe and I were looking for a house in Vermont we found one that we loved but it was in the middle of nowhere although it was rate in between her work and my work it wasn't around anyone we knew and it wasn't close to any of the things that we loved about Vermont ski hills ice hockey rinks breweries Etc we a bit hesitant to buy but we didn't find anything better so we went for it I figured that even if we were a bit isolated and bored it'd be good to just buckle down for a few years and really save some money I was also about to start my free master's degree so I figured a bit of quiet and isolation would make it easier to study at first things were fine and we enjoyed ourselves in our new place over time though the disconnection from our friends and family started wearing on us for Jill she started to get very homesick and for me I started to get depressed without really even knowing it looking back it seemed obvious but at the time I just figured I was stressed about being back in school I remember being on top of a beautiful mountain in Vermont on a clear January day skiing with Jill and friends who came to visit us from Boston and I was miserable I thought to myself what's the point spending 70 bucks to be unhappy when I could be unhappy at home and at least be saving money and getting some schoolwork done from that point on I avoided anything that cost money five was the main focus so I didn't want to do anything that would delay me Crossing that finish line as I got closer to my goal however the unhappier I became isolation was what initiated the unhappiness but I continued to isolate myself more and more which further increased my unhappiness for an already homesick wife who was missing her new niece and nephew back in Scotland having a husband that didn't want to do anything besides work study and write articles about weird tax avoidance strategies didn't really improve her happiness either sometime during all this I hit my target number and do you know what I didn't feel any different it makes sense now that there's absolutely no reason why seeing X Dollar in my bank account would make me instantly happy when having x- $1 sitting there didn't but I was still surprised it wasn't until Jill described what had been going on that I realized how bad it had gotten the isolation made me unhappy the unhappiness caused me to solely focus on my pursue to and abandon everything else and what resulted was not good for anyone once we understood what was happening we immediately decided to sell our house and our self-imposed Exile and get back to spending more time with the people we love we've since spent months visiting friends and family in the states and in Scotland we've met interesting new people while traveling through southeast Asia and I'm pleased to report that we're back to being as happy as

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 07:00) [5:00]

ever you might be thinking to yourself damn mad finitist why are you talking me out of pursuing Financial Independence I'm definitely not pursuing F has been an incredible journey and I would recommend it to anyone I would just caution you to avoid the FI tunnel vision that can occur instead focus on the journey that's where the magic is I'll explain humans are terrible at predicting what will actually make us happy we think a new iPhone will make us happy but soon after getting it we grow accustomed to it and we revert back to our Baseline happiness we think more money will make us happier but as our income grows our frame of reference changes and the Jones as we compare ourselves to change as well we think we'll be happy if we move into the nice wealthy neighborhood but once we get there our peers are wealthier than our previous peers and we're left wanting more so we're bad at predicting what makes us happier and we quickly grow accustomed to bigger and better things so what's the best way to pursue happiness then subtraction when I was in Thailand basking in the happiness once again I read a book called antifragile by Nim Nicholas TB I plan to write a full review on that but one of the most impactful Parts was when TB describes the value of subtraction when pursuing happiness is best dealt with as a negative concept the pursuit of happiness is not equivalent to the avoidance of unhappiness each of us certainly knows not only what makes us unhappy but what to do about it this idea is so simple but is brilliant we are terrible at predicting what will make us happier but it's obvious what makes us unhappy so rather than pursue something that likely won't improve our well-being Focus instead on eliminating things that make us unhappy and the net result will be increased happiness and that is why the pursuit of financial Independence is such a worthwhile Endeavor having money in the bank allows you to say goodbye to all the things that make you unhappier don't like commuting tell your boss you're working remotely from now on don't like your boss or your job quit don't like your neighbors move although hitting my number didn't instantly make me happier the pursuit of f allowed me to eliminate nearly everything that used to make me unhappy and as a result has vastly increased my happiness I no longer have to commute to work I'm not trapped in the office from 9:00 to 5 I avoid most of the meetings I despise and I don't have to deal with office politics thanks to fi and the power of quitting I had enough money in our bank to leave her house vacant while Joe and I traveled around the states in Scotland visiting friends and family had we not had that luxury we would have been forced to remain isolated in a place we didn't want to live anymore my savings gave me the option to sell our house at a loss which eliminated the stress of having it sit there empty during the Vermont winter the list goes on and on so in conclusion don't Focus solely on the Finish Line because once you get there you may be disappointed the journey is the important part so figure out all the things that make you unhappy and use your F savings to eliminate them a big number in the bank is relatively meaningless but using that money to remove the things from your life that make you unhappy is priceless Finance