Happiness...and Experiences

My best friend packs parachutes for a living.  The job has an obvious perk: it allows him to jump out of airplanes.  He loves talking about it and it's rare that any of our conversations are completely skydiving-free.  Skydiving makes him happy.  Just look at those two on the right: how could it not make you happy?

When I think about what makes me happy, I recall the things I like to do and have done, not the physical objects I have.  But a cursory look at our consumer landscape shows that retailers are meeting our desire for possessions more than trying to sell us experiences.  I see more stores filled with stuff than places simply selling experiences.  Where is the disconnect?

Happiness...and Debt

I was surprised to see Sonja Lyubomirsky reference the same old testament verse that I've long associated with Dave Ramsey: the borrower becomes slave to the lender (Proverbs 22:7).  But Lyubormirsky's conclusion is based on two decades of psychological research that just happens to align with biblical wisdom, showing that we feel the sting of the negative more than the lift of the positive.  From Lyumbomirsky's book, The Myths of Happiness:

Happiness...and Thrift

From zieak at Flickr Creative Commons.

I am reading more lately.  A book I stumbled upon at our local library, The Myths of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky, is providing some life changing insights as they relate to my happiness.  It seems a lot of the things I believe about happiness (e.g. - married people are happier than singles, or parents are happier than non-parents) are not true.  They are myths.  So I'm trying to take the lessons of this book it a bit further than I typically do...which involves me thinking, "That's interesting," to myself, then telling my wife and friends an anecdote or two, and then pretty much forgetting everything I read.  Instead, I'm going to apply some of the happiness advice from Lyubomirsky's book to my day to day life over the next few months, and write about it here as I align my financial goals with my emotional goals.  

April Net Worth Update

And the good times keep on rolling.  April was another good month due, it seems, to home prices continuing to rise (or so the internet tells me), putting extra money into our "next home" fund instead of towards our tiny mortgage, and some modest gains in our investments.  It makes me wonder when the good times will come to an end.

Books I'm Reading

From dr_tr at Flickr Creative Commons

We are back to reality, as our time in Hawaii had to end sometime.  The small break has shown work to be more enjoyable, spending times with the dogs feels new all over again, and oddly, I seemed to just miss my house: my favorite chair, the backyard, my own pillow.  Life, as always, is good.

I've been reading more books lately than I usually do, and I thought I'd share the ones I liked (and that have at least some angle on personal finance and wealth).  I'll keep the reviews short, and please comment back with any books you'd like to recommend.  I'm always looking for new ones to check out of the library.

Relative Costs

From madmarv00 at Flickr Creative Commons

I'm writing to you from the island of Oahu, as my wife is attending a conference here and we decided to make a vacation of it.  We've hiked a lot, up to Manoa Falls and Diamondhead and along the North Shore, watched the surfers take on ridiculous waves at the Pipeline, rode "The Bus" everywhere for a surprisingly affordable $2.50 (which apparently includes unlimited transfers), and are trying to get our money's worth out of the snorkels we bought at Target back home.  It's been a great time and we still have a few more days to enjoy it all.

March Net Worth Snapshot

After a somewhat disappointing month in February, we got back on track in March.  Despite my best efforts we still got a tax refund, and we received a small inheritance ($5k) last month.  But most importantly, we decided to take $27k from the cash portion of our "next home" investment mix (50% cash, 30% bonds, 20% stocks) to pay down our current mortgage.  We had a pile of cash earning nothing, and a pile of debt.  Why pay 4.25% in interest when the cash is only earning 0.8%?