Thirty Things Lighter Update

Last month I set a goal for myself to become thirty things lighter over thirty days.  While I definitely have more than thirty (or even three hundred) things I could easily do without, I chose a smaller number so I could establish a healthy monthly habit of reducing items that I could maintain going forward.  So here's a list of my former possessions:

Pulling the Debt Free Trigger

After months of hemming and hawing, we've decided to pay off our mortgage and to be, for the first time in years, completely debt free.  We're both pretty excited about the possibility. (Though my wife is keeping a level head about the whole thing, while I spent today walking around the house smiling and half-dancing and occasionally making up little songs about paying off the house.  Dah-dah-dah-dah, gonna pay off our house...yah-tat-tat-tah, gonna own that house!  That's not weird, right?)

Buy No Thing Month Update

Just a quick update today: I've reached the end of my buy-no-thing month and wanted to report back.  I basically failed the simple goal of buying no tangible thing, but only experiences.  I broke down and bought myself a Platypus bladder for my upcoming hiking trip, and I bought my wife a pair of Brooks running shoes since she hit her six-mile running goal, and that was the stated reward.  I told myself the reason for the purchase was because REI was having a sale, but the purchases could have waited a couple weeks and I'd only have paid slightly more.  And, at least for us, these weren't small trinket purchases that might be explained away.  For us, these are really nice things that shouldn't have been purchased during this particular month.

Happiness and Many Small Pleasures

This is the fourth in a series on happiness, based on the research covered in Sonja Lyubomirsky's book, The Myths of Happiness.  Click here to read the previous posts on Happiness and Thrift, Debt, and Experiences.

Would you rather have one big international vacation, or four domestic three-day-weekend getaways?  I asked this to my wife and my housemate yesterday, and neither of them hesitated: they wanted the big international vacation.  I do, too.  Quality over quantity, right?  But this urge to have larger, fancier, but less frequent pleasures isn't optimizing our happiness: it's doing the exact opposite.

Thirty Things Lighter

My "Buy No Thing" month is going pretty well so far, with a couple exceptions: an anniversary gift for my wife and a bladder for my Appalachian Trail section hike.  Still, I didn't really adhere to the rules since, hey, I bought some stuff.  To make up for my poor purchasing behavior, and also just to give myself another challenge, I decided today to take action on an idea that I've been pondering for a while.  By July 5th, thirty days from now, I will be thirty things lighter than I am today: one thing per day.

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.  

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.