List of Ways to Make Happiness with Money

Lot of my idiot friends think that beyond a certain point, making more money won’t make them happier. This is to me, obviously a lie.

To me, this is a capital allocation problem i.e. we don’t know how to convert money into happiness or contentment. This leads us into thinking that additional money is not that useful and doesn’t make them happy.

One Thing

I can attest both anecdotally and with some empirical research [1] that buying time seems to be the best way to make happiness with money. Unfortunately, we, as a group of peers are not trained to buying time (or more specifically, freedom).

So inspired by this list of things you’re allowed to do, and Katjia Grace’s how to trade money and time — I wanted to make a list of ways to Make Happiness With Money. I also steal from both of them heavily, word for word, so don’t bother clicking through if you’re reading ahead.

The things I’ve tried myself, partially or fully, are marked with *. The rest I’ve not tried, because some of them are too $$$ or time expensive for me.

Interpersonal

Buy goods/services from your friends*

• It’s not weird unless you make it weird

• Everyone knows some starving artists and needs to buy holiday gifts

• Doesn’t apply to every service obviously: don’t take out loans from your friends

Community/Friends

• Travel to friends just to visit them

• Move closer to where you friends live, so that you be a part of their day*

Romance*

• Hire a matchmaker

• Buy premium versions of dating apps

• Get couples therapy

• Get a relationship coach*

Entertainment - Social Value

• Instead of watching Netflix alone, go rent a hall and convert the watching into a shared experience with your loved ones

• Rent an arena/playground and invite friends (or use this to make friends) to play with you!

Give to Charity*

• You really can, to the best of our knowledge, save someone’s (statistical) life with not that much money. Let that idea really, fully osmose through your brain before you pass it over.

Gifting

• More than the $-value of the gift, having more money allows you to be more creative and thoughtful. E.g. Buy that Saregama player for your parents who like old music

• Buy gifts as a surprise, just because you want to!

Parents

• Pay for them to travel to you, as many times as you need

• You can buy them a place if you want them to live close to you

• Travel to visit them — you can visit them more often and in more comfort with more money

• Hire a caretaker via something like Khyaal to give them company

• Hire a professional to plan their retirement and pension fund

Dating

• Just ask people out, without worrying if they’ve expensive tastes

• Ask people to make introductions* to who would gel well with you

Support and Accountability

Hire a Coach

• No seriously, just do it for everything you want to grow rapidly at

• Meditation* — Vipassana is free, but taking 12 days of leave from work isn’t

• Nutritionist*

• Relationships*

• Learning Languages, e.g. Mandarin for me*

Instead of relying in your partner as a therapist, hire one and pay them to listen to you vent/rant

Accountability

• Hire someone who just keeps asking you if you did X. And keeps you on task.

• Good example: focusmate.com and coding-pal.com work really well for someone like me

Quality of Life Improvements

Rent a place that you actually like in terms of location and area both

• For starters, do not live in a shelf with cockroaches if you’re presenting your place as an amazing place to live

• Since sunlight is widely believed to improve moods, pay for windows and corner places

Great mattress and bed*

Buying comfortable shoes, different for different occasions*

Cleaning services

• Can be regular or just when you need a big spring clean*

Grocery Delivery*

Medicine Delivery*

Rent furniture instead of owning it*

• It’s more convenient because you don’t have to worry about maintenance or shifting

Alcohol Delivery to home*

Books*

• My friend circle is biased towards voracious readers (e.g. my flatmate has 1 entire bookshelf’s worth of books which he has read in last 7 years) — and even with that, I believe there is more that we can learn from books

Telemedicine*

• Physiotherapy*

• Ailment specific e.g. ENTs and Pulmonologists for me

At-home vet-care* for your pet

At-home massages or spa*

Surgery for appearance or comfort*

• Lot of elective surgeries really improve your experience in meaningful ways e.g. LASIK made my 20s much more fun and bearable*

Replace suboptimal gadgets

• Get rid of them and buy new ones. e.g. If you have a microwave, but it takes ten minutes to heat up your food, and you hate waiting, just sell/discard this and get a new one which heats faster

• Applies to air conditioner which take too long to heat the room as well

• Your phone is too slow? Too bad, replace with a new one*

Keep fixtures in top condition*

• Replace/repair them instead of tolerating plumbing, switches which are broken or a hazard

Learning and Decision Making

Host small gatherings or conferences on topics you care about

• These are much easier to set up than you’d think, especially in the age of Zoom

• If you can use the gathering to bootstrap a group chat or community, so much the better!

Hire a tutor*

• Language tutors are surprisingly cheap and better than any app

• Services like Sharpest Minds, BeOnDeck, Stoa and Upraised exist for professional training

Buy task-specific devices that prevent multitasking

• Kindle*

• Dedicated music players

• iPad + Apple Pencil for drawing

• Dedicated notebooks for specific purposes (day planner, exercise log, etc.)

Hire a financial advisor and tax consultant*

• This is a bit of duhh, but I am surprised by number of my friends who don’t have a financial advisor and invest bulk of their savings into buying a house or fixed deposits

Coffee with Experts*

• Prepare a list of questions and just cold DM an expert from a domain you’re curious about, offer to pay for their travel and coffee and/or donate to their chosen charity for their time — most people will be flattered

By this time, you have probably realized that most of these ideas are fairly pedestrian ways to convert money into happiness. You can always go the Elon Musk way and buy a company (Tesla) which you truly believe in and bring the future closer to you.

The larger point is that there are bunch of problems that can be solved with money, and probably more than you are imagining and for cheaper than you think!

On a parting note, I fully understand this comes across as preaching from someone’s who’s far from rich — nevertheless, I hope I am able to rely on this list when I am rich. If nothing else, as a reference to what I wanted in Q1 2021.

—

Thanks to Deebarghya Das (Twitter) aka Deedy for the original spark which inspired this list.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114