Planning
So if this moment right now is all we have, and we should all stop living in advance of some future now and be in the only now we can count on, why bother planning? Why delay gratification? Why tolerate discomfort? Why try to get promoted? Grow? Start a business? Have kids? Travel? On the other hand, a lack of planning often delivers a lot of discomfort as anyone who has ever arrived in town to look for a place to eat and stay only to discover that there is a sports event being held which has sopped up all the excess capacity. Sleeping in a car is one of my least favourite ways to spend my now.
Creating a Better Now
I think the most obvious answer to the very good questions above is that at some level, we believe that by planning, delaying gratification, tolerating discomfort, we make it more likely that our future moments will be enjoyable. For example, if we are tired while walking home, we can lie down on the sidewalk and sleep for a few minutes, or we can keep on walking for a few minutes and then have a more restful sleep in a comfortable bed. When we attend courses, we are hoping to create opportunities for financially more lucrative, or existentially more fulfilling, occupation in the future. We hope that these opportunities will both make our future day to day moments of employment more tolerable and result in more money to spend on leisure and luxury in order to make our future moments of non-employment more enjoyable.
Lowering Your Standards
Extreme FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) advocates point out that all you have to do in order to retire early is to save up enough capital that 3-5% of it meets your annual spending needs. This rough estimate is not in fact meant to allow for early and permanent retirement as it was based on a more usual length of retirement of 20-30 years but it certainly makes sense in general. For example, if you earn $100,000 per year and live on $20,000 per year, then you save $80,000 per year and using a 4% rule, it would take you 6.25 years to save up $500,000 which would yield $20,000 at 4% per year. The less cash you need to live on, the smaller the nest egg you need to accumulate is. Practically speaking, it is unusual for people to accomplish this, but certainly, curbing non-essential spending will result in an earlier reduction in the need to work for money for the essentials.
Aphorisms
Money can’t buy happiness. The best things in life are free.
Are these ideas true, a capitalist plot to keep workers oppressed, a combination thereof, and how do these ideas interact with the hierarchies of need for food, shelter, security and so on?
Money can’t buy happiness, but it certainly can buy food, shelter and security. Social determinants of health are critically important for health. Can you be rich and miserable? Of course, but statistically speaking, you are more likely to be poor and miserable.
Following Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – a well known model with associated controversy in its most deterministic interpretation but with a certain common sense approach to this issue – we see that the levels above the lowest have to do with community, connection, esteem and cognition. These are the kinds of needs which cannot easily be met by money. I suppose you can use money to throw parties for your community, but you can’t buy real friends. We instinctively have a sense of the kind of loneliness that the very rich and very famous may have. How, after all, can they be sure that their friends are with them on account of enjoying spending time together or merely using you for your money.
If you neglect your need for community and connection by working very hard for money in order to retire early, you are likely to wind up friendless after your 6.25 years of subsistence. Plus, as Oliver Burkeman points out in Four Thousand Weeks, time is sweetest when shared with others, so winding up financially independent and retired at age 28 or so while all your friends are blowing their excess $80k a year on lattes, dinners out, the occasional vacation and other luxury pursuits, may not deliver the kind of happiness you are looking for.
Goldilocks
One senses that there must be a sweet spot, as is found in all natural systems, a place of balance, where times of self denial are followed by times of self indulgence. Where spending all excess money immediately will likely lead to a future which is poorer in experience and fulfilment than it needs to be, but where spending no excess money will lead to a future which is likewise impoverished.
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
— Oscar Wilde
By this I do not mean that it is possible to balance things perfectly so that you can find an optimal saving/spending spot. There is no perfect amount of self indulgence in the now which offsets the costs of delayed self gratification in the future. If you are person who enjoys library books and home-brewed coffee, you may wind up with more excess cash than someone whose joy comes more from rock concerts and cocktails. If you really love eating sweets, you may decide that exercising more than is strictly necessary for your health is a reasonable tradeoff, or you may decide that being somewhat overweight is a reasonable tradeoff. If you are quite happy with IKEA furniture and a humble home, you may need to work less and shorter than someone for whom granite countertops bring joy.
Probably what is true for almost everyone is that we have some of what we don’t want and not all of what we do, so it is critical to engage in self discovery so you know what to spend your time and money on after your basic needs are met.
TL;DR
The fundamental truth is the same as the one I explored in the last post – you cannot do everything you want to do. You cannot optimally save and optimally spend. You always only have this moment for certain AND you can improve the likelihood that future moments will be more of the ones you want by tolerating discomfort in this moment in service of a greater goal. And the longer you delay gratification, the greater the chance that you will not get to enjoy the only life you get.