MBA2544 Why 'Money Doesn't Buy Happiness' is The Biggest Lie Ever

0:06Hey everyone, welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm Omar Zinhome. And in today's lesson, in today's episode, we're going to discuss why money doesn't buy happiness is the biggest lie ever. I was poor for very long, most of my life before I was rich. So I know that this is a lie. OK, and we hear it often in our society. And there's many reasons why it's such a popular phrase. But we're going to dig deeper today's episode. and I'm gonna show you why money actually can solve a lot of your problems and create a lot of happiness in your life. This is a big reason why I have started the$100 MBA is because I wanna help other people become financially independent through building a business.

0:50I believe that money can solve a lot of problems for you and open up a lot of doors. Now, money itself, it's not going to make you happy. Like money in the bank is not gonna automatically just make you ecstatic, right? Maybe more entirely. But what you can do with that money is going to open up a whole world of ways for you to be able to be content, peaceful. And I'm going to draw from a lot of things I've learned from other people on this topic, but I'm going to also share some examples of my own life. So let's get into it. Did you know that financial stress is one of the leading causes of anxiety and depression?

1:25That's according to the American Psychological Association. Now, when we hear this, we're like, yeah, of course, you know, financial stress is horrible. But 72 % of Americans report feeling stressed about money at least some of the time in the course of their daily life. Let's talk about why having enough money isn't about extravagance, right? You know, having financial freedom in my book is not about Rolexes and Lamborghinis. It's about having enough money to feel free of the burden that money can cause or lack of money can cause you. OK, so what we're trying to get to today is how can money make you happy and how much money do you actually need in order for that to happen?

2:08But first, I want to talk about why the quote money doesn't buy happiness is very misleading. OK, this phrase suggests that money is irrelevant to your well-being, but that's far from the truth. In our modern world, you need money to survive. OK, how are you going to eat? How are you going to sleep? How are you going to protect your family? How are you going to make sure that you're feeling healthy? You have the health care you need. Money doesn't directly make you happy, but the lack of money can make you very unhappy. I know firsthand. I live through it. Right. The stress and the burden of being financially strapped is incredible.

2:45It's like you can't breathe. Right. And if you've ever been paycheck to paycheck, you know exactly how that feels. worrying about bills, worrying about not having enough money for even like gifts for your family on a birthday or, you know, being able to pay your way through a birthday party at a dinner or something like that. It's incredibly stressful. Okay. That doesn't sound like happiness to me. All right. Now, unless you're going to be a monk and just, you know, kind of disconnect from the modern world, then you need money. You need money and you need a certain amount of money. So you're not worrying about it all the time.

3:17Now, I am a believer that happiness is actually a choice. I know people that have money, that are financially free, that are financially stable, but are miserable because they haven't chosen to be happy. They haven't allowed themselves to be happy and are looking for ways to be happy. Happiness is a choice, but it's a prerequisite. In order for you to be in that position to choose happiness, you need to get from under the burden of not being financially free, the burden of debt, the burden of strapped for cash, not being able to pay your bills, all that kind of stuff. So financial freedom for me means not having to worry about your essentials, rent, food, unexpected expenses.

4:00You need to get to that position in life where you don't really think about money anymore. And it's not on top of mind all the time. You're kind of taking care of that part of your life. And I remember from a very long time in my life. Growing up, my parents were immigrants that came from Egypt to America. They really worked hard, but they struggled financially. We never kind of were financially independent. Money was a big stress in our house. And I remember growing up in my early, I would say, 20s, even my late teens, thinking to myself, man, if I could just solve this money piece of my life, things would be so much easier.

4:37And I really believe that. And in the back of my mind, I thought to myself, well, what if that's not true? What if I do solve it? I'm not happy. And guess what? When I did solve it, I was significantly happier. Okay. Cause I wasn't worrying about money. Money is a huge stress. If you haven't heard, okay. If I haven't said it enough, but the point here or lack of money is a big stress. So what I'm trying to get here is once you solve this problem of lack of funds and making sure that you have enough money to cover all your expenses and then some, and you're not really thinking about money so much.

5:11Your mind is open to be creative. Your mind is open to be innovative. Your mind is able to solve bigger problems and fulfill other parts of your life and fulfill you in different ways. So instead of seeing money as a root of all evil, you need to start viewing it as a tool for freedom. Money buys you time. It buys you peace of mind and opportunities to pursue what really matters to you. I believe that you really can't reach your full potential as a human being without being financially free because you are strapped and unable to seek the medical help you need if you're not feeling healthy. Or even if you want to excel in your health and get a coach, or maybe you want to learn something new and get educated, that's going to cost you money.

5:54If you want to be able to live in a safe area or environment, that costs money. And, you know, all this is not, you know, some sort of fantasy world that these things happen automatically. You need financial freedom. You need money in order to make that happen. And for me, the ultimate financial freedom is not having to trade time for money. And this is why I love entrepreneurship. This is why I think entrepreneurship is the way to become financially free, because even if you're like you're a banker or some sort of like financial advisor or you're like, you know, a hedge fund manager, you're tied to your job.

6:26And if you stop doing that job or you, you know, say you take a year off, right, that money's not coming in anymore. Your salary is not coming in anymore and you can't live that lifestyle anymore. You know, with entrepreneurship, you build an asset that serves you and works for you even when you sleep, even when you're on holiday. This is really what we're trying to do here. I'm a big believer that lack of money creates a lot of problems. OK, wealth is about freedom. Like I mentioned, it's being able to choose how you spend your time. Without money, you're trapped in this cycle I'm talking about.

6:58It's a constant stress from financial problem to financial problem. If you have health issues, you can't solve it with getting the best doctors. You have broken relationships. You can't get coaching or see somebody that's going to help you through that. You have limited life choices. This is just a fact, okay? And if you're just going to have a blanket statement and money is evil or money doesn't solve our problems and just be blind to this, you are doing yourself a disservice. You're actually stopping yourselves from solving a lot of problems that can really make you much happier once they're solved.

7:30I know because I witnessed this firsthand, you know, seeing my family being strapped for cash, being very, very tight month over month and being unhappy because of that, because of all that financial stress. It's hard to be happy when you don't know if the ceiling is going to hold up. right? And if you've ever experienced that or been around that, you know that your main problem in life is not, am I self-fulfilled? Am I self-actualized? Am I living my life's purpose? Am I doing my passion? No, your main problem is, hey, I want to make sure that I don't have to worry about money anymore. And once you solve that, then you have the liberty to figure out the other stuff, right?

8:10You have the freedom to do that stuff. But if your focus is survival, That's exhausting. This is why I'm a big believer in prioritizing building your financial security as a way to improve your quality of life. Whether you're trying to invest in a business, if you're trying to build a business, if you're looking to invest in the stock market, whatever it might be. You know, in my opinion, entrepreneurship is one of the best ways to do this because you're building assets that are worth something. Or you build a business that earns you money, that earns you income even when you're sleeping. It allows you to employ other people and allow them to become financially independent, all that kind of stuff.

8:46And then one day, if you want to sell your business, that's an asset that you can sell. That's like really going to change your life. This to me is huge. OK, this to me is something that was like an unlock in my mind when I learned about it when I was in my early 20s. Like, OK, this is something that I can actually do now. It doesn't happen overnight, but it's definitely worth the investment of time and energy over the years that I spent. because I could tell you for a fact that when you are financially free, your problems are not problems anymore. I'll tell you why. Because you have perspective.

9:22You have perspective. You know what real problems are. You know what real problems are when you didn't have money. Those are real stresses. But there's very few things you can't solve with money. Very few things. And people that want to deny that are just lying to you. They're just lying to you, period. Because if you have the money to spend, there's many things you can invest in to improve your quality of life. And I mentioned a few of them already, but we'll get into them a little bit later. But my point here is that you need to really just commit to the idea that, hey, I need to figure out this financial piece of my life, get financially independent, build a business that allows me to do that.

9:59If you commit to that, that's a really good step forward because it means that you are moving towards the direction of getting out of that trap and getting out of that death cycle of financial stress. One of my favorite things that I learned from Naval Ravikant, a big student of Naval, he says that happiness comes from removing things that make you unhappy. Let me say that again because it's pretty profound. Happiness comes from removing things that make you unhappy. be things like stress debt unhealthy work environments so on and so forth right and money helps you eliminate these stressors and especially entrepreneurship because you can create the utopia you want in your business you can work with the people you want to work with you can transact with people to transact with you spend time with who you want to spend time with it allows you to become financially free unless it would be time free as well because you can outsource the work to other people that's what true entrepreneurship is and spend your time on the things you want and with the people you want.

11:00So I love this way of thinking that happiness is really removing the things that make you unhappy. And think of all the things you can remove that make you unhappy with money. Now, of course, of course, there's things that can happen in life that can make you unhappy that can't be solved with money, right? But money won't hurt, okay? Even if you have some tragedy in your family, some sort of issue that is not solvable with money, you can get the least support, the care, the advice that you need to get you through that tough time. And what I would say is that the lack of money in that situation doesn't really help you.

11:40It actually hurts you and makes the situation harder. One of the ways to motivate you to think seriously about becoming financially free is to list the things you can do with money to make you happy, like living in a safer neighborhood, affording better healthcare, investing in experiences like travel or personal growth, and having more control over how you spend your time, essentially, and that's really what we're talking about here. This sense of autonomy is a key ingredient, in my opinion, to happiness. I really value autonomy, being able to do what I want, when I want. When I don't feel autonomous is when I don't feel happy, and really, money allows you to do that in a lot of ways.

12:18And this leads me to my final point and kind of wraps this all up in a way, hopefully, that resonates with you, And it's the idea that the true purpose of money is to buy freedom. Okay. Money buys freedom. It gives you the power to decide how you spend your days, decide how you spend your life. Really. You know, we have a very limited time on earth. Okay. Even if you live to a hundred, 120, it's going to go by quickly. You know, I just spent some time with my parents who are 79. The other one's 82. And I'm looking at them and they're old now and they're unable to do some of the things that they used to.

12:51and how quickly that time went by. I remember seeing them young and fit as a fiddle and all that kind of stuff. Time goes by, right? Your life is not that long and it's limited. We only have a certain number of breaths on this earth, right? So my point here is that you need to really take this seriously if you want to make the most out of your life. If you want to make the most of your time on earth, if you want to make the most impact on other people while you're around, it's very hard to do that when you're not financially free. This is the real value, and it's not really about luxury cars or mansion, but just as a side note, there's nothing wrong with enjoying luxury cars and mansions, beautiful things, things that maybe allow you to feel a little bit more secure or maybe make you feel some sort of excitement or joy.

13:36There's nothing wrong with that, right? But in my opinion, what money really does, it gives you control over your time. It gives you control over your life. Yes, there are things that can happen in life that are going to challenge you outside of money, but money is going to give you a better leverage, a better position to be able to battle those things and to overcome them. Now, many people think that they need millions to be rich, to be financially independent, but it's really about making sure that you're making more consistently than you're spending. Okay. So if you're spending not that much, if your spending habits are not extravagant, then it's going to be easier for you to be financially independent.

14:16It's just that simple. And this is why they say don't fall into lifestyle creep, meaning that the more money you make, the higher your lifestyle gets or the more expensive your lifestyle gets. Try to be a little behind on your lifestyle. So for example, you might live in a three-bedroom house and a Honda Accord, you start making twice as much money. Don't just automatically upgrade everything. Try to be a little bit behind so that you don't feel that financial stress. That's where the stress comes from, where you're just trying to keep up to pay all your bills. So financial independence really is about spending far less than you're actually making.

14:53And one of the ways to do that is to make more, right? And that's why business is one of the best ways to do that is because you are limitless of how much money you can make and earn. And there's a lot of other potential rewards in that, obviously helping other people and adding value to the world, which is great. But one of the byproducts of that is being able to be financially independent. So is money the root of all evil? I don't think so. I think the truth is that the lack of money can really cause a lot of horrible things in your life. I've lived through it. And one of the things I want to remind you of is what Naval says is that happiness is really just removing the things that make you unhappy.

15:31And one of the things that makes you unhappy is financial stress. So let's remove that by becoming financially independent, by building a business that helps other people, that helps society, that helps people solve a problem or entertains them or helps them get through the day. There's nothing wrong with that. And wealth building is something you should be proud of, not be ashamed of. You're adding value to the world and you are compensated for that value. The more valuable you are to the marketplace, the more the marketplace will reward you with financial compensation. So I believe that money can really solve a lot of problems, help you have the ability to make the choices to be happy and be able to reach your full potential.

16:14So ignore that lie and go after it. It's my opinion, okay? Go after it. And we're here to help you do that at the$100 MBA. If you need any help along the way, check us out over at 100mba.net. We got over 2 ,500 business lessons, templates, guides, helpful tutorials to make sure that your journey into entrepreneurship is as smooth as possible. Thanks for tuning into the$100 MBA show. Hope you found this episode valuable and you're thinking a little bit different about money and happiness and how it all works out, okay? For more insights, again, check out our website, 100mba.net. I'm Omar Zedholm, and I'll see you on the next episode.