The "Money Doesn't Buy Happiness" Canard

Recently in my newsfeed I saw yet-another "Money Doesn't Buy Happiness" article. This one is based on an interview with Barbara Corcoran, star of the TV show Shark Tank. Example coverage: CNBC article 14 Jun 2023. These stories bother me because they're almost invariably written by or about people who are a) wealthy today and b) have never really been poor.

What's my stake in it? I grew up poor. Mind you, not poor-poor, but not higher than lower-middle class. We had food on the table but couldn't afford doctor visits except in emergencies, and I regularly wore shoes with holes in them. Although I'm doing much better, financially, in life as an adult after completing an advanced degree and building a well-paying career, I don't forget where I came from. I draw on that life experience to understand the challenges that people currently in poverty face. And it pisses me off when yet-another 1%er trots out that canard that poor people should be happier because "Money doesn't but happiness".

I call it a canard because while the statement "Money can't buy happiness" is literally true, the implied meaning, the meaning that almost everyone understands, is false. Money is actually pretty important to happiness in the 21st century US.

Consider these three basic determinants of whether a person can life a happy, satisfying life:

Money is critical to having a place to live— and not just having a roof over your head from night to night, but having certainty about your living arrangements. Couch surfing, where you depend on the generosity of friends week to week or month to month, creates a lot of stress.

Money is critical to having adequate food— and again, as with housing, it's also about food security. Not knowing if you're going to have money to buy food next week, or having to choose between buying food and being late with the rent check or utilities bills again, is hard.

Money is critical to adequate health care. Yes, you can show up at a hospital emergency room and technically they have to help you, but there's a huuuge gap between getting only minimal, life-saving emergency care and getting proper health care. You might not see that difference if you're young and healthy... but wait until you're older, or think about it again when you have a chronic health condition you can't afford to address.

It's pretty darn hard to be happy (in any non-self-deluded fashion) when you don't have certainty around housing, food, and health. And the reality for genuinely poor people in the US is they don't.

No Longer Giving United Business Card the Business

One year ago I opened a new Chase United Business MileagePlus credit card. A few weeks ago the annual fee for the next posted. As always, this annual fee-paying anniversary prompted me to count my wins over the past 12 months and decide if the card stays in the fleet to keep flying for another year or if it's time to stop giving Chase United Business the business.

Why Buy One When for Twice the Price You Can Have Two?

This card is one of actually two United affiliated cards I opened within a few months of each other. The offer on this one, the business version of the card, was 75,000 bonus miles with UA after spending $5,000 within the first 3 months. I knocked out that $5k spend target within 2 months (it was easy with a quarterly income tax payment in addition to ordinary spend) and pocketed the 75k miles in my UA frequent flyer account.

The reason I applied for two UA affiliated cards in rapid succession was that there was a "better together" offer: an extra 5,000 bonus miles at renewal time for people who own both. I learned belatedly, that that 5k bonus is only paid a month after the annual renewal— if you still have both cards then.

Totting Up the Score

Across 12 months with this card I spent a bit under $6,000 total and earned a total of almost 82,000 UA miles. At my current valuation of 1.1 cents per mile, those miles are worth $902. That's a pretty nice haul! That's the gross value, though. To get the net value I subtract 2% of the amount charged as an opportunity cost. That's how much cash back I had to forego by using this card instead of a no-fee 2% cash back card. 2% is $120, so the net value drops to $782. That's still a nice win!

Off to the Hangar 🛬

Totting up how much I scored with a credit card over the past year is a fun little exercise but it's not in and of itself the answer to the question of whether it's worth keeping the card for the next year. It's just a point of comparison that helps put the estimate in perspective.

Over the next year I figure the value of this card would be less than zero on a net basis. That's because with the big signup bonus gone there's just the basic earning rate on charges. At 1x miles/dollar on general spend, and with miles being worth only $0.011 a piece, that's way less than the 2% cashback I can earn with a basic card. Even counting in $55 for that "better together" bonus it's still less than break-even. And, most importantly, it's way less than I can earn if I shut down this card to make room in my wallet for a new card with another juicy signup bonus!

Friday Night Halfway in Folsom

Folsom, California. A suburb of Sacramento. It's where you go if you've shot a man in Reno, according to a famous Johnny Cash song... or, in our case, when we're staying halfway between hither and yon on a Friday night.

Yon this trip is Bassi Falls, where we decided a few days ago we'd like to hike tomorrow. The drive is almost 4 hours best case, though, plus extra time for stops. Could we do that, there and back, all on Saturday? ...Yes, but it'd be a tough day. We'd want to be up by 6 and rolling by 7, only to start the hike a noon and then still have to drive home 5 hours (including a stop for dinner) afterward. We wouldn't have time/energy to double- or triple- up with other short hikes in the area, and we'd still get home exhausted anyway.

Enter Friday Night Halfway. Instead of spending 5 hours on the road tomorrow morning we knock out 3 or 3.5 tonight (including stops) and have a gentle 1 hour 15 minutes tomorrow. We start the hike earlier and with more energy, we have more time and energy to tack on an additional short hike or two in the area, and we get home not as wrecked. Oh, and we don't have to get up at 0600.

Who's Got the Folsom Blues? Not Us!

We made good time getting out of the house this afternoon. Hawk worked from home, which made things easier. We started packing at about 5:15 and were rolling at ten of six. We stopped for dinner along the way and checked in to our hotel in Folsom at 9:30.

Yeah, there was traffic along the way. It cost us about 45 minutes vs. best case conditions. But we were able to be more mellow about it because we knew we'd still get there at a completely reasonable hour (versus, say, having to drive until midnight+).

Once we got to our room we faced a choice. We could slip out to the hot tub for a soak before it closed at 10pm... or ice cream. There's a fantastic home-made ice cream shop two blocks from the hotel, and it's open 'til midnight. Hmm, hot tub or ice cream, hot tub or ice cream? Ice cream. It was hardly even a question. 😅🍦🤤

Now we're back at our hotel room for the night. We're winding down though we may also stay up a bit late. It's not like we have to get up at 0600! And when we do get up, we've got a full kitchen in our hotel suite so we could cook a big breakfast if we really wanted. But instead we'll settle for some meat, cheese, crackers, and bread we packed from home in a cold bag.