Phantasmix

Finding total happiness is the ultimate goal for many people — but should it be? New research suggests that if wealth and success are also at the top of your list, the two goals may be somewhat incompatible.

Diener and his colleagues used data from the World Values Survey, which measures the happiness of respondents on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the happiest). They found that income did indeed increase along with happiness but not at the very top. The 10s earned significantly less than the 8s and the 9s. The latter were also more likely to have gone to college, have engaged in the political process and have saved money.

Why is it better to be happy but not euphoric? Diener’s take is that happy - but not too happy - people are strivers. They’re interested in making the sorts of changes necessary to get ahead in life, including engaging in competition (not always a happy pursuit), obtaining more education and changing their behavior when what they’re doing now isn’t working. The 10s, on the other hand, are too complacent to adjust enough…

Extreme optimists (those who overestimated their own life spans by 20 years or more), additional research shows, also behaved in other ways that weren’t good for their future. They accumulated debt and didn’t save. Moderate optimists, recognizing that their luck could run out, saved more than the extreme optimists did.

Source: CNN

In other words, happiness makes you complacent and lazy.

We have a saying “the greedy pay twice”. The cheapest most definitely isn’t always the smartest or the most frugal thing to do. Yes! sometimes it’s more frugal to pay more.

The economic benefit of paying as little as possible to save money is lost if you have to pay the second time to fix the result.

A couple of anecdotes:

• Last year I dyed my hair at home, and had to pay the hair dresser to have the color fixed. Color corrections cost more than a simple dye job. Have I learned the lesson? You bet.
• We bought a fairly expensive item ($1,300) last year from a small store. The owner gave us a discount, but his return policy is “no returns”. The item turned out to be not what we wanted and we ended up having to re-sell it on Ebay, taking a monetary hit, of course. In the end we lost more than we saved, not to mention all the time and worry of selling on Ebay.

Next time you feel like having a candy bar, consider buying an organic apple. At an average price of $1.49-$1.99 a pound, one medium-size organic apple costs about 50 cents. How’s this related to money? Why you’ll save money by improving your health, of course!

This post was prompted by a late run to the grocery store.

P.S. How about that snow! Lovin’ it.

I enjoy Thicken My Wallet’s reports on how to save money at the supermarket. Not so much for the savings tips, but for the amusement factor: I don’t buy a single brand/item he lists! I’ve come across several other blogs that talk about saving money at the store and this is pretty much the common theme - I just can’t relate. I’m an admitted semi-elitist food addict (occasional Doritos or Reese’s happen, that’s why “semi”).

Overall I’m pretty bored with money right now:

- stocks are not moving. Suppose I should be grateful they’re not down more than they are. I keep dreaming about numbers and charts and crazy breakouts, *must*take*a*break. It’s like computer games all over again (overplayed them at one time, started dreaming in Tetris and Super Mario. Yeah a long time ago.)

- it’s warm outside and makes me want to spend money, not save it. But in winter it’s so miserable I want to spend it, too. It’s a year-long affliction.

- I’ve only sent 4 invoices this month (typically it’s 8-12). One client keeps begging for an invoice - time to get worried about my lazy invoicing habits?!

- Again - warm out, too lazy to make graphs. Those are usually amusing when the weather is ugly.

Hope y’all are enjoying the summer!

As mentioned in my previous post, I had requested a price match on high-speed internet from Sympatico. It’s not going smoothly so far.

In March (first contract month) they added on $17.10 activation fee, so our total bill came to $44.56, about $5 less than before. It was supposed to have been around $30-35. This was most likely a computer error - they assumed since we signed a new contract, we must be a new customer (not so!), so they or it charged us an activation fee.

Of course I called them the minute I noticed it on the credit card statement, and they graciously removed the charge, but I spent yet another 15 minutes straightening this out. Really hoping next month it’ll go as planned.

I often look for these online, hopefully they can help someone, too. Latest Victoria’s Secret catalogs came with two offers for 10% off. They will work for both US and Canada. Don’t forget to use AirMiles when shopping online (www.airmilesshops.ca). These codes won’t work for clearance, taxes and shipping.

• SP75317 - 10 % off. Valid through April 13, 2007.
• SP75473 - 10 % off. Valid through April 25, 2007.

Every month some of my cash mysteriously disappears. Usually about $20-50 just falls through. I write it off as “Miscellaneous Household”. Granted, it’s a small amount, but puzzles me because I usually collect all the receipts, and I mean ALL receipts. It’s making me crazy because I haven’t been able to go at least 1 whole month without this weird loss. A year ago it was much worse though, I used to “lose” $100-150 and my memory was completely blank as to where the money could’ve gone.

So at least my attempts to keep track have made these undetectable losses smaller. Next month I’ll try to do without cash at all and have every transaction recorded in our checking/credit accounts.