Are Beer, Ramen Noodles, and Canned Tuna the Secret to Happiness?

Recently Yahoo Finance and a number of other websites have featured a series on living well on $40,000 a year, $20,000 a year, and $11,000 a year. I did not find them all that interesting nor do they contain anything all that surprising, but they do reinforce the virtues of frugality, deferred gratification, and a disciplined method of setting priorities. As I am fond of saying, important things are simple and simple things are hard.

They also remind me how complicated we Americans make our lives. There was a time, for some of us the college years, when a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou were truly sufficient. I recently heard a sports show radio host, now in his early forties married with children, long for his undergraduate days. There was a time when all he asked of life was a girlfriend and money for beer and concerts. He wondered how everything had become so complicated. His co-hosts, who knew him in those days, reminded him of his rat trap apartment, his nasty (really nasty) sofa, and his diet that consisted mostly of beer, ramen noodles, and tuna eaten directly from the can. Those memories didn’t matter to one of the most successful radio personalities in sports journalism. He only remembered skipping class, picking up girls on the quad, and late night pick-up ball games with his drinking buddies.

I am approaching that point when I will begin to simplify and discard some of the trappings of the so called good life I have accumulated over the years. In one last frenzied burst of energy I am driving towards retirement, trying very hard to accumulate enough money for the remainder of our lives. Then what? Then if I am like most Americans, I will sell the big house in the expensive neighborhood. We don’t live in a very big house, but the Washington, DC area is certainly very expensive. Then we will probably move somewhere warmer and less expensive. Before the move, we will probably have a yard sale or perhaps pay somebody to put a big dumpster in our driveway so that we might fill it with all the junk we have accumulated while living in the same house for 24 years. Even if the market does well, like most retired Americans, for the first time in many years, we will learn to live on less rather than learning to live on more.

In the “Energy of Money” Maria Nemeth suggests a number of exercises to help you understand what underlies your financial behavior and how to find your way to what really matters. One of them, discovering your standards of integrity, will help you understand what is really important, to you, no matter what your financial condition. Take a sheet of paper and list everyone you really admire, alive, dead, real, or characters from fiction. Then take each name and list the qualities you admire in that person. Then list all the qualities that appear under all the names. Put a check next to the quality each time in occurs in one of your most admired. You will discover there are certain values that appear over and over again in the people you most admire. Those are the values that are really important—to you. The author also contends that those are the values that will lead you to enlightenment. My list? Authenticity (I don’t think I’ve done all that well with that one), courage, command presence (several military leaders in my list), loyalty, spiritual depth, wisdom, compassion, perseverance, creativity, and equanimity (oh well, blew that one). Try it. It is an interesting exercise.

Philippians 4 (NIV)

10 I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.
11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.
12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.