Did you get that name out of a Cracker Jack box?
“Did you get that name out of a Cracker Jack box?” one of our clients asked.
Turns out the name Happier Wealth doesn’t always land well with the Baby Boomer generation. It makes sense. They were raised by parents who were children of the Depression, raised their own children through the Savings and Loan Crisis, and hit the peak of their careers around the time of the Great Financial Crisis. Perhaps a name representing something strong and stable would have been a better foundation to start with.
However, we noticed a pattern in many of our Baby Boomer clients—they focused so much on their financial security that their questions eventually turned from “How do I make my money last as long as I do?” to “What am I going to do with all this money?”
Financial security is crucial, and I don’t want to devalue its importance with this next observation. After decades of working with clients, we’ve found that our happiest clients strike a balance between the memories of today and the dreams of tomorrow.
We find that many of our Baby Boomer clients hesitate to splurge on that trip they’ve only hoped for, cover the cost of the family reunion that will bring everyone together, or buy a new car. And they certainly don’t see the need to replace their perfectly good couch. Even their children, the beneficiaries of their parents’ frugality, would often rather see Mom and Dad a little happier than receive a fraction more of an inheritance.
Millennials seem to resonate with the name Happier Wealth immediately, and Gen X quickly comes around to it when they realize it’s part of how we plan and how we try to live our own lives rather than just a platitude.
Originally, there were three things that I loved both to study and teach:
- Happiness—which continues to be a lifelong pursuit
- Wealth Management—which is where I have my technical training
- Principles—which are guiding values for my life
A triple Venn diagram came to mind, and at the intersection of the three circles was Happier Wealth Principles.
I was really interested in the place where those three things overlapped.
We obviously work in wealth management, so the financial piece was easy. But I’ve never thought the point of financial planning was simply to end up with the biggest number possible. Money matters, but mostly because of what it allows us to do with our lives.
And happiness mattered because, well, isn’t that ultimately what most of us are trying to get at?
Maybe we don’t use that word every day. We might say we want more freedom, less stress, more time with our family, a comfortable retirement, meaningful experiences, the ability to help our kids, or the chance to give more generously. But underneath a lot of those goals is some version of the same thing:
I think this will make my life better.
Then there was the third circle: principles.
I have learned that I am happier when I live in alignment with my principles and values. I’ll get into my own a little later. Some principles are pretty clearly financial. Live within your means. Save. Plan ahead. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Be a good steward of what you have.
Others have very little to do with money. Invest in relationships. Keep growing. Take responsibility for your decisions. Have some fun along the way.
The more we talked about the firm, the more I liked the idea that we could spend our careers learning about all three of those areas, and especially about the place where they come together.
Eventually we dropped the word Principles from the name. Happier Wealth was simpler.
But the idea behind it never really changed.
Why Happier and Not Happy?
I’ve thought a lot more about the word happier since then.
Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey wrote a book called Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. The first chapter is titled “Happiness Is Not the Goal, and Unhappiness Is Not the Enemy.”
There is a line in that chapter that I love:
“You can’t be happy—though you can be happier. And your circumstances and your source of unhappiness don’t have to stop you.”
And later:
“…happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction. We won’t find complete happiness on this side of heaven, but no matter where each of us is in life, we can all be happier.”
That gets at something I think we sometimes misunderstand about happiness.
Happiness isn’t something you obtain and then put on a shelf. You can’t bottle it up and store it for later. There isn’t some point where you make enough money, retire, buy the right house, take the right trip, or check enough things off the list and say, “Okay, I did it. I’m happy now.”
Life just doesn’t seem to work that way.
Happiness is a direction.
And once you think of it that way, the word happier becomes pretty important.
You don’t have to already have a great life to move toward a better one. You don’t have to have your finances completely figured out. You don’t have to wait until your circumstances are perfect. Wherever you are today, there are probably things you can do that move you in a better direction.
That idea has also been on my mind this year as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The phrase is so familiar that I think it is easy to skip right past it:
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Not happiness.
The pursuit of happiness.
I doubt the Founders were thinking about the name of a financial planning firm 250 years later, but I think they understood something important. Happiness isn’t really something we possess. It is something we pursue.
That is a big part of why we chose Happier.
And Then There’s Wealth
Of course, the other half of the name is Wealth.
Having wealth and financial security can make a tremendous difference in someone’s life. It can give you choices. It can buy back some of your time. It can allow you to travel, help your children, support causes you care about, retire, take care of aging parents, or simply worry a little less about the next unexpected expense.
But there’s also a strange thing that can happen with money.
The number itself can become the goal.
You hit $1 million and then start thinking about $2 million. You get to $2 million and $3 million suddenly seems important. Your income goes up, your house gets nicer, your portfolio gets bigger, and yet there isn’t necessarily some magical point where the number on the statement turns into a better life.
At some point we have to ask a much more interesting question:
What is the money actually for?
That question comes up all the time in financial planning.
Should I retire now or work another three years? Can I afford to take the whole family on this trip? Should I give money to my kids now or leave it to them later? Can I buy the vacation home? How much is enough? Should I keep saving this aggressively, or should I start enjoying more of what I’ve built?
Those aren’t really investment questions.
They’re life questions that happen to involve money.
And those are usually the conversations I find most interesting.
Principles Still Matter
Even though we took the word Principles out of the name, I still think it belongs right in the middle of the idea.
I believe happiness has a lot to do with living in alignment with your values.
Our values come from what we believe. Our beliefs are shaped by our experiences, by the people around us, and by the things we learn over the course of our lives. And eventually all of that shows up in our decisions.
Money just happens to be one of the places where those decisions become really visible.
What do we spend on? What do we save for? What do we give away? What are we willing to sacrifice for? What do we say is important to us, and does the way we use our money actually support that?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about my own values. The five I keep coming back to are personal growth, personal responsibility, personal relationships, stewardship, and fun.
They aren’t meant to be anyone else’s five. They’re mine.
But they give me a framework for thinking about whether the way I’m spending my time, money, and attention is actually consistent with the person I want to be. And I think everybody has some version of that, whether they have written the values down or not.
The Happiest Person I Know
Recently I’ve started describing one of my personal goals in a way that probably sounds a little strange at first.
I want to become the happiest person I know.
I don’t mean that I want other people to think I’m the happiest person they know. That would be a very different goal.
Happiness can be faked outwardly. Social media has probably made us all pretty good at recognizing that. Someone can look incredibly happy and have a very different experience going on inside.
But it is much harder to fake happiness with yourself.
So when I say I want to be the happiest person I know, what I really mean is that I want to keep learning what makes for a good life and then try to live more of it.
I want to learn from researchers. From religious teachings. From books. From people who seem to have figured certain things out. From my clients. From my family. And, probably most of all, from my own mistakes.
Then I want to take the things that are actually true and useful and work them into my own life.
Not because I expect to someday arrive at perfect happiness. I don’t.
I just want to keep becoming happier.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize that is exactly what we were trying to describe when we named the firm.
Where the Three Circles Meet
So I still picture those original three circles:
Happiness. Wealth. Principles.
Happier Wealth sits at the intersection of the three.
We want to be very good at the financial part. Investments matter. Tax planning matters. Retirement planning matters. Estate planning matters. Risk management matters.
But those are tools.
The better question is what those tools are helping someone accomplish.
- Are you using your wealth in a way that supports the people you love?
- Does your financial plan give you more freedom or just a bigger balance sheet?
- Are you saving enough for the future without forgetting to live in the present?
- Are your financial decisions consistent with the things you say matter most to you?
- Is your wealth helping you build a life you actually want to live?
I don’t think wealth creates happiness by itself. And I don’t think happiness is a destination we eventually reach. But I do think good principles, thoughtfully applied to our financial lives, can move us in the right direction.
That is really where the name came from.
But maybe one day it truly will show up in a Cracker Jack box and resonate with someone else the way it has with us.
Happier Wealth isn’t a promise that money will make you happy. It’s the idea that wherever you are today, you can make thoughtful decisions about your life and your wealth that move you toward something better.
Not necessarily always happy, but Happier.
