Have you ever watched someone win the lottery, only to hear three years later that they’re broke and miserable? Or maybe you’ve experienced it yourself on a smaller scale: you finally get the raise, the car, the house… and within weeks the excitement evaporates like morning fog.
I used to think that was just me being ungrateful. Turns out it’s biology doing what it was designed to do for the last 300,000 years: keep us moving, hunting, searching. The problem is we now live in a world that sells the finish line as a product.
The Real Reason Money Stops Feeling Good
Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody puts on motivational posters: your brain doesn’t actually care about the stuff. It cares about the hunt.
Think about the last time you really wanted something. Maybe it was a new phone, a vacation, or even just a perfect Saturday with nothing to do. Remember that delicious anticipation in the weeks leading up? That buzz when you imagined how amazing it would feel?
That feeling wasn’t about the thing. That was pure dopamine, the neurochemical of desire and anticipation. And dopamine has one cruel trick: it spikes hardest right before we get the reward, then crashes the moment we actually have it.
“It’s not the having that matters. It’s getting something — anything — that’s new or might be upcoming.”
— Neuroscience explanation of dopamine’s role in motivation
This is why the new car smell fades faster than you can make the second payment. It’s why celebrities who “have it all” still feel empty. The brain got its hit of “almost there” and now it’s bored. Time for the next target.
The Never-Ending Upgrade Cycle (You Know the One)
Let me paint a picture most of us have lived:
- Age 16: “If I just had any car, I’d be happy.”
- Age 22: Gets a used Honda. Suddenly wants something “nicer.”
- Age 28: Leases a BMW. Now eyeballs Porsches in parking lots.
- Age 35: Buys the Porsche. Starts following Bugatti accounts on Instagram.
- Age 45: Owns three luxury cars and feels… exactly the same as age 16 waiting for the bus.
Sound familiar? That’s not failure of character. That’s hedonic adaptation in action — your happiness baseline resets to zero almost immediately after any gain. Researchers at Harvard found it takes roughly 90 days for the joy of most major purchases to completely disappear.
And the wealthier the circle you run in, the worse it gets. Millionaires compare themselves to decamillionaires. Billionaires lose sleep over who made the Forbes list above them. I’ve personally watched friends making eight figures complain about private-jet Wi-Fi speeds while people making 50k a year laugh their way through backyard barbecues.
What My 92-Year-Old Neighbor Taught Me About Wealth
Last summer I was stressing about whether to upgrade my house. My neighbor Frank — 92, lives on Social Security in a 900-square-foot house built in 1953 — waved at me from his porch rocking chair, eating ice cream at 8 a.m. because “why not?”
He caught me staring at his smile and said, “You know what the best purchase I ever made was?”
I braced for some story about stocks or real estate.
“Deciding a long time ago that I already had enough,” he said, licking his spoon. “Everything after that felt like bonus.”
Frank isn’t financially rich. But psychologically? He’s in the top 0.001%. The gap between what he has and what he wants is microscopic. That gap, my friends, is the only wealth that compounds forever.
The Math That Actually Predicts Happiness
Here’s a formula no financial advisor will ever write on a whiteboard, but it’s the most important one I’ve ever learned:
Happiness = Reality ÷ Expectations
Notice what’s in the denominator. You can spend your whole life trying to grow the numerator (more money, bigger house, fancier title), but if expectations rise at the same speed or faster — which they always do in consumer culture — you stay stuck at 1.
Lower the denominator even slightly, however, and happiness skyrockets. This isn’t theory. Studies of lottery winners versus paraplegics one year after their events show both groups return to roughly their pre-event happiness levels. The paraplegics actually reported slightly higher day-to-day joy.
Let that sink in.
How to Want Less Without Becoming a Monk
Wanting less sounds terrible when you say it out loud. Images of tiny houses and eating rice flash through your mind. But it doesn’t have to mean deprivation. It means intentionally choosing where you direct your desire.
Here are practical ways I’ve learned to shrink the gap (and yes, they actually work):
- The 30-Day Rule on steroids – When I want to buy something over $100, I wait 30 days. 85% of the time I completely forget about it. The 15% that survive? Usually worth it.
- Gratitude visits – Once a month I literally walk around my house and touch everything I own while saying out loud why I’m glad I have it. Sounds ridiculous. Try it once and tell me it doesn’t rewire your brain.
- The “Hell Yeah or No” filter – Popularized by Derek Sivers. If a purchase or opportunity isn’t a “hell yeah!” it’s a no. Ruthless, but frees up massive mental energy.
- Comparison detox weeks – No social media, no car magazines, no neighborhood drives where “everyone” has a bigger house. The relief is immediate.
- Buy time, not stuff – I now spend money almost exclusively on things that give me back time or freedom (house cleaner, better tools, experiences with people I love). Everything else gets questioned hard.
These aren’t sexy. But they create more day-to-day joy than any raise I’ve ever gotten.
The Counterintuitive Truth About “Enough”
Most people think “enough” is a number. $1 million. $5 million. A paid-off house.
It’s not.
Enough is a feeling. And feelings can be cultivated independent of bank balances.
I know people making $40,000 a year who feel abundant and people making $4,000,000 who wake up anxious every morning. The difference isn’t the money — it’s the story they tell themselves about what the money means and whether it will ever be sufficient.
The craziest part? Once you genuinely feel like you have enough, money starts working for you instead of you working for it. You take smarter risks. You sleep better. You become the kind of person others want to be around. Wealth starts compounding in ways spreadsheets can’t measure.
Maybe the real flex isn’t having so much that you never need more.
It’s needing so little that you’re already there.
So next time you catch yourself thinking “I just had [X amount] I’d be happy,” try finishing the sentence honestly:
“If I just had [X amount]… I’d immediately start chasing [X times two].”
Because until we solve for the wanting, no amount of getting will ever be the answer.
And the beautiful part? Solving for wanting is free. Available right now. No waiting required.
Frank is still on his porch most mornings, eating ice cream at unacceptable hours, smiling like he knows something the rest of us haven’t figured out yet.
Turns out he does.
