If you want to be miserable, then spend your money like this

An important fact of life is that it’s often difficult to know what will make you happy, but quite easy to identify what will make you miserable.

When faced with a difficult problem — and how to spend money in a way that will improve your life certainly is — it can help to work backward, reducing and excluding what doesn’t work until what’s left over is a decent approximation of favorable traits. Evolution works in similar ways, so thoroughly destroying what doesn’t work that what’s left over tends to work quite well. Or think about health: What foods are good for you is an endless debate, and no one who’s honest with the evidence can say they know the perfect diet. But what’s bad for you is much more settled. I have no idea if a glass of red wine is good for me. I am 100% sure that cigarettes are not.

A young boy once asked Charlie Munger, “What advice do you have for someone like me to succeed in life?” Munger replied: “Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains to the track. And avoid all AIDS situations.” Succeed by first knowing what to avoid.

In the same way, I can’t tell you how to spend money, because I’m not you. And I can’t tell you what will make you happy, because I’m still trying to figure that out for myself. Everyone’s different and life is complex. But what leads to a miserable life tends to be universal and straightforward.

So let me offer you a brief guide on how to be miserable with your money.

Direct your gaze at the socioeconomic group just above you, assuming that within it you will find a level of durable happiness. Tell yourself that you’ll be satisfied once you make just a little more money, have a little bit nicer home, and can spend just a little bit more than you do now. Ignore the fact that the group you’re in now used to be a dream that you thought would bring you contentment and happiness.

Pursue status at the expense of independence. Assume that happiness relies on masses of strangers being impressed by the material possessions you own rather than the hidden magic of you owning your own time.

Let money — the making of it, the spending of it, the accumulation of it — become a core part of your identity. Spend more time thinking about money than the life you’ve built with that money.

Spend so much of your income that you become completely reliant on the decisions of other people, like bosses and bankers, many of whom couldn’t care less about you.

Fantasize that having more money is the solution to all your problems. Tell yourself that you’d wake up every morning with a smile on your face if you had just a little more money. Imagine that you’d be more liked, more admired, you’d have more friends and healthier relationships. Believe that none of your current fears, anxieties, doubts, and confusions in life would exist if only you had more money than you do now.

Assume money can solve none of your problems, and that it is the root of evil and ego. This can be just as dangerous as the previous point. Money is a remarkable tool, capable of offering independence and the joys that come from thousands of years of humans figuring out how to make life more comfortable, entertaining, and enlightening. How tragic it is to live in a world where you believe the accumulated efforts of the 100 billion people who came before you have produced nothing worthy of your time and attention.

Have such a fierce saving ideology that you’re never able to treat yourself to a good life you can afford. Act like money’s only purpose is to accumulate in your bank account, where instead of a tool to live a better life you’ve essentially formed an accounting hobby.

When taking stock of your own life, assume that all your success is due to hard work and all your failure is due to back luck. When judging others, assume all failure is due to bad decisions and all success was due to luck. Place ego over empathy. This is the surest way to become detached from the reality of what you can and cannot control in life.

Compare your inside with other people’s outside, envying others’ success without having a full picture of their lives. Assume that other people’s cars, homes, clothes, jewelry, and social media accounts are an accurate reflection of how happy they are. Tell yourself that because they have nice toys they must also have good relationships, good health, moral clarity, emotional intelligence, and overall life satisfaction.

Ignore the hidden social, emotional, and expectations costs that come from certain purchases. Ignore what some purchases will do to other people’s impression of you. Forget that you may have created a higher bar you’ll need to exceed during the next purchase, which is a hidden form of debt.

Have no sense of your own tendency to regret. Become so wrapped up in the bubble of the current moment, or so fixated on the long run, that you eventually look back at your life and wonder what the hell you were thinking.

Associate net worth with self-worth (for you and others). Think of money as the ultimate scorecard for how well people have done in life — and, worse, assume that their material appearance is an accurate indication of how much money they actually have.

Treat all financial decisions as math decisions with no appreciation for reasonable emotion, sentimental value, and desire to feed your soul. Become more interested in making the spreadsheets happy than making yourself happy.

Be persuaded by the advice and lifestyle of those who need or want something you don’t. Want what society says that you should want. Desire what the marketers say you should desire. Look to other people, including strangers, for answers on what’s best for you. Have no appreciation for the vast spectrum of people’s needs, wants, and desires.

Anchor your lifestyle expectations to the most successful people you know, creating a mindset where even exceptional success in your own life feels inadequate. It’s basically a contract with yourself to be unhappy.

Become so optimistic that your expectations grow faster than income. Live in a world where things get better but you appreciate none of it because you expected all of it, and more.

Risk what you need in order to gain what you don’t need. Risk relationships with your family and friends for the potential of a raise that will have little impact on your life, or risk how well you sleep at night for a new car that no one will pay attention to.

Overestimate the attention you get from having nice stuff, and assume the attention you do get is a reflection of people admiring you versus them fantasizing about having what you have for themselves. 

Assume you have all the right answers. Try nothing new. Reject the mystery of life, and fight against all inclinations you have to grow, adapt, and change your mind. Be curious of no alternative viewpoints. Assume that what you know about money is all there is to know, and argue fiercely when you discover information that might go against your current beliefs. Treat money as you might treat religion, with devotion above curiosity and orthodoxy above exploration.

Do this, and you will, I guarantee, be on your way to misery.