222. Does Money ACTUALLY Buy You Happiness? Our Experience From Poor To Wealthy

Welcome back to another episode of the bennetbergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus, get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. And if you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with a friend or subscribe if you're on YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcasting app. Now, Berg's got a million dollar question today. Does money buy you happiness? This is, it's funny, right?

Depending on who you speak to, you get some different answers and I think over time, you know, for me as a personal journey, didn't grow up with a lot of money. Work for every dollar. Parents rented, still rent and I had to sort of figure it out right on my own. Was never given money. And that was when I started my entrepreneurial journey what, eight, ten years ago. Lost a lot of money, made it again, lost it again. And where we are now, probably the most financially positive position I've been in ever. Business. Did our biggest month last month personally liquid wise, in a really good position, business, great position. But after all of it, it's not like you get to this point and things get magically better. However, it does for me allow you to give you options and freedom that you didn't have before. So, you know what I mean, it's not like you just get to a point. Yeah, you know what I mean.

But in some ways it does give you freedoms. In other ways it can be more restrictive. So, so, so let's just talk. You talked about your background. Mine's pretty much identical except my parents did buy a house. They went through 20% interest rates. We had food and clothing and everything but nothing fancy. Never went on holidays, no international holidays. I think you went once to Bali when I was little and they're lucky if they had $10 left over at the, at the end of the week. And you know, even when you're buying food, like I think I've mentioned this before, shops are closed on Sunday so mum would go on Saturday, I'd go with her where they'd reduce like all the meat so we'd buy heaps and freeze it so we could eat well, like those kind of things. So you know, very didn't grow up with money. Never understood it when I was younger and I just knew that I didn't want that life for myself, so I started to study it and learn about it. And now we're talking about today. Does it buy you happiness? And it's funny where when you're younger and you don't have money, you think that's the goal and that will buy you happiness and it'll solve all your problems. But money only solves your money problems.

Yes, correct.

And. And you're right. Like it. Does it buy you happiness up to a certain amount? I think there was a study and it was something like if you earn 100 grand, you are generally happier than if you earn less than that. I think it was 200k per couple. And I think that's because. And this is what I've experienced where.

It doesn't necessarily bring you happiness, but money can reduce other things. It can reduce fears, anxieties. You can outsource things that you don't want to do. You're no longer scared. I have to work in this job and I don't like my boss. It's not rest. It removes some restricted restrictions and adds more choices to your life.

Yeah, I think that's the best way to put it. I think for me, it doesn't necessarily make you happier, but it can allow you to be. It's made me happier through the optionality and freedom that it's given me. And it makes things easier, but also more stressful in the same weird complex. So the three things that I boiled it down to after building business, investing and getting, you know, to a point where, you know, I think I'm far, well, I am far better off than where I first started. It's not about the Lamborghini, it's not about the watches, but for me, it's about time, support and freedom. So time being able to get the cleaner, get the chef, do the allow to outsource the things you don't want to do and buy back time and focus and energy on the things that you do have so you can spend more time on the things you love doing and get rid of the other shit. That's the big one for me. I hate doing all the other shit.

Yeah, that's in the immediate term, but if you think long term as well. For every dollar that you have is control over your future time, it's a dollar you don't have to work. So you can choose how you spend that time in the future.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's. That's spot on. I also think.

You can decide then, like you said, what you want to do with your day to day. Like once you get to a real point where you're generating passive income from your investments and you've got an income and you literally don't have to work if you don't want to, you've got all the time in the world. But again, that's also the flip side because if you don't need to do anything, it's generally, for a lot of people, very unfulfilling and unrewarding.

Oh, yeah, you always need to do something in your life. People think the goal is like, I become an entrepreneur, I hit this, like, you know, unicorn company and then I go retire on the beach after three months, you're going to be bored. Yeah, you need to, you need that fulfillment in your life. And also people don't understand that. Like, you're very young, right? You understand this to a degree, but as you get older, your life changes. So you're 26, I'm 41. And what you think you want this year will be different to next year, the year after, the year after. You'll change, your relationships will change, your body will change. And classic examples are outsourcing things. I was like, fuck this, I want a chef. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Turns out I absolutely love cooking. I like doing the basic human stuff. Hated mowing my lawn, absolutely hated it. Outsourced it to a guy. Brilliant job. Now you've got electric lawnmowers that are just amazing, easy to use. And now I'm back into it. I mow my own lawn and I like doing basic human tasks. I love gardening, barbecuing, those kind of things. Next year I might not like that. And you're free to change all the time. And it's never this. I hit this amount and I do this thing and I'm done. And this is how I'm going to spend the other remaining 40 years of my life. That just doesn't work.

Yeah, no, literally, I, I think for me too, the building, the company I love, and I'm obsessed with business, I absolutely love it. And to do the things that I love to do, as the business grows, there, there's all this other shit that I hate doing. And that's why for me, an ea, right, having Alice is unbelievable because she manages my calendar, my emails, you know, the messages, the inbound inquiries, booking stuff. You know, she can coordinate, you know, my meal deliveries, she coordinates the cleaners. Like she just coordinates all the, that I have to deal with. So every minute that I Spend working. I can do it on stuff that I absolutely love, which is like marketing and crypto and working with platinums and growing the business, and I don't have to worry about all the other stuff. And that for me is a huge unlock that again, you need to get to a certain level to, to do that. But it just makes my life unbelievably better and far less stressed. Remember when I, you know, before.

You know. And it's interesting too, right? Because the time aspect is, is, you know, even being able to unlock time for you to spend back on what's the most roi, you know, driving thing. Right. And for me at the moment, I'm trying to, you know, generate business growth and money for you bugs. It might be like time is really important to spend back with your family and your kids and things like that. You know, having money allows you to buy back that time to do the things you want to do. And I think that's a, that time's the only thing you can't get more of. Right. So that's, that's the, that's the cool.

Thing in this business. You're used to asking yourself the hard questions, doing the hard things, and understanding why the majority of people are not like, you have to tackle hard shit every day. You and I have very hard conversations. We work our way through it and we're better and the business is better for it. And this is why when you finally, you know, have money, whatever that means to you, money doesn't solve your problems. It's the beginning of your problems. Because you now have to ask yourself, for example, Ben, why don't I like doing this admin task or this or why do I fear this thing? What is it? What value is driving me? Or experience, past experience? Or is it my parents speaking in my own own head from this thing that they told me I was bad at and I shouldn't be doing it this way when actually that's not right at all.

Yeah.

And you have to start really exploring and examining your life. And that is tough because you realize you're dumb and you're wrong about everything. And you have to accept that you have to tackle it and you have to come out a stronger human.

Yeah.

And that sucks.

Yeah. Yeah, Totally agree. And I think the other side is.

Freedom. And, and the other. This is where money for me really helps. Like, it's real choice. It's the real ability to say no, to walk away and to live on your own terms. And that, that is a, that freedom is a massive value of mine. And, you know, being able to go, you know what it, like, next week I'm. I'm gonna go to Bali for a week. Like, that ability to do that is. Is so freeing. And that allows me to feel more fulfilled and freedom and it aligns my values, which, overall, I feel happier that I can do that versus if I didn't have the money to do that. Not that I wouldn't be happy, but I wouldn't feel as though I can do the things I want to do.

Yeah, it's kind of a weird because.

Then there's also a massive level of gratitude underneath all of this to go, well, okay, if I lost everything tomorrow, I know it'd be okay because I've got the skills and I've got the friends and family and all the important stuff. But to get to where we are now, that freedom, choice to be able to decide what you want to do. And it's funny because also on the flip side, I, you know, with the business growth and there's a lot going on, it's. It's probably not reality that I can just step up tomorrow and go away for. For a month, but, you know, you've got more choice. And I think a lot of business owners and people that are even. Even crypto investors that want to become traders, right, you start to do these things, you go, wait a minute, Fuck. Now I'm tied to this desk. I can't leave. I'm stressed. I have less time and I have no freedom. Because now the thing that's making me money or I'm trying to make money from is like, I can't leave from this. So trying to build your future and reverse engineer your future is important because otherwise you end up down this windy path. You go, hang on a minute. What the fuck am I doing? I'm spending 12 hours a day in my bedroom looking at charts, trying to make money to quit my job. But now I've got this other job, and I'm more stressed.

This is a fundamental question people need to ask themselves, and it is, what prison are you building for yourself? So you think that, you know, you're building this company, but it relies on you. You're 12 hours a day in your business now you have all this money, now you have to invest it. You're worried about losing it. Your friends know you have money, your family know you have money. They change their relationships to you. And it can be quite stressful, managing money, deciding what your future is going to be, and then realizing you're in the Prison of your own making. And then what will really bake your noodle is where you're both the prisoner and the warden at the same time.

You're in the prison and you've got your own key.

Yeah, you got the key. Break out the prison right in the field. Oh, mate. And then, yeah, it's so funny. We talk about this all the time in business. You're like, fuck this, I have to do this. And I'm right at work, 16 hour days. This is bullshit, Mike. Yeah, but, Ben, you did that to yourself, mate. We told you to take a little break and you booked all this stuff.

And you're like, ah.

When you want to do it. All right, now, you said something very interesting where if you lose all that money and everything, you know, you'll be okay because you still got the skill set and you're still you. This is something that I didn't understand for a very long time about myself, where I was like, okay, I'm going along this path. And it was more that I was working in an area where it was a status game. And you keep working your way up, and I'm like, well, if I leave, I'll lose all of my status. And I didn't realize I still have my skill set. I've got, you know, multiple degrees. I'm an mba. I'll be fine. I'll float wherever I go. And until I made that choice to jump ship and come to collective shift and started playing wealth games, I really understood that. That even if this all went to zero, I'm still me. I've still got all these experiences. I'll still be okay. I'll be able to find my way in the world.

Yeah, I think that's a. It's a scary one because it's like, well, you know, you don't really know until it happens. But I think the reality is, depending on what you're after, like, you know, a lot of people like stability. They like that they know they're gonna get the income that, you know, that's. That's what they're after. They're after comfort. Comfort. But I think entrepreneurism and, you know, you know, volatile markets, like crypto, like, it's the opposite of stable. And if you're okay with that volatility and you like taking risks, like, you need to be uncomfortable to grow. And I think that's where I have probably given a lot of my growth and success to being consistently uncomfortable and trying to do things that I'm not very comfortable in learning and looking Back at all the skill sets that I've been able to develop. Like yeah, if whatever reason I had to start something new tomorrow, I'd be able to figure it out, you know and there's a lot of, a lot of businesses like with your skills, bergs that would, you know, would lap it up whether or not you'd be able to work and have the freedom that, you know, is allowed through a startup like ours. Probably not, but.

Well, well let's, let's look at that. So you never get everything straight away. There is no perfect job. You have to make your perfect job and I didn't have all that freedom and everything for three years. We're now three and a half years in. Yeah, it's because I had to build it. We had to build it, the team had to build it and, and we had to make that perfect job in the way we want to live our lives. It's. You'll never get it served up on a plate. Like things are never going to be perfect. You have to work your way towards it.

Yeah. And, but then also like the skill sets and the business we're about to build, like you said. Yeah. It's taking a long time to get there. Right. And then once you get there you can reap the rewards. And I think I hear money doesn't buy you happiness probably from a lot of people that, you know, arguably they probably haven't developed the level of wealth or they don't have money because.

Those people and the friends that I'm with that are successful probably align with the way we're saying it. That again, no, it doesn't buy your happiness but it allows you to buy the time, allows you to buy the freedom and it allows you to do the things you want to do. And I think the thing that makes me really happy and fulfilled is being able to use the money I've made to support my friends and family without having to think about it. That's really cool. You know, like on the journey of buying my mum and dad a house or like, you know, lending or, you know, giving money to my friends and family that need it or being able to go out for dinner and just, you know, being able to pay for, for dinner with my girlfriend and her friends or whatever that might be like being able to do that is really cool. And not having to.

Like not having to worry about it or stress about it or let them have to, you know, worry about just the fact you have to talk about it. I just love, you know, you just.

It'S Just, yeah, removing money as a decision point is great.

Yeah.

Because the limiting factor now is not your money, it's your time.

Totally. Right. And it's funny because, you know, I'm 26. It's, I haven't met too many people my age that are at that level. And to, to look at, you're the 1%. Just saying it's okay, but it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's weird for your.

Age, you're the 1%.

But it's, it's weird because, yeah, like a lot of my mates or people in my age like it. You know, I see how it is a struggle like it is and it's tough.

Like they'll be in share houses, they'll be in debt from uni.

Yeah, it's expensive.

Life's expensive. Trying to save for a house deposit.

Yeah, I'm very grateful to be at this point, but it's been fucking eight years. Like I nearly went bankrupt at fucking 21, 22. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's the risk that I had to put in that reaped the reward. If I was just playing the middle game and wanting that stable income and not wanting the growth, great. But I would not, would nowhere near be anywhere near where I'm at, spot on.

And this is the realization that I came to where I was building amazing products in health, mobile tech, pushing things forward, doing things no one had ever done before, very hard and bureaucratic environment with zero upside, zero bonuses, nothing. And it really came down to I was choosing unhappiness over uncertainty in that environment. So I didn't want the uncertainty of jumping to a business like collective shift. So I just chose to be unhappy every single day because I wanted that middle chunk. And I realized that if I want to put my skills on display and have that opportunity for more, to do more things, to work with different people, to build product on the Internet and generate significant wealth, I needed to make that jump. So I ended up choosing uncertainty over unhappiness. So while things are very uncertain, the company nearly died 50 times. It was horrendous. Uh, it was just, you know, fear, anxiety, all that kind of stuff. But I was still happy. Yeah, yeah, I still kept going and I was enjoying the journey.

Yeah, it was paid off now, right? I mean, yeah, you've got to go through that period to, to get to the other end. So. Yeah, and I think the final, yeah, the final just learnings and experiences for me is that, yeah, money doesn't specifically buy you happiness in a sense of. Once you get to a point, you're now happy, but it gives you the ability and the freedom to be able to do more things you want to do. It creates other stresses that you haven't thought about before. But, you know, coming from.

It's a better problem.

Yeah. Coming from a very grateful position, knowing that when I didn't have money, would I rather choose having money or not having money? 100% have money, but. Oh, 100%, but, yeah. Do I think finding the things that genuinely makes life better, the watches, the cars, you know, the, the. That sort of flashy, like flashy luxury stuff.

That's.

That's not it, you know, like it means nothing.

It's like you have. You have a desire, you think about it, you go and look at it, you buy it, it's a little bit, and then you have another desire and.

Then two days later it's forgotten about. Right. And you want the next thing. So, you know, that's a. That's a bit of an endless game.

Yeah, exactly. Right. That's like, you know, hedonistic adaptation where you want the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And then people lose sight of that and they end up going broke because they spend way more than they earn, because they just keep moving up further and further and further. And if you appreciate what you have and respect it and be grateful for the position you're in, you're more likely to, you know, protect it and respect it as well.

Yeah.

And mate, just on time. Freedom. So we talk about this in our other episodes and you don't need to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to have a huge paying job or anything like that. Save up six months worth of income and that's fuck you, money. Like you've got six months to figure it out. Another one of my buddies, Josh, like one of my good mates, he focused heavily on his career. So he was in IT consulting and sales and every two years he would move companies and he would move up and keep moving and moving and moving to the point where he could take as much time as he wanted off and any company would hire him because his relationships around here was so good. He's done so many amazing things and now he works for a massive company because he's got a young kid and he wants a stable job and that's what he wants to do. And you can de risk and have time freedom through different ways. It doesn't always have to be money. It can be your skill set as well.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Awesome, mate. Okay, well, I think we might wrap it up there. We'd love to hear from you guys. If you have any thoughts on this, please let us know. You can tweet at us at Ben and Bergs on Twitter and you've also got our personal profiles in the description. But yeah, interested to hear what you guys think about this as well. For those of you that you know, maybe on your own money journey and do you agree with us? Are we missing anything? Let us know. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with a friend and family member. It's how we grow the podcast each and every week. And, you know, it's great to see the audience is growing Burks, you know, getting up to five, six, seven hundred, a thousand downloads an episode, mate. It's pretty cool to see the Bennett Burks fam growing.

It's great, mate. And I love the little comments on Spotify as well. The little shorts are popping off, mate. They're going great.

That's great. Really enjoying it. So thanks everyone for jumping on the journey and hope you enjoyed the podcast and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions.