You cannot buy anything you actually want

You cannot buy anything you actually want. But living necessitates buying a bunch of somethings every day. Somethings that must be, in some sense, what you want. Your life changes when you realise those purchases, when judged against the common hopes that inspired them, are as futile as they are necessary.

You may believe you can, in fact, buy things you want. Really, actually, want. Most people dedicate most of their lives to trying to do exactly this. But they – and you – can’t.

Maybe, you say, you wanted a beer, and you’ve just bought one. Having drunk it, you confidently declare that it was, in fact, exactly what you wanted.

Maybe you go further. Maybe you’ve not only bought a beer that you very much wanted, but maybe you did so as part of an experience – a spending of time – that you also very much wanted.

Maybe you’ve just spent a long, hot, day outside with some close friends. You’ve been doing something challenging enough to be rewarding, but not so challenging it leaves you with broken bones and a deflated spirit. At the end, as the sun is setting over whatever magnificent piece of nature you’ve just used as a playground, you buy a round of cool, refreshing beers for you and your friends. As glasses chink, and eyes meet, you smile a smile that starts at your soul and beams out towards the stars.

You’re not a huge beer fan, and don’t drink too often, but this beer tastes glorious. It tastes of something beyond mere barley, hops, yeast, and water. It tastes of friendship, and time well spent. Of beauty, tranquillity, and maybe a spot of courage. It tastes of damn fine life choices. None of which can be bought directly, of course. Plenty of people have tried to buy friendship; all have failed. Courage isn’t for sale at any convenience store. The beauty industry is worth billions on the back of people believing beauty can be bought, but they only believe that because the beauty industry told them so, which I don’t think counts.

You bought the beer, but you didn’t buy all that. You don’t even know what that is. Like everything that means anything, that is largely ineffable, and it certainly can’t be measured well enough to price it by the unit.

Ignoring brand-based variation, every time you buy a beer you’re buying the same thing. But what you get each time – what you either want or don’t want; what you’re actually paying for – is different. Because it’s not about the beer. It’s not even about the ‘experience’ (we’ve seen before how the trendy advice to ‘buy experiences rather than things’, while well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed).

The beer is symbolic. You could replace it with something else, and through the magic of ritual, all those juicy feelings probably wouldn’t change a meaningful amount. It’s also pretty obvious that whatever the activity was, that too has a ton of probably adequate substitutes. Change the company, or even your mood – and thus the way in which you attend to the same company, however…

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever’, I hear you groan. ‘So what if the beer was symbolic? So I bought a symbol, an experience. I still wanted those things. This is just semantics.’

Fair enough. In one, very limited sense, you ‘wanted’ the beer. But on those grounds, you could justify ‘wanting’ pretty much anything. And if you can justify any answer, you haven’t justified asking the question.

The point isn’t to argue over what we mean by ‘want’. There’ll be plenty of time for that another day, for example when we look at how that the traditional budgeting distinction between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ is both needless and wanting. Nor is the point to indulge in some amateur psychoanalysis, or a cringey ‘identify your values’ exercise, where you see through the beer to the ‘insight’ that you value a sense of belonging and shared experiences, perhaps as an intro to some daft ‘goals-based’ or ‘values-based’ planning (more on that another day too, probably).

So what is the point? What is this about?

It’s about a shift in how you see the role of money in your life.

Spiral towards > circle around

You cannot buy what you actually want. But you do have to buy something to get what you actually want. Money can’t buy happiness, of course, but try being happy without buying anything.

(Some monks do seem to just about manage this, but good luck following in their well-trained footsteps around their well-cultivated circumstances.)

Living wisely entails spiralling towards what you want, rather than circling around it or aiming at it directly.

Because you can’t buy what you actually want, but have to buy something, you have to buy things that spiral towards what you actually want, hopefully in an ever-wiser way. When you remember this so well you live like its truth has burrowed deep into your bones, something magical starts to happen.

It’s a simple shift, but it’s one hardly anyone makes. Yet it changes everything… even if you end up buying the exact same things as you did before.

Money, it’s said, makes the world go around. It does. In circles. It’s therefore little wonder that it makes your head spin, and no matter how much you make or spend, or how grand the promises of what making more or spending more will bring, you end up going nowhere.

Sure, you accumulate some stuff, and get some other stuff done, and maybe even make some friends along the way, but the problems money promised to solve, the feelings it promised to ignite, the state of happy ever after it promised to transport you to, such that then, then, you could finally ‘relax and enjoy life’… not so much.

The solution is not for sale

What’s peculiar about money’s failure to fulfil its promises is that it doesn’t stop us believing them; and so it doesn’t stop us trying the exact same thing over and over again: never questioning the belief that the ‘thing’ we ‘need’ to ‘fix’ whatever ails us can be bought.

Whatever the fourth Ferrari, or the previous four house ‘upgrades’ were aiming at, it’s unlikely the fifth is going to hit it. ‘Yes, I know I said the first million was all I wanted – I’m not extravagant! – but the second is so close now… and think of what I could do with it!’ However furiously it scratches them, money ultimately doesn’t relieve itches, it inflames them.

Believing that there is a direct route to ‘better living’, and that the ticket is an external thing of some kind – be it a job title, a number in a bank account, or a particularly pretty trinket – is doomed to lead to disappointment. It’s like believing the way to win a game of three-card monte is to just watch the cards more closely.

Spotting this belief in the wild – tracing the link from the material to the mindset – is central to successfully shifting how you see the role of money in your life. To go from spinning in circles of unsatisfying consumption to ascending in a spiral towards something more transformative, more fulfilling, more goddamn beautiful.

In using money to solve problems, to expect success is to feel failure, but to expect failure – and be ready to learn from it – is to start to live successfully.