How Focusing on Making Money Could Be Hurting You

This morning, I burst into my partner’s room to share an idea for the article I was about to write based on some grim research that I had been reading: how focusing on making money is hurting you. “I don’t want to diminish your happiness,” he responded, “but this seems like an appropriate window to share something that’s been on my mind.” He told me about how I had recently been so focused on my work, the book I’m writing on friendship, pitching research ideas, that I wasn’t making time for our relationship (it’s kind of ironic since I’m writing a book on relationships).

His complaint brought to light something I’ve always feared. I’m a driven person. I like working hard, meeting my goals, and benefitting from my efforts, personally and financially. I’m a perfect candidate for the financial independence movement. The crux of this movement is that if you work hard, make money, live frugally, and invest your financial surplus, eventually, you’ll be “financially independent”—that is, no longer dependent on a job to have enough money to live. You can fund yourself. You’re free.

The financial independence movement has led people worldwide to embrace the goal of making (and saving) money. But what’s talked about less is the cost that comes with aspiring towards financial independence or “FI,” or even the costs of being too focused on money-making, more generally. Past research found that college students who were focused on being well off financially were less satisfied with their lives 19 years later. Why? One possibility is that focusing on making money hurt their relationships. They were less satisfied with their friends and their family life.

Another study asked people whether they were more willing to sacrifice money for time or vice versa, and then exposed them to a conversation partner in the laboratory. The study found that people who would give up their time for money (rather than vice versa) spent less time interacting with the conversation partner, and less time socializing with peers when transitioning to college.

Relationships are important. They are the keys to our happiness and longevity. Research finds that even small interactions with strangers—the kind that a focus on making money can distract us from—boost our mood and help prevent loneliness. In the words of psychologist Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, “the quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.” Why, then, are we willing to put money, or anything for that matter, before our relationships?

The truth is that many of us don’t have the flexibility to put our relationships first. According to Alissa Quart, an executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, it’s 30% more expensive to live a middle-class life now than it was 20 years ago. University costs have skyrocketed, doubling between 1996 and 2016. Four in ten Americans have a second job, and half of all millennials do.

The wealth gap in the United States of America is stark. Data from the Congressional Budget Office finds that families at the top 10% of wealth hold 76% of all wealth, whereas those at the lowest half hold onto just 1%. While debt has ballooned, wages, adjusted for inflation, have not increased in the last 40 years, which is why many of us are forced to focus on making money at the expense of our relationships. We are inhabiting a system that, by its very nature, compels us to neglect what is truly important.

So how do we win against this system? Research finds that whereas a focus on making money can harm our mental health and relationships, actually making money benefits these outcomes, raising the question: If the drive to make money actually leads us to make more money, will we be happy and connected? Research also indicates that when people are focused on making money, and they actually do, then this focus on making money is no longer related to less satisfaction with friends and life.

The researchers explained this caveat via “aspiration theory,” which suggests that our happiness depends on the gap between what we have and what we desire. Aspiration theory implies that people focused on making money who are foiled in these attempts will be less satisfied with their lives, whereas those who succeed won’t.

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Yet the same study found that even for those who are wealthy, focusing on making money was related to being less satisfied with family life. Thus, even though money-absorption among the wealthy appears to hinder happiness less than it does for the non-wealthy, it could still hurt where it counts. Out of all aspects of life, satisfaction with family is the greatest predictor of overall life satisfaction.

There are other ways that this focus on making money could harm us all, even the wealthiest among us. Other research finds evidence that wealth inhibits our ability to savor our experiences. In one study, the wealthier people were, the less they savored their life experiences. Also, when people were primed with wealth via being exposed to a picture of money, or else a blurred or a neutral image, they both reported less savoring on a questionnaire, and also took less time eating and savoring chocolate. Even though wealth was linked to more happiness in this study, this link was less strong because wealth coincided with less savoring.

These findings align with the theory of what’s called “experience stretching,” discussed in Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling Upon Happiness. When we experience luxuries—a cappuccino with gold-encrusted flakes, a tri-colored sunset on a Caribbean beach, a hot bubbling jacuzzi and a glass of champagne (the real stuff, from France)—it stretches our range of experiences, so that experiences that used to be on the top of our “what makes us happy” gauge are somewhere in the mid-upper tier. Your trip to Lake Michigan used to have you beaming with glee until you came across the white sand beach in the Maldives, and now it seems duller in comparison. Experiencing luxury raises our baseline for experiences that qualify as happiness-generating, and we begin to take the little things for granted.

So what does this mean for us? Here we all are, citizens of a system that impels us to focus on making money even as this goal depletes us of our sense of presence and our relationships. We can fully embrace this system, turn our energies towards making money, and maybe we’ll win big, get rich, and be less vulnerable to some of the ways that focusing on making money causes us harm. But the research I’ve discussed finds that even if we do find wealth, we won’t come out unscathed.

Alternatively, we can find balance. Recognizing how our drive to make money harms our sense of presence and our relationships can be a reminder for us to be intentional about not allowing money-making to ruin our lives. For me, this looks like taking my partner seriously when he tells me that my work is harming our relationship.

When our budgets allow it, we can say no to extra work to show up for the people around us. We can remind ourselves that even though money distracts us from the moment, we can still override these distractions and show up. Setting boundaries in our relationships are all the rage right now, and we need to start setting boundaries, not just with the people in our lives, but with the money in our lives as well.