The older I get the more my perspective changes.

To me, the most important things in live now are Time and Health.

(Of course money is important and the love to/from our spouse, etc etc etc.)

But if you don't have Health you won't have Time.

If you have Time sufficient for quite a long time before your life on earth expires, but your Health is not so good or is bad, what good is that?

If you have excellent Health in general but suddenly expire from life for whatever reason, what good is that?

Time and Health will have the biggest impact of all, I think, on the quality and quantity of your life going forward.

Enjoy it while you have it for it is perishable and uncertain. Take care of yourself, period.

As Para said, being Content is, to me, far more important than Happiness. This is a bit hard for me to explain, but IMO Happiness is sort of an illusion, especially for some people who are always chasing and not finding happiness. No one other person can make you happy. I'm not saying that contentment means settling for less, far from it, it's being in a state of mind where you are at peace with life and your situation.

Best wishes to you.
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Keep it simple. You can gain more happiness by making others happy. Give more of yourself in some way. If you can't give more monetarily then give your time by volunteering.

Start small and work your way up.

There is an awful lot of doom and gloom out there. There is also a lot of amazing beauty and awesomeness. How you see the world depends on what you focus on. If one lets the doom and gloom consume their attention, the world can seem a pretty bleak place. If one can focus on the things that are wonderful, the world seems a lot brighter.

I struggle with this sometimes. It helps to remember that there are likely a lot of folks out there who would literally kill to have the problems I bite my tongue to avoid sniveling about.

It really is all about perspective. I wish I could do a better job consistently maintaining a better one…

I've found on many occasions that people lose perspective on what's really going on and let emotions become their reality. As someone else pointed out, its highly unlikely your house is worth less today than 4yrs ago. 401ks go up and down but if you look at the long term trends that current decline is going to come back.
Savings? Well that shouldn't be too hard to identify why it's dropping and take the necessary steps to correct it.
We have more control over our lives and happiness than we sometimes want to admit. There's false power in victomhood, don't fall for it.
Of course there's terrible things that can occasionally happen ouside our control. The ability to be thankful for what you do have instead of what you don't have is important.
Gratitude is not just the greatest of virtues, it is the parent of all the others - Cicero

quote:

Originally posted by 9mmepiphany:

quote:

My house is worth less today than it was 4 years ago.

I'm not sure how that is even possible.

My house is worth 3 times what it was 4 years ago, I'm pretty sure inflation hasn't kept up with the housing market in the area...even allowing that it has slowed down a bit since folks are returning to work

I'm in agreement with this. I fail to see how that is possible. I also don't see how the 401K can be worth less than 5 years ago unless it's been horribly mismanaged. Salary being worth less in real dollars, okay. That's true of most people I'm sure.

Be happy you've got what you've got and forget about focusing on money.