Musing About Money, Careers and What Matters

I had a brief conversation online with a friend the other day.

He’s considering leaving his job in marketing for a role in finance.

Not many people are qualified to easily make a shift like that seamlessly, but his background and network could make it possible.

Stereo-typically though, marketing jobs are fun, invigorating, full of mid-day boozing and attractive, interesting people.

What’s so bad about that? Why would anyone want to leave?

Many might say, “How about the stupid long hours and low pay”.

Touche.

So what’s there to be desired in world of Finance if you were to jump ship?

Stereo-typically, finance jobs are sterile, repetitive, full of excel spreadsheets and ‘not-as-attractive’ people.

And many might say, “but what about the MONEY?! There’s so much of it!”

Touche.

Besides the fact that stereotypes are just “widely held but fixed and oversimplified image(s) or ideas”, here’s the bottom line.

Money can buy happiness. There are no two ways around it.

Happiness is a 10-day vacation to Kauai. Happiness is the sound of silence when you start up a Telsa Model S. Happiness is loading up an Amazon shopping cart and not thinking twice about it.

But happiness is often short-term. It’s fleeting. It’s depreciating.

“There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

What money can’t buy, is fulfillment.

That’s because fulfillment comes from giving, growing, connecting and creating.

Money can’t purchase the oxytocin you get from helping a colleague; the rush you get from the process of grinding towards a goal; a genuine human connection; or the courage it takes to make something and put it into the world.

Fulfillment is the holy grail. At least, that’s what I’m striving for. What about you?

Now that I think about it, there’s one other thing money can buy if you really think about it.

Time.

What you do with that time is entirely up to you.

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