"I'm poor, but it's OK, at least I am happy – I have time to spend with my family.
Better than rich people who spend all their lives chasing more and more money"
"He may be smart, but IQ is not as important as EQ"
"You're either with us or against us"
How often have you heard those lines? Myself, I have heard lines similar to those quite a number of times. At certain level, they do have certain appeal. For example, the "better poor but happy than rich but miserable" line could encourage one to not be envious of the person being discussed. After all, not many people want to spend their lives to be a stereotypical workaholic money chaser (who probably would die before he/she can use all the money he/she accumulated).
There's a problem though. Basically, those lines reflect the view that the issues being discussed are purely black and white. In real life, this is often not the case, and it's a fallacy to present the choices as if there's no middle ground. In fact, there's a term for this kind of fallacy: false dilemma.
The world isn't black and white..
Take the “poor or workaholic” line, for example. Many people actually grow richer not by being workaholics, but by developing and fully utilizing their (marketable) abilities and maintaining good financial habits -- avoiding unnecessary expenditures, making prudent investments, and so on. In fact, in his classic book “The Richest Man From Babylon”, George S. Clason basically states that better financial habits are the key to being wealthy.
Conversely, being poor does not necessarily equal “greater happiness and more time with family” either. For example, parents in low-income family may be forced to take a job they particularly dislike, or even to take additional jobs, in order to support their family. If, for example, one of the children has medical problem whose treatment is expensive, the situation becomes worse. This is certainly not a recipe for more happiness in the family.
In this case, we can see that being poor and working long hours in pursuit of wealth are not mutually exclusive, nor are being rich and having family life mutually exclusive. Thus, rather than viewing the issue as “being poor versus sacrificing family life to gain wealth” dilemma, a better approach is to separate the “rich/poor” and “work/life” issues and address them individually. The list available options would thus expand to include, for example:
Stay at current job, and either work long hours to earn better pay / advancement, or just work to earn enough so there'll be more time for the family (i.e. the original options)
Look for a job that pays better for same amount of effort or working hours (i.e. optimizing the returns we get from our work).
Look for a job that provides much better income although they require much longer working hours. Plan to save as much as possible and retire after certain number of years to fully spend time with family.
Invest in courses / continuing education to get a much better paying job with same working hours afterwards.
Try to find ways to reduce spending without sacrificing anything important, and save/invest the money so there'll be extra (passive) income without longer working hours.
As you can see, by seeing things as they are instead of limiting our view to the extremes (“black and white”), we can find a wider range of potential solutions :) Generally, the things we can try to expand our choices are:
See whether the items presented in same group are indeed inseparable. In the case above, we can see that being “being poor” and “having more time with family” does not necessarily go together, nor do “being rich” and “working long hours in the office”. Thus, we can deal with the family time and wealth issues separately.
Seek middle grounds between the given choices. For example, one does not have to be either “rich” (in “having luxurious houses and cars” sense) or “poor”. There are different levels of wealth one can aim for, e.g. “have a home and enough savings for rainy days”, “have a home, a car, some savings, and enough money to go for 1-week holiday trip every year”. Yes, it takes a lot of hard work and luck to become the next Carlos Slim or Bill Gates, but not everyone wants to dedicate their lives to pursue that level of wealth.
See if the problem can be solved at another level. For example, suppose we wish to become wealthier not because we want to buy luxurious stuff, but because we want to have freedom to pursue a career that isn't financially rewarding in our area (theater actor for example). In this case, the main thing is not the wealth itself. Instead of mulling over whether to take a job that pays substandard wage but allow enough free time to moonlight as an actor, perhaps a better alternative is to move to another area in which full-time career in acting is economically viable.
Well, hope this helps :) Go ahead, try to evaluate the choices you are presented every day! See if you can find new alternatives and “view the world in more colors” :D
