What does a home really cost?

Part of the inspiration of the tiny home movement is saying goodbye to insane mortgages.

Psychologists have identified that we humans are good at comparing similar items - like one car versus another - but much less good at comparing between items from different categories.

This house auction satirical ad points out the things we sacrifice to be an owner of a home.

I think it could go further. Many people spend years, or decades, in jobs they hate - just to afford a house they can call their own. I guess that's fine if you value the house more than those lost years. But if that's not the case, are we better off having smaller homes? Or renting? Or both?

Part of what I'm doing is discerning what I value in life, and working out how to make a life that reflects that. I reckon that's part of the key to happiness - lining up our values and our actions.

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How to retire on a boat at 40

Irish Leonard explains how his family of four lives on a sailboat. No inheritance. No lottery. Just not wasting money - or his time. How does he afford it? He explains by showing the average Irish household expenses, converted into hours worked. Here's the result shown as a working week: We work a lot to pay for our cars. As he puts it: Almost 20% of our working lives is spent so that we can afford to get to our working lives. So Leonard eliminates or massively reduces most expenses. On the family boat, he sails "in a climate that requires no heating or air conditioning, doesn't own a car and generates what energy he needs using solar panels". Remove the unnecessary costs and you remove most of the need to work. He calculates that we can feed and clothe our family on 5 days work per month, or the equivalent. By contrast the average Irish couple devotes 19 hours a day to work, including commuting. Why all this focus on time? In Leonard's words "I...

Why millionaires don't "feel" rich

We're wealthier than ever - so why don't we feel like it? Australia has gone almost three decades without recession. The stock market recently hit a record high. Our wages are record highs. Home loan rates are at record lows. We live in one of the richest countries in the world at the richest point in history. So what's wrong? Comparison Wealth is relative. So what do we compare to? Where we expect to be? "When your wages growth is only 2 or 3 per cent, you don't feel as well-off as when it's going up 10 per cent. That's that nominal distortion that people often suffer from" , says economist Shane Oliver, and that "expectations have grown a lot faster than reality." We're earning more than last year, but we want even more. So compared to our imaginary situation, we see ourselves as worse off. What we see around us? Shane Oliver again. "If you think about it - Australians today are a lot wealthier. They're living far ric...

Happiness: 13 science-based hacks

I've recently been doing a happiness course through Yale University and am excited to find so many proven methods for increasing our happiness. Here's a brief summary of some of them. You can find out more and go deeper by doing the free online course . My previous article was about our brain often making mistakes in picking the things it thinks will make us happy. So the first part here is quick happiness hacks to get around that. The second part is about wanting the right parts of the things our brains think will make us happy. Then there's the course experiments I did - to 'rewire' our habits for greater happiness. 1. Quick happiness hacks Experiences make us happier that things Stuff doesn't make us as happy as we think. "A new car sticks around to disappoint you. But a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory." Studies show that (compared to material pur...

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