I read a fascinating article yesterday in Huffington Post about how explicitly pursuing happiness can actually make you less happy. It enumerated four things we often do in our pursuit of happiness that backfire on us.
First, we try to figure out if we’re happy. This requires us to measure our happiness on a regular basis to assess whether we’re getting happier. In doing so, we begin evaluating our lives instead of experiencing them, which leads to greater levels of dissatisfaction. Second, we tend to overestimate the impact of certain events on our happiness. A promotion, a new relationship, etc. are perceived as things that will make us happier, but over time we readjust to the new norm of a bigger paycheck or the now mundane relationship and no longer derive the same level of happiness from it. Third, we perceive happiness as an individual pursuit, but focusing too much on yourself while neglecting the importance of relationships can have a negative effect. Finally, we seek out intense happiness, which is actually less fulfilling than constant moderate happiness because the peaks and valleys are too extreme.
Here’s a little confession: while I’m doing a great job being frugal in certain areas of my life, such as food, clothing, and entertainment, one area where I’m doing a terrible job is transportation. I’m a frequent reader of 
For the past year or so I’ve been dabbling in investing in 
I was catching up on some of the blogs I follow, and a post over at Thousandaire caught my eye. The post was titled “
This is a guest post by Stewart Bradley, following up on 
Yesterday I wrote about the 
I used to go to a high end salon where I paid $60 per haircut. But after a few mediocre haircuts and an awful first experience getting my hair colored, I switched to a higher end salon near my office where I paid $90 per haircut (but stuck to coloring my hair at home from a box). It wasn’t until I pulled out my wallet to pay for my latest haircut at the overpriced salon that they informed me my stylist’s prices had gone up – to $120! I was flabbergasted. I asked why they didn’t tell me about the enormous price increase when I scheduled the appointment, and the woman said “well we increased our prices a month ago, I would have thought you’d already known about it.” I call bullshit. It was just terrible service. But terrible service aside, the place doesn’t take credit cards, and I didn’t bring enough cash to pay the bill and leave my stylist a decent tip, so I ended up having to stiff my stylist and leave him a crappy tip.
