The measure of happiness & what’s a good bargain
Travelling with us on board the cruise ship was a travel guide who’d give free talk and info sessions about the ports and places that we’d visit. Amongst the usual topics about the places to see, things to do, the food, the people and culture, the money and general travel tips, he’d also talked about two things that I found enlightening.
One was about how people who can afford to go on cruise holidays measure happiness and how that affects our perceptions of people who we think are poor. He said that although these people might seem poor in terms of money or material possessions, their happiness might not necessarily be tied to their level of perceived wealth.
That made sense to me. Here in our “first” world we strive for personal betterment usually in the form of a job promotion or better profits from our businesses. We do this because this gets us more money, and that allows us to buy more stuff. Sometimes this pursuit for more money and stuff makes us lose sight of the costs involved: longer hours, stress and perhaps the requiring of cold and unscrupulous, or even illegal methods, and the deterioration of personal relationships.
And are all the extra stuff that we buy necessary for true happiness and self-worth? I don’t think so.
The other thing he talked about was what constitutes a good bargain. He started out by saying that unless you have a local person with you, you will always end up paying more for the same thing than a local would, especially in shops and areas that tourists flock to. So, instead of trying to avoid being ripped off, we should first think about what’s a good price for the thing that we are buying and bargain towards that.
We should bargain, no doubt about that. But if we end up paying more or less what we thought we should be paying for it, then that’s a good bargain. And sometimes, especially when the local currency is lower than your home currency, pause and think about how much money in real terms that you are actually penny-pinching over.









