Adam Carolla - Daddy, Stop Talking! - And Other Things My Kids Want but Won't Be Getting

Now I know that, by nature, kids understand the cost of things. Especially you, my children. As I mentioned earlier, you treated the cars in Jay Leno’s garage like the rack of candy bars at the grocery-store checkout. Remember, Natalia, when we went to Lowe’s to pick out a new light for your room?

We were in that section where they have a hundred and fifty lights dangling from the grid on the ceiling. I asked you to pick out which one you wanted. With no hesitation or thought, just an instant gravitational pull, you pointed to the one that was two hundred and nineteen dollars.

I was blown away. This is Lowe’s; I was unaware they even had an option this pricey. I didn’t even know they made lights over one-fifty that didn’t have fans attached. The lights at Lowe’s start at around eighteen bucks and average thirty-nine. They’re all stamped out in China. But you found the one that was the shiniest, with all the glitter and spangles. Seven-year-old girls are like largemouth bass. Everything is a lure to them. If it winks at them, they buy it.

I thought I was safe heading to Lowe’s. I even threw out the “just get anything you want” line because I’m a baller like that. Of course, you quite literally found the diamond in the rough.

Money has no meaning anymore because every transaction is handled with plastic cards. And soon, we’ll just use our phones. You won’t even need to swipe a card; you’ll scan your iPhone screen. Money used to count for more because you held it in your hands. It’s not tangible anymore. My kids have never seen their mom take out cash to pay for anything. I don’t even think they’d know what it was. “Mom, why are you handing that person green paper instead of the magical never-ending money card?”

Here’s how bad our lack of understanding of money has gotten, and how badly it’s affecting our kids. I always look for the little signs that our society is coming apart at the seams. The latest is a public service announcement billboard I saw that read “It Takes Courage to Save Money.” I thought that things had taken a turn a few years back when, during the State of the Union, Obama told us it took courage to raise your kids. Now it takes courage to save your own money? Is this what it has come to? We’ve so lost touch with the value of the almighty dollar that we have to have a public service campaign to remind kids that bread doesn’t just appear when you click your heels together?

And what message does this send about keeping your shit together in general? Twenty-five years from now what can my grandkids look forward to as far as PSAs? “It Takes Courage to Sit Up”? “It Takes Courage to Wipe”? “It Takes Courage to Chew and Even More to Swallow”?

I know I’m talking a lot about money, but I want to be clear as we come to a close about one thing. Sure, money helps, but I have a lot of bread and I’m still pissed off all the time. You should make as much money as you can, especially since I won’t be leaving you any. But don’t expect it to solve all your problems. Trust me, the whole “money doesn’t buy happiness” thing is actually true.

When you’re poor, you feel that the reason you’re unhappy is because you don’t have money. “I’m eating at the Shakey’s Bunch-of-Lunch buffet again. If I could just afford to go to a nice restaurant I’d be happy.” But then, sometimes those people get money and realize their lives are still filled with unhappiness and problems. And now that they can’t blame their poverty, they have to start looking within and changing and there’s nothing harder or scarier than trying to change your life. If you’re unhappy without money, you’ll be unhappy with money. Dr. Drew often says that we all hit our mean. Just like we have a biological homeostasis, we have an emotional homeostasis. We’re always trying to find balance and get back there when we’re out of whack, even if it sucked. So you are who you are, and getting a sixty-inch flat panel television is not going to change that. A little introspection, a little therapy and making different choices might.

I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been the guy in the Shakey’s booth with the Mojo potatoes thinking, “If I could just afford to go to Sizzler, that would be sweet. Then I’d be happy.” I could buy a Sizzler franchise right now, and I’m still not happy. And there have been times when I was broke and very happy. When I was a drunk teenager visiting Tijuana and didn’t have two pesos to rub together, I was quite happy. Having money doesn’t make you happy, being happy makes you happy.

And no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy friends. If you’re rich or poor, it doesn’t matter when it comes to friends. You can be broke as shit and still sit around with friends high on pot brownies and watch Caddyshack over and over again and laugh your ass off. As I noted earlier, a lot of times money comes between friends and ruins those relationships. You lend an old pal money, never get it back, stop talking to each other and have him be the one pissed at you.

Don’t buy into the myth that when you get to the top of the mountain you’ll be happy. It’s the constant chase that makes the one-percenter the one-percenter. The key to financial and career success is to never be satisfied. But that’s not necessarily the key to life success. No matter what you end up doing for a career, have the mind-set that you’re never done. Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Oprah wake up hungry every day. Especially Oprah. No one our society has deemed successful ever feels like they’re finished. The reason billionaires get mad when they go from the third-richest person on the planet to the eighth is not because they have a couple billion less. That’s more money than they, their kids and grandkids and the country of Chile will ever spend. It’s because to them, they lost. These are just ultra-competitive guys. They don’t see money as a way to purchase things. They see money as units of success. It’s simply a measurement of how hard they’ve worked, how hard they’ve beaten the competition, how much they’ve innovated and challenged themselves. But do you think they’re always happy?

Here’s the real message I want to end with, kids. Even if you don’t heed my advice, somehow become rich and successful and manage your money well enough to not fuck up your relationships, even if you can pull off the being rich and happy thing… what you should really be aiming for is satisfaction and gratitude.

We equate happiness and satisfaction. But they are actually two very different things. Our culture foists this upon us. Our society has created this myth that you’ll be satisfied if you can just stop driving that Camry and start driving a Lexus. We watch the Kardashians and The Real Housewives and think, “Why don’t I have what they have?” We have a constant stream of self-esteem wounds being pumped into our homes and mobile devices. Every commercial, every reality show, is “How come you’re not in charge? How come you’re not partying on a rooftop? How come you’re not walking a red carpet in a designer dress and a million-dollar necklace?” We’re taught to be disgruntled at all times, that there’s something better out there if we could only afford it.

And then, we’re taught not to earn those things. Between the lottery, casinos, subprime mortgages, Wall Street Ponzi schemes and reality shows we’re constantly barraged with messages about how everything we want to make our lives better we need to have right now. We’re either supposed to scratch off a ticket and win our happiness or be so pitiful that Ty Pennington and his bus full of experts come by and fix it for you. But satisfaction is earned. Chasing happiness is what drugs, junk food and amusement parks are for. Quick hits. But when you earn it, it’s so much sweeter. Going out for a meal is good, but cooking one for yourself feels better. Sucking off a drinking fountain at a high school is not a satisfying experience, but when you’ve been out running wind sprints it is. It’s not the things you accumulate, but how you accumulate them.