We live cheaply. By choice.

I don’t talk about it, usually, because it’s difficult to say anything and walk the tightrope between people’s pity if they get the impression we have to, and them thinking we’re holier-than-thou if they don’t.

But sometimes I wish I could explain, so I’m going to give it a try.

When we got married, I was used to spending whatever I felt I needed and not looking too far ahead. That changed partly because my wife is a more disciplined type, but also because we wanted to buy a house, and this was in the lingering aftermath of the financial crisis and borrowing money was tough.

So we cut spending. Then more. To beyond what I thought was the bone.

I counted myself lucky that I’d bought things previously that were really good and still lasting, because we bought nothing more that we didn’t absolutely need.

It wasn’t fun, and I didn’t like it. But we got our house, and survived the first mortgage period with punishing payments.

… and this is where things get interesting. At least for me.

If you read psychology literature, one of the surprising things about people is that we all have a natural happiness level, and nothing shifts it very much, for long. If you win the lottery, you’ll celebrate, but give it a while and you’ll feel much as you did before. If you get permanently injured somehow, you’ll wonder if life is worth living, but find in due time that you feel much as you did before.

And the same applies to the things you spend money on. To my surprise, I’ve proved this.

For long enough, we simply didn’t do the things that needed money … and life turned out fine. We enjoy life anyway. For me, I was as happy as I’d been before. Which was a revelation.

Emotions are complex things, and happiness is not all that counts for wellbeing. “Money can’t buy happiness”, people say.

Well, to a point, that’s true.

Yes, people settle into their natural state of happiness whatever their situation. But without money there’s constant stress, constant worry, regular panic and regular inconvenience. Money makes those things go away, which is worth a lot.

So that’s what I noticed as we crested the wave, equity built in the house, payments reduced and we earned more and things become comfortable. I’d got used to spending less and being as happy. But the comfort of knowing we didn’t have to worry was a multiplier of that happiness.

Meanwhile, I notice that what people do as these things happen is that they trade up in their lives. It’s expected. If you can spend more, you do spend more. Bigger house, better car, restaurants, holidays further afield.

… and the happiness stays about the same over time, because that’s the iron law of human nature. The one thing people seem to get out of it is the satisfaction of assuming that others think they’re happier.

Maybe I was lucky that things happened as they did for me, going fairly quickly from free-spending to no-spending to earning well, quick enough to notice how I reacted to each. But it struck me that the treadmill is ridiculous.

If we react to extra money by spending extra money, we keep our satisfaction as it was, and forgo the additional peace of the cushion we could have had. And we raise the stakes in our lives, because we need to keep it up, knowing that we’ll be more miserable if we lose what we’ve got used to.

So in our case, we made the conscious decision that as our income rose beyond what we’d previously dreamed of, we’d stay as we were, with the things that already made us happy. We each have things we do spend on, but they’re rare treats, because treats still have emotional power.

When people say “life is short, you should enjoy it”, it’s the treats that count.

And we don’t have to worry about bad times too much, because we haven’t squandered the good.

Monks of every religion will tell you that happiness comes not from what you get, but from freeing yourself of wanting things. And none of us believe them, do we? But it is true.

So we live cheaply.