According to a study by Northwestern Mutual and a health education company LLuminari, people who set financial goals, take steps towards achieving those goals, and those who spend within a budget find themselves happier, with a higher quality of life, and are optimistic. It’s a good thought for people who always think retirement is deferred happiness, this study showed that planning and saving for retirement had some present-day benefits as well. While it’s clear that it’s happiness derived from the fact that you are planning for the future (a future of uncertainty hardly helps you sleep at night!), it’s certainly better than feeling as though you’r pinching pennies now so that you can live happily later.
Or as the playwright George Bernard Shaw put it: “To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”
Very true!