I use money to improve my life.

Improvement gets pictured as an upgrade: a better car, a bigger room.

Some of the best money ever spent is a subtraction. Somebody pays for a cleaner twice a month, and what they are actually buying is the end of a recurring argument. A dishwasher removes twenty minutes of resentment every night. A taxi removes the walk home you would otherwise have spent frightened.

The interesting test is not what a thing costs but what it deletes.

Look at what money has already taken off your plate. It is a shorter list than the one of things it added, and it tends to matter more.