Back in the 1960s, the world’s richest man was a chap called Howard Hughes.

He was sort of like the Elon Musk of his day, only more eccentric (if that’s even possible).

Story goes that by the time he was in his fifties, Howard owned various airlines, casinos, hotels, aircraft companies and even a film studio.

Depending on how you measure it, he’d be worth tens of billions today.

Yet by all accounts Howard lived a thoroughly miserable life.

He was obsessed with germs and bugs. In fact, he was so obsessed that he created a multi-page guide for his staff just to explain how to prepare a can of peaches. Then he’d shut himself away in dark hotel rooms for months at a time, watching the same films over and over again. And all he ate was chocolate bars, chicken and the aforementioned peaches.

By the time Howard eventually popped his clogs, his hair, beard and fingernails had grown so long that the FBI had to use his fingerprints to confirm the body was actually his.

Blimey.

If there’s a better case study for the myth of “money buying happiness”, I can’t think of one.

Yet whenever I read the FT, listen to a podcast or idly scroll through Dimstagram, I can’t escape the experts telling me to invest my money in some sort of tracker or ISA or crypto fad. And from the way they bang on, it’s like financial investments are THE tried and tested path to happiness and salvation.

Before anyone accuses me of being “anti-investing”, I’m not saying don’t invest your money. I invest my money and if you have money to invest, I think it’s a sensible thing to do.

But lest the cautionary tale of Howard Hughes isn’t clear, there’s all the difference in the world between building a fortune and building a life. And you can certainly follow the advice of these financial experts and become richer year after year while your life becomes poorer and poorer.

Anyway, perhaps this is on my mind given my day job.

I work in a bank, after all. Investing money wisely is my employer’s bread and butter. Every day, the bank makes decisions about where its capital should be allocated and what return it will generate. And this way of thinking ripples out across the company like an undercurrent that colours thousands of actions every day. Which means everyone who works here is very focused on investing the bank’s money too.

Trouble is though, some of the best investments will never show up on a bank statement.

A recent report from Mental Health UK stated that 91% of UK adults experienced high or extreme stress in the past year at work.

91%!

That number does make me wonder if we’ve got our investment priorities a bit skew-whiff.

Again, I’m not saying making money is “bad” or anything like that. Money pays the mortgage, puts mac & cheese on the table and gives us the means to do some cool shit in our lives.

But what I am saying is this:

Do whatever you want with your moolah. But don’t forget you’re an asset worth investing in too.

If you’d like to make an investment in yourself right now and find more fulfilment in your day job as a result, one particularly cracking option (if I do say so myself) is my group coaching program The Inside Job.

It’s a modest investment by anyone’s standards (less than a dollar a day).

The next call kicks off at 7.30pm UK Time (2.30pm EDT, 11.30am PDT) on 2nd September.

That’s also the deadline to join.

If you’re interested, all the info is here:

https://tomgrundy.coach/the-inside-job/

To fulfilment,

Tom