I wakesurfed yesterday with a friend, and it reminded me of this post I wrote almost exactly one year ago.
That article is as relevant as ever.
I’m sharing this as a two-part newsletter. Today is the first post, the one from one year ago. The next post is an update on how things have worked out over the past year.
There are important insights here for all of us wishing to live wealthier and happier lives.
Thursday, March 6th, 2026 | Austin, TX:
Malibu delivered my wakesurf boat last week. It’s winter in Austin, but it’s 74 degrees outside, and the water is comfortable with a $200 3/2 wetsuit. The lake–even on a beautiful sunny Sunday–is empty.
Lake Austin boat slips are on five-year waitlists and cost $2,000 per month to lease. The slips are filled with boats people don’t use. Lakefront homes cost $10 million. The most expensive home, called “The Legacy of Lake Austin”, was listed for $50 million in 2023. Home buyers paid a lot for water they don’t enjoy.
Similarly, you don’t see buyers of $10M+ homes on the beaches of Hawaii. Those who enjoy warm sand and a blue ocean are those living cheaply and surf every day. The wealthy work to make more money to buy more homes in beautiful places they barely use.
Why we buy stuff we don’t use
It’s easy to buy a boat. Give money to a salesperson. High financial cost, low time cost. It’s harder to use a boat. Get fuel, plan around the weather, contact friends to join you, and devote part of a day to boating. Low financial cost, high time cost.
I’ve only owned a boat for a week. But, I think part of the reason people say, “BOAT stands for bring out another thousand” and “the happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day they buy it and the day they sell it”, is that people don’t use their boats enough to justify their cost.
If you total the annual insurance, storage fees, maintenance costs, and depreciation and divide that by a low number of uses per year, such as one, the cost per use is high. Most people who buy boats love something about being on a boat–they like wakesurfing, water skiing, taking their kids tubing, or fishing. Yet, most watch TV instead.
If I don’t use my boat at least two to three times per week while in Austin, I’ll sell it.
When deciding which boat to buy, I knew I wanted a high-quality, great-for-wakesurfing boat. Since this is my first boat, I also wanted one that, if I damaged it running into a dock, wouldn’t sting too much financially. I thought about buying a Super Air Nautique G23 or Centurion Ri230, both top-of-the-line wakesurf boats, which cost around $250,000. I knew I could get a Malibu 22 LSV, a good wakesurf boat, for more than $100,000 less.
Not only would the Malibu be less expensive, and therefore less stressful, to own, but I could also use the extra $100,000 for something else. I could buy 266 private lessons with a professional wakesurfer. That’s three lessons every week for five years.
Buying a more expensive boat would have been easy; putting in the time to get decent at wakesurfing is hard.
We have more money than time, yet we want even more money
One of my favorite books is Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Dr. Michael Norton. The authors share how we can spend money in ways that make us happier and which expenditures don’t, according to scientific research. Here are four ways to buy happiness from Happy Money:
1 – Buy experiences: Spend money on unique experiences, vacations, tickets to shows, and small local events. Enhance the experiences by sharing them with a friend or family member.
2 – Buy time: Pay others to clean your house–or do chores you dread. For a couple of hundred dollars, enjoy a cleaner house, less stress, and more time to do what you enjoy.
3 – Pay now, consume later: Pay for your travel or experiences far in advance. Then, once the experience comes, you enjoy it without thinking about the credit card bill that comes afterward.
4 – Invest in others: You get a greater boost in happiness when spending money on others than yourself, especially when you can enjoy the expenditure with the person you give to. Buy a coworker coffee, take a friend to a movie, plan a birthday party for your sister, take your mom on a trip.
When does a large purchase make sense?
At some point, the extra utility we gain from investing in happiness-boosting experiences diminishes. We only have so much time and so much appetite for our hobbies. Most of us, however, far underinvest in experiences and far overinvest in things. If your life and calendar is full of quality time with those you love, and you couldn’t spend more money there if you tried, then buying a nicer home is worth it. You get a bigger yard, a better view, a more peaceful living environment.
Similarly, if buying a boat would stress me out because of the costs and maintenance, requiring me to work more to afford it, then buying a boat would be a dumb decision. However, I’ve been fortunate to make enough money that spending what’s required to maintain and store a nice wakesurf boat is affordable. Instead, I can use the expense to spend time doing a hobby I love, being in nature, and spending time with people I enjoy.
Experiences, time with friends and family, and spending money on others enhance our well-being; buying stuff, especially stuff we don’t use, doesn’t. Invest more in the former, less in the latter, and you’ll be happier–and will spend more time on the lake.