What I'm Learning About Stability

They say "money doesn't bring happiness," but that really seems to depend on who you ask and what their life is like. I've never been the type to tie my own happiness to money or material things, but I've always understood how important it is to meet basic needs, like shelter, food, clothing, and paying your bills.

In my view, having your basic needs met doesn't bring happiness so much as it brings less stress. I say less stress because just getting by still leaves you in a fragile spot. Any unexpected turn can mess things up and bring back that deep stress. I believe that stress is what directly shapes our moods. Maybe it’s more accurate to say money acts as a mood booster by taking away some of these pressures.

True happiness is very personal. When a date recently asked me, "When are you happiest?" my answer came easily. My life has taught me that I find a special kind of joy and mental quiet when riding my bicycle. It's one of the rare times where my mind seems to completely shut down.

Needing that mental quiet is a big part of my daily life, as I often find it hard to quiet my thoughts enough to sleep early. I'm frequently up at night, working on my computer, reading, or even doing simple chores like laundry. My mind is wired to see tasks through. If I start something, or even just think about starting it, I feel like I have to finish it instead of putting it off. This led to a habit of napping during the day to make up for lost sleep, and my sleep scores were never very good.

A turning point came earlier this year, thanks to a date. She pointed out that my poor sleep quality would eventually affect my mood. Because I really liked her and didn't want my sleep habits to be a problem, I really tried to change. At first, I removed electronics from my bedroom, but that just led to more reading. So, I took a stricter approach. I would just lie in the dark until sleep came. The effort paid off. I finally got a full 8 hours and 12 minutes of uninterrupted sleep, with a sleep score of 95.

The connection between money problems and mental health became very clear to me after I met a man at Panera Bread. He was an engineering manager who had lost his job in 2023 and hadn't been able to find a similar permanent role since. You could feel the weight of his responsibilities. He has a wife and two young children, aged five and two, depending on him. His wife is now the family's main earner while he pieces together an income from whatever work he can find. Delivery gigs and low-paying short-term IT contracts.

He told me how he’d used up his 401k and part of an overseas pension just to cover bills, but that money ran out by March 2025. Now, he was four months behind on his mortgage. A first-time late payment had damaged his credit score, and a creditor then lowered his credit limit on already maxed-out cards. He was at a point where affording gas or paying his phone bill had become a struggle.

I later texted him to ask if his experience made him feel sad or stressed. His response was clear: "stressed." His thoughts are consumed by the challenge of meeting his bills and the cascading consequences for his credit and future recovery. This stress has taken over every part of his life. He shared that he'd given up playing soccer, a hobby he once enjoyed, and family outings were no longer possible. They are stuck in a housing trap. They hesitate to sell the house because a foreclosure would ruin his credit, making it impossible for them to rent a new place. The situation has even forced them to change their children's schools.

Here was a person with over fourteen years of tech experience and a U.S. master's degree, who consistently gets to the final interview stages with top companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, yet repeatedly falls short of an offer. His situation made me think about the bigger, and often invisible, economic forces that shape our lives.

This encounter connected with articles I read after that in the New York Times and Axios about the impact of AI on the job market. The articles highlighted a worrying rise in unemployment among recent college graduates and a strategic shift by some companies towards an "AI-first" hiring policy. They would check if AI could do a task before looking for a human employee. One tech executive said his company had stopped hiring below the mid-level L5 engineer because AI could handle the more junior tasks. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, gave an even more serious warning, saying AI could potentially get rid of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years.

As someone who works with technology as both a developer and a consumer, I've seen these trends myself. My own experience with AI includes a 16,000-mile cross-country journey in a car with supervised full-self-driving. The car skillfully navigated different traffic scenarios because of its training data. Yet, it wasn't perfect. It made its first big error at my final destination, hitting a small barricade. On another test, it handled a steep, narrow road well until it met a very sharp turn and just stopped, forcing me to take over.

These moments remind me of a truck driver I watched at a warehouse job. He could navigate incredibly tight spaces and park perfectly using only his side mirrors, never hitting anything. That natural human ability to understand small details, to keep learning, and to connect different ideas is something today's AI systems still struggle to copy.

So, my view is not that AI will replace all human jobs. Instead, I think it will lead to a big reduction in how many people are needed for many roles. If a team once needed 10 engineers, AI might let them do the same work with only five. This will create fierce competition for fewer jobs. The effects will also hit entrepreneurs. Where you could once build and sell software, big companies can now use their own engineers and AI to develop similar tools, creating a tough competitive environment.

These realizations have made me more cautious. My own software and consulting business started losing clients who found they could use AI for services we offered. With revenue declining, I had to part ways with three members of my team. These worries were on my mind earlier this year, especially with news of layoffs affecting people I knew, and the anxiety was a big reason for my sleep problems.

I count myself lucky. The conversations with the date I mentioned, with her expertise from working in the mental health field, were a huge help. I also benefit from ongoing therapy and the unwavering support of my incredible family and two dearest friends. But seeing firsthand how fragile stability can be, even for a hardworking person like the man I met at Panera, really reinforces an important idea. While money isn't the same as happiness, having enough to cover your needs and be stable removes a deep layer of stress. If that stress isn't dealt with, it can make every other part of life feel almost impossible to handle.