Money & Career

Dear Caroline, I have a co-worker who just came back from vacation looking like a totally different person.We’ve all noticed that her face is much fuller and her chin is totally different. We’re pretty sure she’s had plastic surgery.

Don Draper and his fellow ad men live a mythical kind of life – lush Manhattan apartments, deluxe trips to LA, and cocktails all day long. It’s miles away from the kind of work life most of us have today and that makes a great way to escape to another time every Sunday night. But there are also some important life lessons we can learn from the folks at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, especially when it comes to money. No we can’t turn back time and live it up like Don etc., but we can take away these five lessons about how we handle our own finances:

Do diet: Slash your grocery bills and your waistline with these simple tricks for eating well for less

Being in a rush all the time is bad for your psyche – and it’s also really hard on your wallet, whether you’re shelling out money to save time or, like me, paying for accidents and mistakes made while rushing around. I think we all need to slow down a bit – sure, we might end up getting less done, but it could also help us to spend less money and, as an added benefit, enjoy our lives more.

Turns out it doesn’t take millions of dollars to make most people happy. Princeton economist Angus Deaton and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemen conducted a U.S. study linking human behaviour and finance. According to their findings there is a specific dollar amount or income plateau after which earning more money has no measurable impact on your level of contentment.