Can Money Buy You Happiness?

By Kaniethonkie

There are volumes of published research on money and happiness. Trying to find out if money can truly buy you happiness from research is like well, trying to make more and more money to make you happier.

Here is a quick look at two big issues and making big money…

Poverty takes the biggest toll on one’s physical and emotional well-being. So getting out of poverty generally makes people a lot happier. After that, earning more money makes a much smaller impact on happiness, but it still makes a positive one. At this point people generally live what we call or think of a middle-class lifestyle. So the point is…earning ENOUGH money is an important factor in most people’s happiness but it isn’t everything.

It’s clear that for most people, being poor can diminish happiness and being middle class can increase it – but what about the rich? Well, it turns out the rich are in fact no happier than the rest of us. In fact, it has been proven being wealthy has no measurable impact in the degree to which people report feeling happy on a daily basis and can actually diminish some of the everyday joys of life. So… there is a limit – more and more money doesn’t keep making people happier.

Let’s try living richly: 2 Problems and 2 Solutions

There are two reasons why earning more and more doesn’t make us happier and happier – and we can all use their lesson to make our lives rich in the ways that really do matter.

Very high earners generally spend a great deal of time working and thinking about working and relatively less of their time doing things they enjoy with people.

The FIX. The most important thing we can do to increase our happiness is to strengthen our relationships and spend more time with the ones we love. Earning a living demands trade-offs so be clear about your priorities. Set real limits and don’t trade away what you can never get back. So staying late at work or taking your son to his lacrosse game? Your son is young only once in his life.

We tend to measure our own financial success in comparison to others (for right or wrong). And we tend to measure against those who earn somewhat more than we do. So when our incomes rise so do our frames of reference for comparison. Instead of comparing ourselves to the family with the new car, we start comparing ourselves to the family with the new house and we still feel dissatisfied.

The FIX. Social comparison really gets in the way of happiness, but comparing seems to be hard-wired into our brains. So when I feel the urge to compare, I try to cast my net wider than the nicer neighborhood down the road. I think about all the ways my own life is wonderful and appreciate how fortunate I really am. The benefits of this are two-fold; I generate less jealousy and I find myself more and more grateful for the people who are in my life, and thinking less and less about what isn’t.