Can Money Buy Happiness ? :-) | Your stories | Discussion forum

Money is one of the pillars of freedom.

Freedom is one of the pillars of happiness.

Enough is whatever one decides. Once you think you have enough, money is no longer a source of unhappiness.
And money can buy a lot of happiness, just not 100%.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin says it best
Having money allows you to move stressful unexpected events that cause anxiety into the nuisance category as you write the cheque to make the inconvenience of replacing the roof go away..
so at some level it certainly does bring an extra level of comfort which lends to happiness

I remember learning about this phenomenon during my undergraduate degree in psychology. It comes as no surprise that insufficient funds to afford basic needs (i.e., shelter, nourishment, and/or utilities) is associated with drastically lower self-ratings of happiness. Therefore, money most definitely can and does "buy" happiness.

More recent research essentially continues to reveal that, yes, money can and does buy happiness. The following is a paraphrasing of this journal article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120

"In the simplest terms, this suggests that for most people larger incomes are associated with greater happiness,” says Killingsworth, a senior fellow at Wharton and lead paper author. “The exception is people who are financially well-off but unhappy. For instance, if you’re rich and miserable, more money won’t help. For everyone else, more money was associated with higher happiness to somewhat varying degrees.”

Mellers digs into this last notion, noting that emotional well-being and income aren’t connected by a single relationship. “The function differs for people with different levels of emotional well-being,” she says. Specifically, for the least happy group, happiness rises with income until $100,000 (USD), then shows no further increase as income grows. For those in the middle range of emotional well-being, happiness increases linearly with income, and for the happiest group the association actually accelerates above $100,000.
_____

Conclusion: Yes, money still can and still does buy happiness, especially if you are already a happy person. 🙂

Happiness? I would pay to go back in time, to my younger years. Can I buy back my strength and natural radiance that I once had? Buy back the time lost on stupid things.

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it makes misery easier to tolerate.

Money allows us the ability to make choices which wouldn't be otherwise possible.