Comments on: When Money Can Buy Happiness

By: Money and Happiness: A “Little” Paycheck Perspective « PR PRep

Money and Happiness: A “Little” Paycheck Perspective « PR PRep — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:33:54 +0000

[...] to the blog Personal Finance Advice When Money Can Buy Happiness is when the amount you make meets your basic life needs: shelter, food and clothing. When those [...]

By: green

green — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:22:08 +0000

I don’t think money can buy happines when you have very much money, it makes you crazy, but decent or avarage money makes your life better and healthy.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:12:20 +0000

Also note that, according to psychological research, relative deprivation/upward social comparisons are a major reason why people in the richest countries are not happier than those in other well-off countries. In other words: we don’t compare ourselves with those who have less than we do. We compare ourselves with those with flashier electronics and more expensive clothing, and in the midst of plenty we think we don’t have enough, contributing to dissatisfaction. Cultivating “enoughness” and seeing the big picture are more important to happiness than any absolute amount of money.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 21:15:06 +0000

“If you have a lot of money and are able to spend your time any way you want, youâ€™re not going to be happy if you havenâ€™t developed relationships or activities that make you happy. You will simply spend the time wondering how to spend the time â€” and why you arenâ€™t happy even though you have money.”

I cannot agree more with this statement. Not that I have a lot of money, but I am single and do OK for my day-job, so I have enough to choose where to spend and have the time. However, I woke-up one weekend morning, relieved that I was not going to work, however I was depressed that I had no ideas for what I was going to spend my precious two weekend days doing.

I have come to realize that, despite having the “golden handcuffs” at my current job, living here is really a waste of my life as I don’t have access to things I want to do in this town/area. I spend all of my week waiting for the weekend only to arrive at the weekend and have nothing to do.

It was at that point that I really understood the “money doesn’t buy happiness” thing. Of course, I would not be happy living in a cardboard box in the street, but I also would be willing to make half what I make now as long as I could move to Orlando, cover living expenses, a new computer every 1.5 years or so, and afford annual passes to amusement parks. This vision is driving me to make changes, but it’s tough to give-up a decently-paying, not-very-strenuous job for the “unknown” of a whole new town and life.

By: samerwriter

samerwriter — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:56:40 +0000

The trick is to avoid commensurate increases in your spending as your salary increases. Increasing spending causes two related problems:

First, it makes it difficult to save. So you never get the opportunity to buy time.

Second, when you do want to retire, your cost of living has increased so that you need a significantly larger nestegg to afford retirement.

To echo the sentiments in your post, I’ve found that the things I buy rarely buy me happiness. However having very little debt does buy me peace of mind, which certainly contributes to happiness.

I do think, however, that too much of this “peace of mind” can result in lack of motivation, and that may ultimately lead to unhappiness. I’m not sure where the balance is…

By: mapgirl

mapgirl — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:18:58 +0000

Thank you. That is a much more nuanced discussion about money and happiness. It separates out the direct relationship and properly associates money, happiness and time, or rather freedom to spend our time as we wish to actually create happiness.