Can Money Buy You Happiness?
It’s a silly question, but I understand why so many people ask if being rich makes you happy. We’ve been programmed to believe that the answer is “No.”
Research analyzing over 450,000 responses distinguishes between emotional well-being and life evaluation. While life evaluation steadily increases with higher income, emotional well-being improves with income only up to about $75,000 annually. Low income amplifies emotional distress from challenges like divorce and poor health, indicating that high income boosts life satisfaction more than everyday happiness.
Read on for our insights about if money buys happiness.
Key Takeaways
- Money can help to buy love, good health, and fulfillment, but some more effort is needed.
- Old money may provide greater opportunities for happiness than new money.
- The rich can make a social impact through charitable donations.
Can Money Buy Love?
Decades ago, Liverpool’s most famous quartet, The Beatles, offered what seemed like sage wisdom when they sang, “I don’t care too much for money; money can’t buy me love.”
However, they needed to be corrected, and the catchy tune led generations astray from something that could bring them great joy: money.
Money can indeed help to buy love. Think about it. Money buys dates, gifts, security, comfort, and, most of all, time.
You need time and efforts to cultivate love, and you only have time if you have money. Money buys happiness in the form of financial freedom — the freedom to push the world’s busyness away to spend moments with those you care about.
Without money, you are under the thumb of a hard world, and often, there is less time for love. Money and happiness go hand in hand when financial freedom lets you spend quality time with loved ones. But you can’t buy trust, respect, and loyalty only with money, these things take time, effort and need to be deserved.
Can Money Buy Good Health?
In America, we don’t have socialized health care. That means if you want good health, you need to pay for it.
Even if you have great health insurance, it often doesn’t cover the following resources to improve your health:
- Therapy where you can talk out your problems with a trained professional and improve your mental health
- Holistic treatments like acupuncture, massage therapy, and naturopathy
- Gym memberships that give you a place to work out and improve your physical health
- Fitness programs with a personal trainer
- Nutritional programs that can help you get your diet on track
All of the above can greatly increase your health, which is closely correlated to greater happiness. Do you know what else they all have in common? That’s right — they all require money.
Not only that, money also allows you to live in safer and healthier living conditions with better sanitation and lower pollution levels. This can reduce the risk of health hazards and improve your overall well-being.
Old Money vs. New Money
One of the greatest literary comparisons of old money to new money is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In the novel, the titular character, Gatsby, has found new wealth and hopes to win the love of his life, Daisy.
However, Daisy represents old wealth, which Gatsby cannot achieve no matter how much new wealth he accumulates.
Old money is generational wealth earned by one’s ancestors. One assumption about old wealth might be that if you grew up with money, you grew up with opportunities for refinement that someone with new money would not have had access to.
We won’t go into too much depth here about the merits of these arguments. However, we will say that there may be some logic to the idea that old money may lead to greater happiness than new money, if only because the resources that money offers are ingrained into the lives of those with old money.
These resources include upbringing, financial education, and social networks.
In the self-help book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, we learn that rich parents set their kids up for greater success by using logic and tools inherent to them. Poor dads can learn these traits, but those with old money live this way instinctively.
For instance, a rich dad may teach his kids about financial literacy from a young age. That means his kids will grow up knowing how not to take on too much debt, which will help them enjoy more financial freedom, which can lead to greater happiness.
Lottery Winners Stories
Those who disagree with the thesis of this article may point to the stories of lottery winners like William “Bud” Post. Many of these miserable tales of people winning a lot of money and ultimately ending up in despair may seem like proof that money doesn’t buy happiness.
However, in most of these cases, it was not the money that ruined the people’s lives. It was the misuse of money and ultimately losing the money that led to despair.
There are examples of people who win the lottery and use the money in a way that brings them greater happiness.
Take Cynthia Stafford. She won $112 million in the lottery in 2007. Before this incredible windfall, she was attempting to raise her brother’s five kids after his tragic death.
Winning the lottery made it possible for Stafford to realize her personal dreams while also providing the best upbringing for her family.
She was able to put aside the daily struggles and stresses that had robbed her of happiness for so long. In its place was the realization of her dreams, personal growth, and happiness for her entire family.
Stafford is an example of how money combined with wise decision-making can lead to greater happiness.
Still not convinced? Take Brad Duke, a fitness club manager who won $220 million in 2005. After winning the lottery, he kept his job and didn’t let money change him.
He consulted a financial advisor to set a plan for his new fortune. He is now worth over a billion dollars. He maintained his financial discipline and didn’t allow the win to change his lifestyle, learning from the mistakes of previous winners.
So, can money buy happiness? It certainly can help to get it, but everything depends on you.
The Rich and Charities
To paraphrase Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, “With great money comes great responsibility.” Those with wealth can find happiness by donating that money to worthy causes. Even research shows that spending money on others, including charities, can make you happier than spending it on yourself.
In fact, some of the world’s richest people are also the most charitable. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, continues to donate the majority of her billions of dollars to charity.
She’s given away more than $14 billion to 1,600 nonprofit organizations, helping causes like racial equity, public health, education, and environmental stability.
Most of us could never dream of helping the world as much as Scott has helped it. But she never could have done what she did without money.
There is satisfaction and happiness that only comes from having the resources to make a difference, and more often than not, that resource is money. So, when people say money can’t buy happiness, they may be missing the point.
Work Ethic and How to Get Rich
Whether money buys happiness is a debate that will continue forever, but we can all agree that it’s nice to have money.
The way to get it, if you don’t already have it, is through hard work and persistence. By studying the frugal habits of the super rich, we can see that another trait of having wealth is making smart financial decisions.
If you work hard and make good decisions with your money, you can build your wealth over time.
Does money make you happy? Being rich can make you happy. Rich people are happier people. Money can help to buy happiness. Realizing these truths can be the first step toward building your own wealth and become happier. We wish you luck in your journey toward more money and more happiness.
