Can money buy happiness?

Actually money cannot buy us happiness, however, I would absolutely say that it's better to have money than to not have money. Can you spend your way to a sunnier outlook on life? Sometimes it would certainly seem that way wouldn’t it?

We see the ads on television all the time that tell us if we I a certain luxury car we will be happier. Now, that's not to say we won't be happier driving a more comfortable, safer, prettier car but let's look at it from the material aspect of it. If one has the money to buy a luxury car and is able to afford it without it putting any stress in their lives around money, then certainly they feel good and happy about having a new car.

It’s a really fine line in making the distinction around some thing making us happy and feeling happy because we've purchased some thing that we wanted that’s new and that we can afford.

We are particularly seeing these days how many people bought many things that they could not afford and have absolutely no happiness. Truly they are as far away from feeling happy as they possibly could, because now they cannot afford them.

It's really being made manifest in the physical form for us to see how we really haven’t been able to make that distinction. Many people these days are going back to a much simpler way of life.

If one buys a luxury car they can't afford, life is anything but simple when it comes time to make that monthly payment. If they have purchased that luxury car by planning for it - absolutely knowing they have enough money for a down payment that allows them to afford the monthly payments when it comes time to make them - it's very simple. All they have to do is write the check and it's done.

There’s such a thing called ‘money misery’ but I would contend that it’s ‘money miserly’ that creates the ‘money misery’. What do I mean by this? What we are seeing lately is that we're never satisfied. We always think, “If we had just a little bit more money, we'd be happier,” says Catherine Sanderson of psychology professor at Amherst College. It's the thinking “If I had just a little bit more I'd be happier” that gets us into trouble. Because, when we believe that we need just a little bit more, we are really saying that we can never have enough. As we continue to go through life believing that we’ll never have enough, we continue to live the life of never having enough.

Once we get our basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn't make for a lot more happiness. What are the human needs? A roof over our head that is safe, food on the table, a nice car that is safe to drive and dependable that we can afford, and whatever else we have to have to support ourselves and/or our families.

What we are really looking for is financial security and, even more than that, financial serenity. What is going on in our society today is not so much the financial bankruptcy that we see but a spiritual bankruptcy that we don’t see and sometimes don’t even know to look for.

When we are spiritually bankrupt we can never get enough of what we don't want. What we don't want is misery, discomfort, sadness, anger, and any of the other feelings that come up that simply don't feel good. When we start looking at money and/or things as providing our happiness, then we are looking to the outside for our lives to get better. We have to look inside and from there bring out the happiness that we already possess to create more security in our lives.

What's happening is that we've overestimated how much pleasure we’re going to derive from having more. More than likely, many of us have, at one time, had more than enough in a 24-hour period.

That's one of the things about the 12-step program that I like so much. It's about living right here right now, one day at a time. When we get into thinking that we don't have enough, we need to bring ourselves right back to this moment and ask ourselves: “In this moment do I have enough?” Now, it may very well be that you don't have food at this moment, that you don't have a place to live at this moment, so for those people the answer is “No, in this moment I do not have enough.” That is why I said “many of us”. There will always be exceptions. I'm not speaking to the exceptions. I am not in the way negating those exceptions, but for the intention of this conversation, I am not speaking to those exceptions.

The truth is that while earning more may make you happy in the short term, you quickly adjust to that new “wealth” and everything that it buys you. Yes, you get an instant thrill and it feels really good but eventually if you come from a place of “I’ll never have enough”, when you do get more or enough, it wears off very quickly and you're right back to “I don't have enough, I want more and then I'll be happy.”

It's like setting a goal to lose 25 pounds and achieving that goal then saying, “no, maybe just another 5 pounds and I'll be good enough”. It starts the cycle all over again.

What we don't hear a lot of people talk about is the fact that more money can cause more stress. Not that having more money is more stressful but having more money creates the need to take more responsibility for the money you have.

What I mean by this is, having $100,000 takes more thought than having $1,000. Are you ready to step up to the plate of responsibility that having $100,000 brings to you?

Look at the history of lottery winners; they've won millions and within a year some of them have had nothing left. I believe that’s about having a millionaire consciousness and with developing a millionaire consciousness the million comes and with it also comes the millionaire responsibility.

There was a study done and quoted in Money magazine back in August of 2006 some of those statistics are quite interesting when it comes to happiness. It’s better to be rich than to be poor - 56% of people who make more than $75,000 a year say they are “very satisfied” with life. Only 24% of people who make $25,000 a year or less say they are “very satisfied” with life. That's the part of “having money is easier than not having money.” But then once you earn enough to cover your basic needs, being much richer doesn't make you happier. 42% of people who earn $50,000 to $89.9 thousand a year say they are “very happy.” Of the people who are in the $90,000 plus a year earning category, 43% say they are “very happy”, a difference of only 1%.

Once we reach a certain amount, let's say the $90,000 mark, having way more money than that is not going to create or make us happier. That is an inside job. So, I encourage you to look within and really examine what is your happiness factor? Where are you on a scale of 1 to 10 in happy? If we took money off the table where would you put yourself?

The truth is Americans have become richer. Again this is quoted in Money magazine from August of 2006. In 1957, the average income was $10,171 a year and 35% of the people were very happy. In 1980, the average income was $17,931 a year and 34% of the people were very happy down 1% with an increase of some $7,840 a year. In 2004, the average income, almost 3 times that of 1957, $27,237 a year and the percentage of people that were very happy was the same as in 1980 - 34%, 24 years later. So, I would contend that although Americans have become richer, we've also become more about stuff and material items.

People who value money highly are less happy than those who care more about love and friends. I would change that to say, people who value friends, love and family are also people who can value money highly. And when I talk about value I mean respect.

Respect yourself, respect your money, you will have both.

Reva Kussmaul
CVO – MoneyVisions
http://www.moneyvisions.net