The connection between money and happiness

The quick answer is, it depends

People usually answer this question incorrectly because they try to overgeneralize and to give a one size fits all answer instead of understanding that a human personality is too complex to be explained by a generic answer.

In this article i will tell you whether money can really buy happiness or not.

The truth about money and happiness

If a child was raised in such a way that he became a showy adult then most probably this person will feel extremely happy whenever he shows off and impresses people.

Now what if that person was really poor or if he has always wanted to buy an expensive sports car but never managed to do it? won't he feel sad? yes certainly that will add a lot of pain to his life and he might not be able to feel happy.

In such a case, money would certainly buy that person happiness provided that all other factors are constant.

So the first conclusion we can make is that money Can buy happiness for certain people.

What if there were other unmet needs?

What if a person was really poor and in the same time had no friends at all, will being rich make him happy?

At this case the level of happiness this person can reach if he became rich will be limited because of his loneliness. So if happiness was measured using a 1 to 10 scale and if the initial level of happiness of that person was 1 then becoming rich could give his happiness level a push up to 4 out of 10.

The man would never be able to bypass this 4 simply because he feels lonely.
If the man managed to make friends and fix his social life then his happiness levels will shoot up.

So in the this case, money enabled the man to buy partial happiness, and since true happiness can only be felt when you get rid of most of your big life problems then money can play a very big role in affecting your happiness levels.

Lack of money causes stress

If a person was always struggling to pay his bills and to find money to buy the things that he needs then he would experience a very high level of stress throughout his day and this level of stress will lead to unhappiness.

prolonged stress can be the main cause for depression, So in this case, lack of money lead to depression.

The conclusion

To some people, who are really in need of money, money can affect their happiness levels dramatically and the size of the effect will depend upon the other factors involved (such as loneliness in the previous example)

On the other hand, if the person have got enough money to meet his needs, even if he was poor, then money might not be the thing that can make him happy.

can money buy happiness? read this article to know the answer

www.2knowmyself.com, The ultimate source for self understanding

10,000,000 Million visits and counting. why you are not happy

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