Money And Happiness

Does More Money Really Make Us More Happy?

Life start as a Baby

The moment you come out of your Mother's womb, Your parents will start thinking only about the extra expenses you will do if you are a boy or girl. If you are a girl then situation thinks about your marriage expense too. So Money always become part of your Journey from the moment you BORN. You cant run away from the money instead you need to embrace it and acquire it. Never waste a single second dreaming about it or trying to hug it for your future Ever.

Learn from your parents with what mistakes they did in their life and never repeat yourself anytime in your future at all. Most of the kids or boys will just want to enjoy their life as they get what they want from their parents always. But there are some who see how their life goes from their childhood itself and will always dream to change things whats going on in their life.

There are 3 phases in life when you start. CHildhood phase you can enjoy like anything even you dont study well doesnt matter at all. When you come to the agehood before college then you need to step up if you have some big dream unless you want to be entrepreneur. College phase comes with equal joy and seriousness to it. Those who want to pursue higher education they work very hard in their studies and get succeed in climbing up fast in the money ladder.

There are few people who are not engineers but will drive them as Leader since they have the qualities in born with them. From this internet age from 2020 you need to go through all the opportunities you have and use it wise. Money will never cry for you, so you need to earn as much as you can and there is no limit. You dont earn just to show people but to live comfortably in the age of 60+ that you keep in mind. Also in the early days never think any small job is small as you start small and grow much bigger sooner.

Money Psychology

Income may not be the most important contributor to how happy most people are, and there are good reasons, psychological and moral, to decry rampant materialism. But money matters, if only a bit. As Mae West once said, "I've been rich, and I've been poor; believe me, rich is better."

Here is another finding about money and happiness. When we compare the average life satisfaction of people who live in different nations, the wealth (GNP) of the nation is a strong predictor of the happiness of its citizens. With exceptions, the least happy nations are the poorest, and the happiest nations are the richest

Perhaps the Native American potlatch ceremony, marked by the ritualized giving away of one's most valued possessions, deserves attention from the perspective of positive psychology. Maybe we should devise and carry out our own versions of the potlatch ceremony, so long as they do not involve color televisions or air conditioners.

The new science of happiness starts with a simple insight: we’re never satisfied. “We always think if we just had a little bit more money, we’d be happier,” says Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, “but when we get there, we’re not.” Indeed, the more you make, the more you want. The more you have, the less effective it is at bringing you joy, and that seeming paradox has long bedeviled economists. “Once you get basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn’t make a lot more happiness,” notes Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the author of Stumbling on Happiness.

More money can also lead to more stress. The big salary you pull in from your high-paying job may not buy you much in the way of happiness. But it can buy you a spacious house in the suburbs. Trouble is, that also means a long trip to and from work, and study after study confirms what you sense daily: even if you love your job, the little slice of everyday hell you call the commute can wear you down. You can adjust to most anything, but a stop-and-go drive or an overstuffed subway car will make you unhappy whether it’s your first day on the job or your last.

An often misunderstood 2010 study by Princeton University researchers agreed that increased income does add to “emotional well-being” up to a point. From a daily survey of 1,000 US residents, the study found an annual income of $75,000 to be the point at which further rise in income didn’t guarantee further emotional wellbeing.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

For Deaton and Kahneman, the study authors, happiness can be defined in terms of “emotional well-being” and “life evaluation.” Emotional well-being can be defined as the day-to-day feelings a person experiences. These could be feelings of joy, sadness, stress or anger. While life evaluation is chiefly about the feelings people have about their life when reflecting on it.

The researchers concluded that only emotional well-being was the aspect of happiness that tops out at $75,000. Which is not the case for life evaluation which they found to increase with more money.

Therefore, they summarized that more money buys life satisfaction but not happiness while low income is linked to both low emotional well-being and low life evaluation. Simply put, when people earn well above $75,000, they feel more satisfied with how their life has worked out. But it doesn’t stop them from being cranky and irritable every now and then.

In yet another research into the correlation between money and happiness, the average life satisfaction of people who live in wealthier nations are generally found to be higher than those in poorer countries. Then again, other researched has found that those in poorer nations tend to find meaning in life more than their wealthier counterparts. This is due to the fervent religiosity of poorer nations which is often absent in more affluent countries.

We decided to look at happiness trends through the lens of class, specifically via income and education. Among white Americans in the 1970s, adults with and without a college degree were equally likely to say they were “very happy” – around 40%. But by the 2010s, there was an education gap in happiness: Only 29% of those without a degree said they were very happy, compared with 40% of those with a degree. The same was true for income: The difference in happiness by income level grew steadily larger from the 1970s to the 2010s.

In a society with more income inequality, the gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots” is more stark, with fewer belonging to the middle class. That’s partially because the cost of many key needs, such as housing, education and health care, have outpaced inflation, and salaries haven’t kept up even as workers became more productive.

How Money Affects Happiness

The big question is, “Can money buy happiness?” There’s no simple answer. “It seems natural to assume that rich people will be happier than others,” write psychologists Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener in Happiness (Blackwell Publishing, 2008). “But money is only one part of psychological wealth, so the picture is complicated.”

There is a strong correlation between wealth and happiness, the authors say: “Rich people and nations are happier than their poor counterparts; don’t let anyone tell you differently.” But they note that money’s impact on happiness isn’t as large as you might think. If you have clothes to wear, food to eat, and a roof over your head, increased disposable income has just a small influence on your sense of well-being.

To put it another way, if you’re living below the poverty line ($22,050 annual income for a family of four in 2009), an extra $5,000 a year can make a huge difference in your happiness. On the other hand, if your family earns $70,000 a year, $5,000 may be a welcome bonus, but it won’t radically change your life.

In their personal-finance classic Your Money or Your Life (Penguin, 2008), Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin argue that the relationship between spending and happiness is non-linear, meaning every dollar you spend brings you a little less happiness than the one before it.

Comforts. After the basics are taken care of, you begin to spend on comforts: a chair to sit in, a pillow to sleep on, a second pair of pants. These purchases, too, bring increased fulfillment. They make you happy, but not as happy as the items that satisfied your survival needs. This part of the curve is still positive, but not as steep as the first section.

Luxuries. Eventually your spending extends from comforts to outright luxuries. You move from a small apartment to a home in the suburbs, say, and you have an entire wardrobe of clothing. You drink hot chocolate on winter evenings, sit on a new sofa, and have a library of DVDs. These things are more than comforts—they’re luxuries, and they make you happy. They push you to the peak of the Fulfillment Curve.

Overconsumption. Beyond the peak, Stuff starts to take control of your life. Buying a sofa made you happy, so you buy recliners to match. Your DVD collection grows from 20 titles to 200, and you drink expensive hot chocolate made from Peruvian cocoa beans. Soon your house is so full of Stuff that you have to buy a bigger home—and rent a storage unit. But none of this makes you any happier. In fact, all of your things become a burden. Rather than adding to your fulfillment, buying new Stuff actually detracts from it.

The Conclusion

Money can lend you the opportunity to have memorable experiences. Although you do not need a lot of money to have certain experiences, to travel the world and do so comfortably, significant amounts of money can go a long way. Therefore, spending money on experiences will give you many moments of happiness as well as positive memories to look back on.

One important point to note is that the experiences you pay for should be ones that you genuinely enjoy, not just things that society values. If you hate going to concerts, for example, then splurging to go to a show is not a good use of your money.

Money can also enable you to learn new things. You could buy musical instrument lessons or pay for a fitness instructor to get into better shape. Picking up new skills and finding hobbies that we love will make us happier. Consequently, it is worthwhile to spend money to get more out of your hobbies and interests.

Another great way to spend money is on people you care about. Helping a sibling, parent or friend through a tough time can be a great feeling. Even being able to throw extra money into a birthday party for your child or a good friend will make you happier.

An underrated way to spend your money is on saving yourself time. There are many tasks we do throughout the day that we do not enjoy. These differ for everyone, but examples might include doing the laundry, cooking, driving and doing household chores.

One of the largest struggles faced with buying things is that, although they are novel and exciting at first, they become normalized and you forget to appreciate them. That is why, generally, experiences tend to create higher happiness levels than items.