I’d agree and disagree just based on my personal experience. I think a lot has to do with a person and their circumstances.
I agree in that money, to a point, tends to make happiness easier. The security that can come with having money and wealth can get rid of alot of stress and anxiety that can eat at people and chew at you preventing you from fully enjoying life. Having enough to be able to do things you enjoy obviously helps- but having enough that you can do the things you enjoy without a “guilt” or anxiety that you might need that money for something else or you kNow you’ll fall short elsewhere because of it let’s you just be in the moment. Obviously more money means more options generally- if you’re in the mood to learn the drums and have no drums- that whole process is a lot easier or more possible if you can just buy a set of drums and get rid of them no worries if you get bored or don’t like it.
It’s not impossible but a bit hard to go to Maldives for a week if you don’t have the money for it, and having the money to do so once in a lifetime and being able to decide you “feel like Maldives” any given month or week is another thing. That’s where circumstances comes in a lot too though- if you like to surf and live in landlocked middle America- flying to the coast or to some far off land every time you want to surf is going to be a hobby that requires much more money than for someone who lives 5 minutes from a major surfing beach. For the kid living near the beach- surfing or swimming etc. might seem the obvious choice for low cost entertainment- but not everyone who lives near a beach likes those things. If you grow up in a city or town it may be easy to go to the library and entertain yourself for eternities for free- in a more remote or rural setting that might not be as feasible. In rural America you (used to) could plink with air guns or small caliber weapons for cheap-
Shoot cans or varmint hunt- or cheaper still were bows- generally home made bows and arrows that worked but weren’t great.
I don’t endorse the dangerous hobby- but swimming in irrigation canals after a long bike ride was another rural one. So there certainly are lots of potential options to enjoy oneself depending on where they live for little or no money- or starting with little to no money (as some hobbies can help pay for themselves or even make money while having fun…)
So what makes a person happy? What does a person need to be happy? It all depends on the person I guess. I wouldn’t say that no one was happy 50,100,300 years ago and in most regards most people had way less than we do now as options or as wealth. Can we say that they were less happy than us? I don’t know. I’ve spoken to people born as far back as in the 1800’s who seemed pretty happy with life and at least say they wouldn’t trade their childhood for ours. I’ve also spoken to people who wished they’d grown up..
.. in todays world with what we have. So it’s hard to say.
Money itself doesn’t bring happiness. If you were stranded alone on a deserted island you’d probably be happier to find a crate with $10,000 in provisions, tools, equipment, entertainment, and supplies every other month than a crate with $50,000 cash in it every other month. If you ever got rescued and managed to survive that long without supplies then maybe you’d be happier with the cash crates lol.
But like, there are levels too. In a market with million plus dollar homes like many areas- if you’re making $100k a year and you’re single you can be pretty comfy- but starting from zero savings you have a while before you could bid on a home. $10-20k extra a year wouldn’t be bad- but it’s not going to drastically change your life or how you can live at that point.
There is also a sort of stress for the money metric. Most of us will generally feel like we aren’t paid enough for what we must do or go through for work. That said- there are jobs that are just not worth it to some people. I landed a job in my mid to late 20’s making about $6k a month. That isn’t a lot now, but back then it was very good money. I was working 100+ hours a week. I had basically enough time to get ready for work, get to work, work, and sleep. I ate at work when I could. Weeks were 6 days and sometimes 7. The job was competitive, high stress, and often distasteful. They also constantly tried to cheat you out of money- which if you’re making $6k a month you’d think a couple hundred here or there wouldn’t matter, I’d say it does, but when all you were doing with your life was making money, being cheated your money was like having all you’d sacrificed made meaningless.
So I quit. I went and took a job making MUCH less and it would be a long time before I made that kind of money again at an actual job. I can do long hours, I can stomach distasteful work etc. but all those things together with the demands of the job- it wasn’t for me. I hated every minute and was miserable. I was 100x happier making 5x less money at a job that I found interesting and enjoyable. Not just happier in work- happier in life. Of course- I was unmarried and without kids etc. If I had a family to support… things might be different on how losing that income made me feel vs. no longer having as much money to spend on stupid crap.
Family is an interesting part of the equation and an interesting counter balance to money. The idea that “money does buy happiness” has become hip in recent years online. But… we could argue family brings unhappiness too? I mean- if you don’t have anyone to support but yourself- you really don’t need as much money- a trip to Disney for 1 is cheaper than for 4. The price of McDonald’s for a family will buy you alone a steak dinner etc.
of course we know family can make us happy… except.. not really. If family made us happy- who would be depressed as long as they had a good family? We tell people this all the time- “it isn’t your fault…” etc. and it isn’t- because family can’t make you happy. Family can help you be happy, give you things to be happy about, share moments that can bring happiness- but they don’t “make you happy.” Well… they do for some people. For some people just knowing they have a family is enough they can be happy whenever they think about it…
And ultimately part of that comes down to what we are grateful for or what we take for granted in life. To be clear- in chemical depression external factors aren’t so much an issue. Don’t take it that way like “oh- you can only be depressed if you are ungrateful…” depression generally inhibits our ability to be grateful, part of therapy often involves reminding oneself they have things to be grateful for. But speaking of non depressed people- some people are just happier people. They wake up and are grateful to have a shot at another day of experiences and life. They live in their gratitude for friends or family or what they have. Playing off “money can/can’t buy happiness” and “families make you happy/unhappy”- ambition. Ambition can be the thing that makes us happy, the thing that helps us find happiness, or the greatest roadblock to happiness in our lives. Let me get all “monk” on you here- but desire and attachment are held in many very old and established schools of thought as..
.. the roots of unhappiness or evil. Even religions like Christianity are full of such messages- preaching that what’s of this earth is fleeting and one needs focus on the eternal after this more. Telling people to avoid overindulgence in many earthly pleasures or vices. Telling people not to put worldly things above their faith or their obedience to God- who basically command to be nice to people and not be selfish.
So it’s pretty wide spread in spiritualism and religion- this is temporary and being too attached or invested init leads to bad things or a bad life. Ambition is quite the opposite of being content with what one has isn’t it? It’s literally the desire to go beyond what one is or has. It can be noble- to want the power to help people or whatever else- and I don’t think ALL ambition is bad- but it often is an unhealthy expression.
What we seek and why and how and what we are willing to do to reach it factor in- but so does how we deal with it when or if we fail. If you were perfectly content with whatever life handed you and never died for more, you’d not want what you didn’t have, you’d not fail or feel lacking. Of course in the real world that also means most of us would probably starve since food doesn’t regularly just fall into our laps in nature. So it makes sense in evolution why ambition is a trait that was passed on and it makes sense why it is so often valued in society. My point isn’t don't be ambitious or ambition is bad- the point is that ambition is different in each of us. Some people HAVE to be the best and will never stop trying. Others reach a point where they feel “good enough.”
A person who feels like 3rd place is “good enough” probably wouldn’t have their life satisfaction greatly enhanced by a bunch of first place wins- but a person who feels they must be first for it to matter may be very unhappy if they keep getting third. There’s no universal “happy life.” There are things the majority of humans will like and things the majority won’t- but your dreamier and mine and someone else’s are likely all very different just like what I do for fun and what you do for fun may be totally different. Some people are crazy for pro sports and some don’t understand the big deal. Many of us could not get excited for a symposium on the formation of atmospheric pressure zones or a detailed review of urban traffic patterns in Chicago- but someone out there would call that a great weekend.
Happiness is a relative thing. Money- within certain boundaries and conditions- can make it easier to find your happiness, or at least to entertain yourself for a moment. It can’t ultimately make you happy. So much that we want can’t be bought with money, and as having money can teach you,
We can quickly grow accustomed to things that were once unthinkable or luxuries so that their presence doesn’t really make us happy, we just get unhappy at their absence. At a certain amount of money one can even become lost. Some people can do one or two things forever and never get bored- unless those things cost a lot of money though a person like that could be happy as long as they had enough for those things and general life.
But things do tend to get old for most of us. This is part of why the rich tend to be so extra. To some people a place like red lobster is a “fancy meal” for special occasions. If they had the money to eat their everyday it probably would get old- and they’d probably…
.. at some point have “better” food and red monastery would become like McDonald’s to them. But eventually that “better food” might get old or seem low quality. So you end up eating exotic crazy stuff because what do you do to have something “special” or “different” when you can afford to eat whatever you want whenever you want? How long before parties or fast cars or bedding models becomes just a regular thing and loses the novelty or excitement?
For some people that’s not a worry- for others it is. When you have so much money you don’t have to ever work- you may find yourself bored in life. Like after you’ve beat a game and unlocked everything and have so much money and all the best items and have been basically everywhere and done all the mini quests etc- it can still have its moments or you may come back for nostalgia time to time- but what if you were stuck in that world where you were basically untouchable and there weren’t any states or Goals asides one you make up to keep..
Busy?
There is a point in wealth and financial success where you can find yourself without any “challenge” or “goal” that can be incrementally rewarded. Using video games again- imagine a game where your skills are all maxed out and you’ve done everything in the game 10x over, but you have to keep playing and all you are doing is basically leveling up even though you can’t raise stats or skills- just leveling up so you can see how many skill points you can gain even if you don’t need them. You can sit by a creek or hunt random enemies for the 10,000th time but…. It’s going to be less fun and eventually you’ll probably be unhappy playing.
So it’s a fine point but money can help you open the door to happiness but only you can find happiness and you can have money without happiness and vice versa, or have both. Circumstances and personality etc. matter a lot.
That's very true. My sister ex husband make something like 20k per month but he spends it all and he's the most miserable man I've met. I live on less than that per year and despite my disabilities I'm a lot happier.
You bring a lot of happiness karlboll, so I’d hope you’d have your fill as well. And yeah- I don’t know if some people are just “wired” with a disposition towards unhappiness and can’t REALLY be happy unless they learn/unlearn how (but often don’t think to or want to put in the effort at it) or if there’s something else. I also don’t know if there is some correlation between the personality type and lifestyle common in society towards gaining wealth and traits of unhappiness- but I do know that a lot of wealthy people are just miserable folks.
I guess I could sum up all the stuff above much better by saying that happiness in the sense that money can afford it is dependent largely on having what we want and need or being able to do what we want in life. One of the most successful people I know lives in a room at their mothers home, has no degrees, and works a service job for modest pay and has done so for maybe twenty or so years. Some who know this person shake their heads and wonder what a person our age is doing with their life to choose such a life and not try or work at more. I think they are perhaps the most or one of the most successful people I know and perhaps have ever met. They’re overall happy in life. They do the things they enjoy, the things they enjoy just happen to be playing video games and spending time with their family and watching Tv. They enjoy their job and it allows them the flexibility to spend most of their time- even at work- doing what they want.
That really is a big part of it all- what do we base our own happiness on? Some people couldn’t be happy if they didn’t feel they were impacting the world or meeting or exceeding societal expectations or norms. Overall happiness tends to come from a variety of places for most people- things like a sense of self worth, a sense of belonging and companionship, a sense of achievement, etc. I’m not going to judge- I mean- we look down on videogames after but the stock market is just a giant multiplayer game that’s entirely micro transactions. Made up numbers in a set of man made rules where the goal is generally to achieve the “highest score” possible for the player through various tactics. Why should I take a wall street trader any more seriously or hold them higher than a master at Fantasy Star Online?
The only argument really that can be made is that such a life is selfish- lived only for one’s own happiness perhaps. I won’t argue the point beyond to say that when we are talking about wether a person is happy or not we aren’t talking about wether that happiness is “good” or “bad,” that’s a different conversation concerning what of any responsibility humans have to be constructive.
To really change that we’d need to change how society looks at success and it’s expectations and values so that instead of things like money or material possessions or family and “legacy” we judged on a basis of what actual and real good vs. harm any person and their actions contribute to the world. Society will generally call you a “success” and you can be made a role model simply by getting murderers set free on technicalities or peddling legal drugs that destroy communities or if you make a product that enriches many lives using exploited labor to do it. The people who decide wether your actions are…
.. sum total “good” or “bad” tend to be the people who stand to receive direct or indirect benefit and little or no discernible harm. When you ask a random sampling of people who’s entertainment and comfortable lifestyle and commerce revolve around a device if it is worth the high human or environmental cost generally born on those far across the globe if the benefits are worth the cost- they’ll tend to justify it.
When you ask the people who suffer for their benefit the answer may be different- of course the people who suffer for the benefit generally aren’t in a position to speak or act power to their opinions in the first place or they wouldn’t be exploited to start. Sadder still- they may say yes. They may say yes simply because exploitation is generally better than death objectively. Living in terrible conditions for poverty wages can be considered a step up from dying from lack of what little such exploitation may provide. So sometimes it isn’t as simple as
“Stopping” the bad behavior to “help” the situation. If a village in the desert was suffering because their only water source was full of lead, if you came in and sealed off all the water to stop the lead poisoning they would all die faster and more surely from lack of water. If you cap the well and just go back to your life feeling good about how you “saved a those poor suffering people” that’s the end of the story for you- for them it is not.
So there are complexities and nuances as is usually the case in life, but a large source of unhappiness in much of the more developed world comes from these ideas of what we must have, what it means to “be a loser.” You aren’t married by X age? You don’t have your own place or own a house by X age? You don’t make $X dollars? You have no kids at X age? Your kids didn’t go to X fancy school?
What we drive, if we drive- have you traveled? Where have you been? What is your job? Where do you live? Having name brands and this lifestyle that is pushed on us by media and companies and peers…. And there are cliques of sorts- so the more people we want to like/approve of/respect us- the more that takes because… this clique cares about what you make or what big name companies you’ve worked with. This clique cares about what and how many start ups and “missions” you’ve been with. This one care about how much or where and when you volunteer. These ones care about your politically activity and awareness, these ones care about your achievements and awards and academic credentials, most care about who you know but who each considers “worthy” differs.
So flooded with all of that- hardly a person on earth if anyone isn’t coming up short in someone’s eyes. You can make all the money and be politically and socially active and blah blah blah-
Think you have all the boxes checked, you golf and surf and skydive and all the things that someone will ask about or want to talk about- and then you meet someone who is like: “what a shame. You’ve done all that but you’ve never just taken a year off to <follow this band><volunteer in XYZ place><etc.>?” Or some kid that scoffs it off because you have a lame social media and no TikTok cred ir whatever the current platform would be. And if someone is the type that has to have it all- that will eat at them. The things they just can’t.
So it does come down to your own… satisfaction I suppose. Satisfied doesn’t mean we don’t think we could or would want more or to do more; but it means we are reasonably ok with things.
Speaking of disability- I was on long term disability for a bit when I was younger and I was very happy then overall. I could mostly do what unwanted barring those things my disability precluded, and I had enough money to enjoy myself a bit and get by. My days were mine for what I pleased and it was nice. When that ended I went back to work. I wasn’t happy. So I figured if I wasn’t going to be happy, I might as well be unhappy and have money, so I worked hard to make as much as I could. I was content in that my life became work. A rare true day off without some task or side gig was usually just me wandering about. I’d thought that if I made all this money and was always working so was saving lots of money- when I didn’t have work I could have a blast. It didn’t work out that way. I’d buy things and not have time to enjoy them. Most of the enjoyment I got from the extra money was in buying better food lol.
So then I started to get unhappy. It had been years since I spent any real
Time with friends or family. I’d work 6-7 days a week, often working into the early morning and then sleeping at work and starting the next day when the first shift came in and woke me. In that period I also had several years where I was working multiple jobs and doing contract and side work. Eventually I became miserable. I started to behave miserably. I ended up cutting back on the work. I dropped down to one job and kept (for the most part) an 8 hour work day, 5 days a week. I started to take my vacation/time off as well.
I can say that period where I was now making less money but had all this money accrued in years of sweating away was very happy. Having the time and having less stress were probably the bigger factors than money- but having lots of money I “didn’t need” didn’t hurt lol. I started dating again as I’d been single for awhile at that point, and with the time and money I had I could go on
Many different dates a week and have lots of different fun experiences and meet different sorts of people. There was still an unhappiness though- the fun felt superficial most of the time. I didn’t really have anything I wanted or needed the extra money for, and serial dating was just a more expensive and less effective stand in for the friends I’d missed while I was so busy. So I set to reestablishing the normalcy of that- re learning and re teaching friends that it wasn’t pointless to call me because I was “too busy” to hang out. It took some time but I found that the more I reconnected to my fiends and even made some new ones- the happier I became overall. Having the money to do things with my friends was nice, but for the most part nothing we were doing was very expensive beyond maybe a weekend trip here or there or an amusement park or event etc. That said most of the time was just hanging out or grabbing lunch or dinner or working on each other’s houses or cars and doing life…
.. stuff like helping move furniture or pick up large items etc. and that alone was great. So I mean…
Finding the love of your life can be free- but starting a life and keeping it together maybe less so.
Renting a home vs. buying- if you own, your landlord can’t just decide you don’t live there now and give you notice- stability is a component of happiness.
If you own, you get credit and wealth and potential tax breaks that can make it less difficult to be able to enjoy life.
If you own- you can modify the home as suits your needs and tastes-
Which being able to tailor our environment can help with happiness.
Long term you retirement looks better usually if you own- so less stress, more security, and an “emergency” source of cash as a safety net. All good for happiness.
There are all these “little” places where having the money can really help improve your options and trajectory for sure. The simple ability to have some choice and say in life generally helps happiness.
I can’t credit the money too much. I also can’t be so blind as to say there isn’t any value towards potential happiness in money- but at the end of the day there just are so many factors to go into happiness and so many things that money can’t do even if there are possibly ways for it to help you do them.
I think only a total monk or a person with very little awareness to privilege could say money has nothing to do with happiness, but likewise money shouldn’t be considered a “source” of happiness but a potential for choices that can be sources of happiness. Happiness is also.. elusive. Having $10k a month to spend on prostitution and heroine can certainly bring a certain type of happiness- but making those choices generally won’t create a life most people who consider a happy one.
I agree in that money, to a point, tends to make happiness easier. The security that can come with having money and wealth can get rid of alot of stress and anxiety that can eat at people and chew at you preventing you from fully enjoying life. Having enough to be able to do things you enjoy obviously helps- but having enough that you can do the things you enjoy without a “guilt” or anxiety that you might need that money for something else or you kNow you’ll fall short elsewhere because of it let’s you just be in the moment. Obviously more money means more options generally- if you’re in the mood to learn the drums and have no drums- that whole process is a lot easier or more possible if you can just buy a set of drums and get rid of them no worries if you get bored or don’t like it.
I don’t endorse the dangerous hobby- but swimming in irrigation canals after a long bike ride was another rural one. So there certainly are lots of potential options to enjoy oneself depending on where they live for little or no money- or starting with little to no money (as some hobbies can help pay for themselves or even make money while having fun…)
So what makes a person happy? What does a person need to be happy? It all depends on the person I guess. I wouldn’t say that no one was happy 50,100,300 years ago and in most regards most people had way less than we do now as options or as wealth. Can we say that they were less happy than us? I don’t know. I’ve spoken to people born as far back as in the 1800’s who seemed pretty happy with life and at least say they wouldn’t trade their childhood for ours. I’ve also spoken to people who wished they’d grown up..
Money itself doesn’t bring happiness. If you were stranded alone on a deserted island you’d probably be happier to find a crate with $10,000 in provisions, tools, equipment, entertainment, and supplies every other month than a crate with $50,000 cash in it every other month. If you ever got rescued and managed to survive that long without supplies then maybe you’d be happier with the cash crates lol.
But like, there are levels too. In a market with million plus dollar homes like many areas- if you’re making $100k a year and you’re single you can be pretty comfy- but starting from zero savings you have a while before you could bid on a home. $10-20k extra a year wouldn’t be bad- but it’s not going to drastically change your life or how you can live at that point.
of course we know family can make us happy… except.. not really. If family made us happy- who would be depressed as long as they had a good family? We tell people this all the time- “it isn’t your fault…” etc. and it isn’t- because family can’t make you happy. Family can help you be happy, give you things to be happy about, share moments that can bring happiness- but they don’t “make you happy.” Well… they do for some people. For some people just knowing they have a family is enough they can be happy whenever they think about it…
So it’s pretty wide spread in spiritualism and religion- this is temporary and being too attached or invested init leads to bad things or a bad life. Ambition is quite the opposite of being content with what one has isn’t it? It’s literally the desire to go beyond what one is or has. It can be noble- to want the power to help people or whatever else- and I don’t think ALL ambition is bad- but it often is an unhealthy expression.
We can quickly grow accustomed to things that were once unthinkable or luxuries so that their presence doesn’t really make us happy, we just get unhappy at their absence. At a certain amount of money one can even become lost. Some people can do one or two things forever and never get bored- unless those things cost a lot of money though a person like that could be happy as long as they had enough for those things and general life.
But things do tend to get old for most of us. This is part of why the rich tend to be so extra. To some people a place like red lobster is a “fancy meal” for special occasions. If they had the money to eat their everyday it probably would get old- and they’d probably…
For some people that’s not a worry- for others it is. When you have so much money you don’t have to ever work- you may find yourself bored in life. Like after you’ve beat a game and unlocked everything and have so much money and all the best items and have been basically everywhere and done all the mini quests etc- it can still have its moments or you may come back for nostalgia time to time- but what if you were stuck in that world where you were basically untouchable and there weren’t any states or Goals asides one you make up to keep..
There is a point in wealth and financial success where you can find yourself without any “challenge” or “goal” that can be incrementally rewarded. Using video games again- imagine a game where your skills are all maxed out and you’ve done everything in the game 10x over, but you have to keep playing and all you are doing is basically leveling up even though you can’t raise stats or skills- just leveling up so you can see how many skill points you can gain even if you don’t need them. You can sit by a creek or hunt random enemies for the 10,000th time but…. It’s going to be less fun and eventually you’ll probably be unhappy playing.
To really change that we’d need to change how society looks at success and it’s expectations and values so that instead of things like money or material possessions or family and “legacy” we judged on a basis of what actual and real good vs. harm any person and their actions contribute to the world. Society will generally call you a “success” and you can be made a role model simply by getting murderers set free on technicalities or peddling legal drugs that destroy communities or if you make a product that enriches many lives using exploited labor to do it. The people who decide wether your actions are…
When you ask the people who suffer for their benefit the answer may be different- of course the people who suffer for the benefit generally aren’t in a position to speak or act power to their opinions in the first place or they wouldn’t be exploited to start. Sadder still- they may say yes. They may say yes simply because exploitation is generally better than death objectively. Living in terrible conditions for poverty wages can be considered a step up from dying from lack of what little such exploitation may provide. So sometimes it isn’t as simple as
So there are complexities and nuances as is usually the case in life, but a large source of unhappiness in much of the more developed world comes from these ideas of what we must have, what it means to “be a loser.” You aren’t married by X age? You don’t have your own place or own a house by X age? You don’t make $X dollars? You have no kids at X age? Your kids didn’t go to X fancy school?
Think you have all the boxes checked, you golf and surf and skydive and all the things that someone will ask about or want to talk about- and then you meet someone who is like: “what a shame. You’ve done all that but you’ve never just taken a year off to <follow this band><volunteer in XYZ place><etc.>?” Or some kid that scoffs it off because you have a lame social media and no TikTok cred ir whatever the current platform would be. And if someone is the type that has to have it all- that will eat at them. The things they just can’t.
Time with friends or family. I’d work 6-7 days a week, often working into the early morning and then sleeping at work and starting the next day when the first shift came in and woke me. In that period I also had several years where I was working multiple jobs and doing contract and side work. Eventually I became miserable. I started to behave miserably. I ended up cutting back on the work. I dropped down to one job and kept (for the most part) an 8 hour work day, 5 days a week. I started to take my vacation/time off as well.
I can say that period where I was now making less money but had all this money accrued in years of sweating away was very happy. Having the time and having less stress were probably the bigger factors than money- but having lots of money I “didn’t need” didn’t hurt lol. I started dating again as I’d been single for awhile at that point, and with the time and money I had I could go on
Finding the love of your life can be free- but starting a life and keeping it together maybe less so.
Renting a home vs. buying- if you own, your landlord can’t just decide you don’t live there now and give you notice- stability is a component of happiness.
If you own, you get credit and wealth and potential tax breaks that can make it less difficult to be able to enjoy life.
If you own- you can modify the home as suits your needs and tastes-
Which being able to tailor our environment can help with happiness.
Long term you retirement looks better usually if you own- so less stress, more security, and an “emergency” source of cash as a safety net. All good for happiness.
There are all these “little” places where having the money can really help improve your options and trajectory for sure. The simple ability to have some choice and say in life generally helps happiness.
I think only a total monk or a person with very little awareness to privilege could say money has nothing to do with happiness, but likewise money shouldn’t be considered a “source” of happiness but a potential for choices that can be sources of happiness. Happiness is also.. elusive. Having $10k a month to spend on prostitution and heroine can certainly bring a certain type of happiness- but making those choices generally won’t create a life most people who consider a happy one.