DOES MONEY MAKE YOU HAPPY?
IT DOES FOR ME!
Money is not everything. Money doesn’t buy happiness. The Beatles sang “Can’t Buy Me Love”.
If you don’t agree, congratulations. A recent study in 2021 by Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania says money does make (many) people happy. The more you have the happier you would be.
The more money we have, the more we can control the well-being of our lives. This “happiness” is not just confined to having the financial resources to buy fancier cars or bigger house. Money gives us the freedom, the sense of autonomy to live the life we want. It unhinges us from the constraints of having less resources to do the things that we want.
In today’s world, money has become a problem-solving tool (well…don’t take this to the wrong track!). No doubt it doesn’t mean rich people don’t have problems, but having money allows us to resolve many problems quickly and effectively. When doctors recommend a certain treatment for our illness which could be very expensive, what do you think the first question they would ask? It would surely be, “do you have insurance?”.
As we battle inflation unleashed by the Covid pandemic, disruption of supply chains and war, the higher our income the less stress we would have. This point is corroborated by another study by a professor at Harvard. The study revealed that money reduces intense stress, gives us better control when negative events in life strike and those with higher income are generally more satisfied with life.
Do the studies tell us anything that we do not about money? No. In fact all of us know the “constructive power” of money in our lives. Our society, since money was invented, is structured in such a way that being poor or cash-strapped not only brings us stress, but it brings shame as well. Especially in today’s world, society has made it hard for the poor.
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This article is adapted from https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finance
More details on the article and the mentioned studies are available at these links.
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/money-matters-to-happiness-perhaps-more-than-previously-thought
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/more-proof-that-money-can-buy-happiness
