Do Riches Actually Make People Happy?

I have met lots of people along the way who felt that "if only they were rich," life would be so much better and all their problems would go away.

The dream of being rich is a common one, but I often wonder whether people really understand what they're asking for. Moreover, I wonder what the "problems" that will allegedly disappear really are about...

Not a lot of people know this about me but I spent a good bit of my childhood and youth around the so-called "elite."

I'm not talking about your well-off upper middle class here, I'm talking about people who threw parties on their 200-foot luxury yachts that had matching live tigers laying on the aft deck. Yes, that really happened... I'm talking people who'd board their private 737 to fly to a sporting event... because they felt like it. And they owned one of the teams playing. Yes, that also really happened...

I mentioned this, primarily because as I lived through that particular phase of my life (about ages 12-20) and got to know people, the incidence of such things as depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse was just as high among these folks — if not higher — than among the much poorer people I have lived among during different eras of my life. And what was really depressing was the suicide rates.

I'll be the first to admit that living a life in which you're always wondering how you're going to pay the next bill, and how you're going to buy food next week, is extremely stressful. I've done that. I've been homeless. I've had to live in my car for a while. When that's your life it's only natural to wish that things were different, and the "easy fix" usually takes the form of having fantasies about being rich.

But whereas money can definitely buy a measure of relief from stress, it really doesn't buy much in the way of actual happiness. In fact, there have been multiple studies done that show that beyond the point where your fundamental life needs are met the more money you have the more stress you actually have and the less happy you actually are.

That "relative loss of happiness" is not major, but significant enough that it is quite evident that we are happiest when we reach the point of not having to worry about our daily overhead, but anything beyond that doesn't actually add anything to the quality of life.

Some might read those words and declare "try me!" and I don't blame you! But chances are the novelty would wear off within a couple of years — tops — and you'd be straight back to being the person you are now... with the same worries, anxieties and sources of trouble as before.

In a way, the original study at Purdue University bears out both my personal experience from my youth, as well as subsequent experiences during which I have learned that some of the happiest people I have known we're not particularly well off, in fact they were just about well enough off keep going on a daily basis.

I don't write these words of some sort of criticism of capitalism, wealth and striving for success, but merely as a cautionary commentary on the fact that we don't actually tend to be very aware of what truly makes us happy. We look at what appears to make life better on a surface level but the truth of the matter is that said happiness is entirely at the surface level.

What often does hold true is that the mansion or a late model luxury car can exciting and happy making for a short while, but then you quickly grow to take it for granted, at which point it has nothing of significance to do with your overall level of happiness.

So what is it that we really want? What is it that really makes us happy?

In most cases, it seems to be some combination of love and connection, family, social life and the freedom to do the things that feel genuinely fulfilling to us. Which is why a lot of quite wealthy but generally content individuals actually live relatively mundane and unglamorous lives.

It seems that what we want the most is actually meaning, rather than money.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

How about you? Do you think money makes people happy? Or does it just provide the framework for making us happy? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.02.09 23:35PST
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