It seems only natural that happiness should flow from having more money. Even if they don’t admit it, people still behave as though it were true. More money means you can have what you want and do what you want. The house you dream of? It’s yours. The new car you desire? Here are the keys. The freedom to enjoy your favorite pastimes? Here’s your racket, the court is down there, just past the pool.
So the puzzle is this: why do social scientists consistently find only moderate relationships between having more money and being happy? Some have even suggested that this moderate connection might be exaggerated. In reality money might have very little to do with happiness at all.
Most puzzling, though, is that people often seem aware at some level that money won’t make them happy. And yet they continue to work away earning money they don’t objectively need.
People who earn more money don’t spend their time enjoying themselves; they spend their time at work, in activities likely to cause them more stress and tension. This may be because of ‘the focusing illusion’. When people think about earning more money they probably imagine they would use the money on recreational activities. In fact, to earn the money, they have to spend more time at work, and commuting to and from work.
When people ask themselves whether money brings happiness, they immediately think of the big promotion and the big house. They conclude that because they have these things, they must be happy. In fact, people with more money and status are just more satisfied with their lives, not happier.
Acquiring money and status makes us feel satisfied with life. Through the ‘focusing illusion’ we convince ourselves that satisfaction equals happiness. Unfortunately it doesn’t. Even though we appear to have everything, we are left feeling that something is missing, but are unable to identify what that thing is. That thing is simply this: feeling happy.
It seems that the more money a person has the more worried they are – if they would be honest with themselves. Take celebrities for instance, they have everything the heart can wish for, but many of them have torn-families, scandalous lifestyles and are blatantly unhappy. If money could buy happiness, then none of the above would exist among celebrities. I agree that money does offer a means to make people happy, but true happiness runs deeper than the possessions. When you can see poor people huddled together to keep warm and sharing what little they have to survive, that’s love, which brings about happiness. Their situation doesn’t make them happy and money would make it better, but the root of their happiness stems from love. On the flip side, if you have a wealthy family who can’t get along, where is their happiness? The money is there but where is the love? The same place their happiness is - out the door - while their money sits in the bank.
Suppose your death is near and you are a billionaire and if asked you would say that no, you are not happy with your life then what is the point of making all the money. Money can buy you a lot of things but happiness. Happiness comes from the inside; some people may find happiness everywhere while some fail to search for it. We love to be happy, we love to have a lot of money but both of them are two different things.
With money comes fake friends and fake love. Those will bring up faked lives. You don’t know anymore who you are, because you become so different with “money-people”. Those kinds of people you should never stick with. They will come and go along with money.
People must not focus the money as the center of their lives because money is just a tool to survival. But some people use to forget this and have the money as the most important thing in their life, forgetting that the money cannot buy happiness.
For some people, money not only brings happiness but it also brings problems. One of them it is the fact that the money turns people materialistic and do not leave them to enjoy no materialistic things such as special moments with the family or friends; that happen because the concept of happiness for this people is to satisfy themselves with material things. According to that, people become selfish and they only think about themselves and about have more money. Another problem that money brings to rich people is the fact that people just want to stay with them or be his/her friend just because of their money. It is one of the worst things that can happen to this people because they do not know if somebody is his/her friend because they are nice persons or because they are interested in their money. So, in some cases the synonym of money could be the unhappiness.
It is said by Benjamin Franklin, “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
Once I happened to see a writer who wrote, “Whoever said: ‘money can’t buy happiness’ is either poor or wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.” He argued regarding the poor that they are likely telling you this because they don’t have much money themselves. They haven’t tasted the freedom money buys. He may be true. With all honesty, I say that money can’t buy happiness because I have not personally experienced the happiness since I did not have the money. It is the readers to pass the further judgment, especially based on their own experiences.