Linking money and happiness

More money makes us happier, right?

We can’t wait to be earning the six-figure salary or winning the lottery so we can be happier than we are now…

Yet according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert (as written in his book Stumbling On Happiness), this is a dangerous belief.

“Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations, but people who live in moderately wealthy nations are not much less happy than people who live in extremely wealthy nations. Economists explain that wealth has ‘declining marginal utility,’ which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired, and scared, but once you’ve bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper.”

If you’re reading this I doubt you’re particularly cold, sick, tired or scared - you obviously have the money for an internet connection!

Would more money in your pocket really bring you happiness?

Stuart Fleming

Creator of the Money Mindset Mob.

Enthusiastic believer in independent teens.

Tags: goals, Stuart Fleming, teens and money