Can money buy you happiness?

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Can money buy you happiness?

We hear it all the time in films and from inspirational quotes; money can't buy you happiness, but is that really true?

It's probably fair to say that we spend our 'disposable' income on things that make us happy, things that are considered non-essentials such as a Netflix subscription or a smart watch etc... while the rest of the money goes on living costs such as rent/mortgage, food and other various bills.

Most people work 40+ hours a week in order to earn money to allow themselves to have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. Some are luckier than others and earn enough to pay for that, along with enough left over to go on holidays and enjoy their free time doing whatever they want, however others are not so fortunate and they feel like they're purely working 40+ hours a week in order to simply 'survive'.

So if the majority of people are only working in order to get money so they can afford to do what they want and have fun during their time off work, then surely logic would dictate that if they didn't have to work because they had enough money to do those things regardless, then that person would be happier right?

They say money can't buy you love, which is probably the real cause behind the saying that 'Money can't buy you happiness' - However wouldn't you argue that if you wasn't constricted by your job, that you would be able to go off exploring the world and doing activities and such that makes you happy, and as a result running into someone who is also doing said activities and thus possibly has similar interests as you.

As the famous quote goes - "They say money can't buy you happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Ferrari"
or "I wish I had enough money to make me realise that it can't bring me happiness"

What are your views on this?

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THIS DEBATE ENDS ON THE 23rd NOVEMBER

For more information on the debate guidelines and how to win prizes see the guidelines thread here

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This debate is now open!

Yeah you can literally buy ecstasy

Money can not buy you happiness but it can buy a peace of mind and a sense of security.

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Originally Posted by JeffDunham-1

Money can not buy you happiness but it can buy a peace of mind and a sense of security.

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Would you not argue that, that is a form of happiness?

It depends on how your defining happiness. Personally, I believe everyone's happiness varies. Some are happy with things they buy. Let's take a phone for example. People want the best features and newest phone that's populating with trend. What happens when the newer version comes out? They are no longer happy with it because now it needs updates or because of it being obsolete. If this is basing off of material then the answer is no. If it is based on necessity such as bills and groceries then the answer is yes because we need those things to survive.

Are you suggesting that paying bills brings more happiness than buying treats for yourself

While money does not GUARANTEE happiness there are a hell of a lot of things money can do - take away anxieties, allow you to spend your time how you want, buy luxuries and treats, all of which would contribute to my own personal happiness

so CONTROVERSIALLY maybe I would say yes

I personally think that money does solve a larger chunk of peoples problems than people probably care to admit. Whether that be by pure materialistic means or as Laura mentioned, by reducing or even getting rid of stress and anxiety.

We work to get money so that we can pay to do thing during our time off work, so logically if we cut out that middleman and do stuff we wanted without the barrier of finance, then we would be a lot happier right?

I guess it then comes down to if you're always doing what you want; when you want, will the novelty wear off. For example I treat myself to a meal out once a month, if I go for a take away once a week, it'll make it feel like less of a treat, and if I do it everyday, then it'll just become the norm..

Can the same be said about having enough money to do what you want, or would you argue that there is FAAAR too many things to do in this world for anything to ever get repetitive such as having a take-away once a month

Well in my personal experience, money makes life a whole lot easier/more comfortable; and I know I for one am happier with comfort!

When I was working before I got ill, I was earning shy of £2,000 a month, so I could afford to live comfortably, buying whatever I want when I wanted it without having to check the bank and pay for holidays abroad. Life was easy and comfortable.

Since I got too poorly to work and moved onto benefits, it gets really tight to live comfortably without having to budget the food shop or plan ahead for any spends over £50!
I have had background depression since the age of 15 but my mental health took a huge downfall after a couple of traumatic bereavements, then my physical health deteriorated so I had to leave work!

Living on benefits is definitely a lot harder, and it's hard to find happiness/motivation when you're pretty much just existing. You also feel like a drain on the economy/country since you're not providing anymore.

To the other extreme however, I think there's a limit to how much happiness money can buy! I definitely think enough to buy your ideal home and a holiday at least once a year, especially if you don't have to work/have a job you love, then that's enough.
Anything over that (Such as £3,000,000,000 resting in the bank with nothing to do with it) is excessive and no longer has anything to contribute towards happiness.

I think PURE happiness is found within, but it's a lot easier to find that happiness in your ideal home/location/freedom, which only money can get.

Won 50 quid on blackjack this afternoon which isn't life changing but that's dinner and drinks sorted tonight with some left over so that's a happy thought

I think "money can buy you happiness" as a statement is far too simplistic, but if we update it then a version of it could be true.

First of all, I think most people using this forum would agree that if you're so poor you can't afford to live with basic necessities/easy access to your "human rights", then you are going to have a hard time being happy (please @ me if you disagree - I wanna know what you think). You're probably gonna be too busy working out whether you can eat a meal in a day or whether your landlord will kick you out to worry about life satisfaction levels, yeah?

But I would argue that that doesn't necessarily equate to money bringing happiness. There's the obvious question of how much money brings you happiness, yes. Y'know, where middle class people are happy living comfortably but if you get "too rich" (whatever that means) then your life satisfaction starts to fall again. I attempted to find a graph from a reputable website but I didn't look very hard and reallyyyy didn't wanna post one from the Huffington Post so please just believe me on this ok. It's not really the point I wanna talk about anyway.

SO. What I do wanna talk about is: money doesn't buy you happiness. Wealth equality leads to happiness whereas wealth inequality leads to unhappiness. And more specifically, wealth inequality (perceiving yourself as poor when comparing yourself to the people around you) leads to super unhappiness. Throwback to what I said about people who are worrying about whether or not they can eat or become homeless to bother with trying to be happy. Those people, weirdly, are probably still somehow wealthier, have more access to government benefits (like the NHS, jobseekers, emergency housing etc.*) than large portions of the developing world.

(*Side note: not saying these people are in any way lucky, emergency housing is shit and awful and in such crazy high demand. And despite having access to that stuff some people choose not to take it for all sorts of valid reasons. Just pointing out that lots of people in the world couldn't even imagine their government helping them to... stay alive and not be totally miserable?)

BUT those people in the Western world are surrounded by people who are much wealthier than them. They can walk two miles across their city or whatever and suddenly be in the nice, comfortable suburbs with 4 bedrooms and rooms that are called the Library, or they can just open Instagram tbh. Then compare that to countries where everyone around you is in the same/a similar situation to you, comparing yourself to others you don't feel much better or much worse off than them. And THAT'S where I think money makes a difference to happiness. If you can see people close by who have things you don't have and they also have more money than you, you want more money and you're unhappy because you don't have access to more money, ergo you decide you don't have access to things that could make you happy. Similarly, my point about perceived wealth: you live in a nice house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a library (I really like this library now and I'm gonna stick with it). Your neighbour, whose house is almost identical, gets a big ass promotion and suddenly extends her house to have a fucking fancy conservatory and a new cinema room!!! You're no less poor, you're still extremely well off, you have everything you need to live, but suddenly you perceive yourself as being poorer and you're sad now. Sucks to be you.

What a long winded way of saying if you can see lots of people who are richer than you and seem to be having a better time than you (mostly cause social media lets them display their best bits whilst shoving the bad bits to the back), you're going to decide you're poor thanks to wealth inequality and get real sad real fast.

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Originally Posted by Empired

But I would argue that that doesn't necessarily equate to money bringing happiness. There's the obvious question of how much money brings you happiness, yes. Y'know, where middle class people are happy living comfortably but if you get "too rich" (whatever that means) then your life satisfaction starts to fall again.

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100% agree with this. As far as my life goes I'd say I'm middle class, as far as my friends say, I'm rich, but that's because all my friends are from my previous job, and since changing jobs I tripled my salary, as a result I'm on 3 times as much as they are, so I splash out a little more than I did before.

Though I think you need to earn a hell of a lot more than I am for it to start having a negative impact on your life. For example if I earned £1000 more a month than I already do, then I would simply spent it accordingly, since it'll be disposable, as I'm already able to save a fair amount each month already... So I'd perhaps buy a new fancier car, or maybe save up a lot more to get a bigger house, or go on more/expensive holidays etc... However if I was earning lets say £50,000 a month, then I can happily say that it wouldn't make much of a difference between 50k and 5k. (After a few months anyway) As on 5k a month, I'll be able to buy everything I want in life and do what I want to a certain degree.

However in-line with that, I'm probably working hard to actually get that 5k a month right? Perhaps working 5 days a week at 40-50 hours... So wouldn't I be happier if I got that 5k a month without having to work? The question is now, would that same 5k be enough? We all know that having time off work is often expensive because you get bored and want to do things, thus you spend money.. If I got given 5k a month and didn't have to work, I'm not so sure it would be enough to actually keep me happy and free from constant boredom.

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Originally Posted by Empired

SO. What I do wanna talk about is: money doesn't buy you happiness. Wealth equality leads to happiness whereas wealth inequality leads to unhappiness. And more specifically, wealth inequality (perceiving yourself as poor when comparing yourself to the people around you) leads to super unhappiness. Throwback to what I said about people who are worrying about whether or not they can eat or become homeless to bother with trying to be happy. Those people, weirdly, are probably still somehow wealthier, have more access to government benefits (like the NHS, jobseekers, emergency housing etc.*) than large portions of the developing world.

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Haven't read something as real as this in a while! It's hard not to do with all the social media posts, however people have been known to go on 1 holiday and take enough photos and change of clothes, to post photos for the next 2 months, creating the illusion that their 2 week holiday was them travelling for 2 months. Not everything is what it seems on social media, but a lot of people fall trap into thinking it's real and to then compare their mundane lives of those who thrive off the attention of their seemingly amazing and successful life, when it's probably not all sunshine and rainbows for them.

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Originally Posted by Empired

What a long winded way of saying if you can see lots of people who are richer than you and seem to be having a better time than you (mostly cause social media lets them display their best bits whilst shoving the bad bits to the back), you're going to decide you're poor thanks to wealth inequality and get real sad real fast.

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I think wealth inequality has an extremely large part in the fundamentals of whether money can buy you happiness, however on a smaller scale such as if I earned £200 more a month, would I be happier?; but I think it ultimately comes down to if you didn't need to work in order to obtain said money so you can buy things, would you be happier since you're then able to live 100% of your life your way, and not stuck in a job 40 hours a week probably doing something you don't want to do, but only do so to get money.

There are 168 hours in 7 days
Averagely we sleep 8 hours a day
That leaves 112 hours of time spent awake
If we do 48 hours of work a week, we're left with a mere 64 hours of free time a week.
However that doesn't account for travel to work.

I'd argue that if I had a full 112 hours to do with what I wanted, with no worries about money, I'd be one happy fella.

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Originally Posted by Sectional

100% agree with this. As far as my life goes I'd say I'm middle class, as far as my friends say, I'm rich, but that's because all my friends are from my previous job, and since changing jobs I tripled my salary, as a result I'm on 3 times as much as they are, so I splash out a little more than I did before.

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how would you define middle class? curious what middle class is or upper class/rich?

curious if I'm working or middle class..

that's generally how things go though, if you earn more money you'll likely spend a lot more (so for example I pay a gardener to cut my grass, pay for a chef to deliver prepped meals, etc that I wouldn't be able to do if I was earning the same as I was 3 years ago) - so I don't necessarily feel 'richer' than I was a few years ago because I have a lot more expenses

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Though I think you need to earn a hell of a lot more than I am for it to start having a negative impact on your life. For example if I earned £1000 more a month than I already do, then I would simply spent it accordingly, since it'll be disposable, as I'm already able to save a fair amount each month already... So I'd perhaps buy a new fancier car, or maybe save up a lot more to get a bigger house, or go on more/expensive holidays etc... However if I was earning lets say £50,000 a month, then I can happily say that it wouldn't make much of a difference between 50k and 5k. (After a few months anyway) As on 5k a month, I'll be able to buy everything I want in life and do what I want to a certain degree.

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I'd agree, I mean currently I have around 40% of my income as disposable after I pay off every monthly bill, then 50% of that goes to savings, so really I leave myself 20% to piss away every month but realistically most months I won't even spend that, so adding an extra £200 for example would be nice in my head but realistically it just means I save a bit more, where as if I have an extra £50k I'd buy a ton of stuff over a few months (new car, few things in garden, etc.) then probably back to what I currently spend.

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However in-line with that, I'm probably working hard to actually get that 5k a month right? Perhaps working 5 days a week at 40-50 hours... So wouldn't I be happier if I got that 5k a month without having to work? The question is now, would that same 5k be enough? We all know that having time off work is often expensive because you get bored and want to do things, thus you spend money.. If I got given 5k a month and didn't have to work, I'm not so sure it would be enough to actually keep me happy and free from constant boredom.

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No, life without a job would be boring as hell.

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I think wealth inequality has an extremely large part in the fundamentals of whether money can buy you happiness, however on a smaller scale such as if I earned £200 more a month, would I be happier?; but I think it ultimately comes down to if you didn't need to work in order to obtain said money so you can buy things, would you be happier since you're then able to live 100% of your life your way, and not stuck in a job 40 hours a week probably doing something you don't want to do, but only do so to get money.

There are 168 hours in 7 days
Averagely we sleep 8 hours a day
That leaves 112 hours of time spent awake
If we do 48 hours of work a week, we're left with a mere 64 hours of free time a week.
However that doesn't account for travel to work.

I'd argue that if I had a full 112 hours to do with what I wanted, with no worries about money, I'd be one happy fella.

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Would you though? If I won £100 million tomorrow I would return to work on Monday.. life without work would be extremely boring, but then I absolutely love my job so I'm sure that makes some difference too.

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Originally Posted by scottish

how would you define middle class? curious what middle class is or upper class/rich?

curious if I'm working or middle class..

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Not really sure, I think it's mainly based on your own opinion, and probably changes depending upon those around you. I'd define the lower class as people on low-income jobs, perhaps minimum wage. Then middle class being those who are on a fair amount more than minimum wage and have money to throw around in moderation. Then you have the upper class, people who earn enough not to really worry about whether or not they can afford 90% of the things they want.

I imagine it's all relative though, for example if I was earning enough for me to be defined as upper class based on the above, then eventually I'd probably meet people who are equally as wealthy, and some who are a lot more wealthier than I, so I assume if I see someone who never has to worry whether or not they can afford something, whereas I have to worry about certain purchases, it would probably make me feel like I'm in a lesser class than they are.. Whereas in reality that's not really the case..

But then I guess you have classes like lower-middle, upper middle etc... but we won't get that technical lol.

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Originally Posted by scottish

that's generally how things go though, if you earn more money you'll likely spend a lot more (so for example I pay a gardener to cut my grass, pay for a chef to deliver prepped meals, etc that I wouldn't be able to do if I was earning the same as I was 3 years ago) - so I don't necessarily feel 'richer' than I was a few years ago because I have a lot more expenses

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Yeah, same here really. I'm earning triple what I was 2 years ago, but I'm not really seeing much more savings in my bank than before, and that's because like yourself, I end up spending money on things that are not NEEDED, but help me have a better way of life. I have a cleaner who cleans my house once a week, something that I CAN do myself, but if I have the money to afford someone else to do it, then why not, also I spend a lot on alcohol and restaurants every week, again something that I only do because I can.

Oh also because I don't include what I've spent already this year, I owed my mum 6k, then spent 14k to redo my whole entire downstairs... I didn't even pick up a paint brush, paid someone to do literally everything, but now all of that is paid off, I should actually start to see an increase in my savings.

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Originally Posted by scottish

I'd agree, I mean currently I have around 40% of my income as disposable after I pay off every monthly bill, then 50% of that goes to savings, so really I leave myself 20% to piss away every month but realistically most months I won't even spend that, so adding an extra £200 for example would be nice in my head but realistically it just means I save a bit more, where as if I have an extra £50k I'd buy a ton of stuff over a few months (new car, few things in garden, etc.) then probably back to what I currently spend.

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I think about 70% of my income is disposable for me in terms of what I NEED to pay for, though with the alcohol, restaurants, cleaner etc, it probably is about 50% like yourself. But yeah I'd probably do the same, new car, new house etc, then continue as I was with fancy new things.

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Originally Posted by scottish

No, life without a job would be boring as hell.

Would you though? If I won £100 million tomorrow I would return to work on Monday.. life without work would be extremely boring, but then I absolutely love my job so I'm sure that makes some difference too.

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I'd agree, but I'd take a few years off travelling, then I'd probably go back to the Cinema as a Manager because honestly that was the best job I've had and I actually loved it, however I probably wouldn't work 5 days a week, maybe 4, but who knows...

But I honestly think that purely knowing that you don't HAVE TO work makes work a lot better in itself anyway. but I wouldn't know for sure since that's never gonna happen, unless you all wanna send me a lot of money, and I'll confirm or deny this... For scientific purposes of course haha

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Originally Posted by Sectional

Not really sure, I think it's mainly based on your own opinion, and probably changes depending upon those around you. I'd define the lower class as people on low-income jobs, perhaps minimum wage. Then middle class being those who are on a fair amount more than minimum wage and have money to throw around in moderation. Then you have the upper class, people who earn enough not to really worry about whether or not they can afford 90% of the things they want.

I imagine it's all relative though, for example if I was earning enough for me to be defined as upper class based on the above, then eventually I'd probably meet people who are equally as wealthy, and some who are a lot more wealthier than I, so I assume if I see someone who never has to worry whether or not they can afford something, whereas I have to worry about certain purchases, it would probably make me feel like I'm in a lesser class than they are.. Whereas in reality that's not really the case..

But then I guess you have classes like lower-middle, upper middle etc... but we won't get that technical lol.

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Yeah I mean I earn a 'fair amount' more than minimum wage and have money to throw around, so am I middle class?

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Originally Posted by scottish

Yeah I mean I earn a 'fair amount' more than minimum wage and have money to throw around, so am I middle class?

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I think it depends on who you surround yourself with doesn't it? If everyone in your inner circle of friends are on minimum wage jobs, then you'd probably feel upper class in comparison, whereas if you're surrounded by wealth which isn't your own, then you'd surely feel lower-class.

So for me I'd say you were middle class based on people I surround myself with, you're not struggling pay check to pay check, so you can't be lower class, but you're not exactly able to freely splash out and buy whatever you want in life, but I'm sure there are people on here who are living pay check to pay check, and based on around 50% of our income being disposable, they might place us in the upper class category.

If we define it as... (Purely based on your income, as can't really get assets, inheritance etc.. involved) I don't want to sit here and define each category, but if I set the first and last, you can make an decision on where you'd place yourself, but tbh I think it's all based on everyone's own personal opinion

Lower class (Part-time job on minimum wage)
Middle-lower class
Upper-lower class

Middle class
Middle-middle class
Upper-middle class

Upper class
Middle-upper class
Upper-upper class (Full time job on 150k a year)

I won't set the upper-upper too high, or in comparison we'll all probably be lower class lol.

I would personally define myself as middle class. I'm comfortable, perhaps borderline middle-middle.