[A081] The Price of Happiness: Spend Money, Be Happy

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Could money be the key to happiness? It may not lead to true fulfillment, but it does provide you with a way to meet your basic needs and lay a foundation for future happiness.

If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the bottom two pieces of the pyramid generally include items that require at least some financial resources.

So, can you spend money, be happy, and move forward with your life? Here’s how to make it work.

Concepts

Spend money, be happy? Maybe it’s more about staving off complete misery.
What you need to think about when it comes to subsistence.
Once you reach a certain point, more money doesn’t add to your happiness.
You are more likely to spend money, be happy when you spend on other people.
Figure out what you value and what makes you happy and focus spending on those things.
Money can also be used as a resource to help you pay for what you need and some of what you want.
Be careful of using money as a status symbol. You are far more likely to be miserable when it’s a means of keeping score.

Here are some cool money quotes:

“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul” – Democritis, the ancient philosopher

“It’s a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” — Albert Camus, early 20th Century philosopher

“Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has, the more one wants.” — Benjamin Franklin

This week’s DO NOWs focus on helping you take a closer look at your relationship to money. We talk about writing down your feelings about money, reviewing your spending to see if it follows your values, and identifying spending that doesn’t make you happy or provide things you need.

This week’s listener question looks at how whether or not earning more money will really make you happy. The spend money, be happy situation is further explored in our answers.