Member Questions

Money can't make you happy, but lack of money - serious, severe, REAL lack of money, not the inability to have a luxury or two - can make you miserable. Money buys freedom from the constant, grinding worry of 'will I make the mortgage next month?', 'will I have housing next month?' 'how can the kids possibly go to university?', 'if I can't pay all the bills, which can I let go for this month?'


Money buys ease. Money buys freedom from worry. All of which contribute to potential happiness in a big way.

I'm not sure that my answer here will add much new to the discussion, but money is a tool. It changes your life situation, which may change how you look at the world, how you relate to others, and what you value - but it's the SITUATION that changed, and you changed with it. Money is just the tool that brought about that change. It has no inherent value - its value is based on what you can do with it. And it literally can't buy anything that has no price, so it can't buy a commodity called "happiness." But you can use it in ways that will help you be happy; you just have to know for yourself what those ways are.

I think so a large extent that money CAN buy happiness. Most of the small joys that we are talking about-- time with our families, true love, watching our children grow-- are luxuries that we have because we don't have to work three jobs or because we have good educations and can get jobs that don't wear us out and take us away from our families all the time. I think there is a privilege that comes with living above the poverty line that brings happiness that most of us are persistently unaware of-- so yes, I think money CAN bring happiness. Or at least set the ducks in a row so that people are ABLE to chase happiness. It's a very Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs kind of thing.

Money can't buy true happiness. Not the jaw dropping ache I feel at the thought of my children going to school soon. Not the flutters of true love, or the firmness of long term love.

But money could make things easier.

Most couples argue about one thing-the ever loving dollar. We don't have this, we need that, you spent what on this ugly thing? It's the one constant, the one thing that many of us don't have enough of. But it's not an end all and be all.

Currently, i work full time and my husband part time, and together we still likely make less than many of you here make on your own in a year. But we're happy. We have eachother. Would we love to have a spare million or ten around? Um, YES. It would mean travelling with our children, a life free of mortgages and concerns about the cost of groceries. It would mean I could have that organic herb farm and all those tattoos I want. But it wouldn't make us better PEOPLE. It might even make us worse.

I'll take my thrift store chic life for now. In the long run, it's so much less stressful.