Can Money Buy Happiness?

<p><strong>Can </strong>money buy happiness?</p><p>Many great minds throughout history have tried to answer this age-old question. And I bet you’ve pondered it a time or two...</p><p>Over the years, there haven’t been any great anwers eithe, leaving many of us still <strong>wondering </strong>if money can truly buy happiness, and others <strong>assuming </strong>that it <strong>does</strong>.</p><p>As a result, millions of people have bought into the idea that they need to spend their lives chasing wealth as the way to happiness and wellbeing.</p><p><i><strong>Which totally works out for capitalism, right?</strong></i> Make people feel like they need more shit to be happy. Keep the world turning round.</p><p>Enter Daniel Kahneman, a 2002 Nobel prize winner, whose research has added some interesting perspectives on the role of money in increasing a person’s sense of well-being.</p><p>In a nutshell, his study determined that having enough financial resources to afford life’s basic needs is crucial to avoiding significant degrees of emotional distress. </p><p>He found that in the United States, the income that seems to hit the bullseye on the money-happiness relationship is about $75,000 per year. At these levels, higher income may increase life <strong>satisfaction</strong>, which refers to how people <strong>think </strong>about their lives. But <strong>well-being</strong> or how life <strong>feels on a daily basis</strong>, stays the same.</p><p>More recently, a 2018 study from Purdue University used much wider data from the Gallup World Poll and found that the ideal income point for people is $95,000 for life satisfaction and $60,000 – $75,000 for emotional well-being. </p><p>So taken together, these studies found that people’s emotional well-being, or how they felt on a <strong>daily basis</strong>, didn’t improve as they made more than $75,000, but their life <strong>satisfaction</strong>, or how <strong>happy </strong>they were with their life overall, did...up to about $95,000.</p><p>Interestingly, above $10