Tran Harry – The Economy Needs A Fix

If you get a chance, I recommend that you read the following article written by Get Rich Slowly’s blog titled, “When Money Does Buy Happiness.” It follows a research study where they interviewed individuals about what they have bought and of those things they bought what exactly brought them happiness as a result of that (expensive) purchase. The answers that most people gave are quite interesting, and I must say that I foresaw some of the answers.

Most big purchases don’t result in us being happier than before the purchase, it may give us a temporary sign of delight such as after purchasing a brand new luxury car but after time takes its toll the happiness as a result of the material purchase will usually fade away after a while. There are some exceptions to this rule, for instance if your expensive car purchase happens to be a convertible for example than it can definitely bring you continued happiness when you can put the top down every day that the sun is bright and shiny. But if you decided to buy an expensive Benz just for the name tag, you may feel that the name brand did not bring you enough attention and thereby your happiness fades away.

I want to write my opinion about money today. To me having more money does not bring happiness by default, happiness is an achievement that we bring to ourselves daily, and it has a very weak correlation with the actual amount of money in your account. Since happiness is a mind state than you can be happy regardless of whether or not you have a million dollars.

On the contrary though money does buy convenience and it is this convenience that many of us mislead as an end goal of happiness. Let me explain what I mean by convenience, let’s say you were moving your 2 story home and have 4 bedrooms of furniture to relocate, without money you will most likely have to spend an entire week moving on your own or with a few friends thus inconveniencing your buddies on their time. But with money you could hire a professional moving company which will have everything sorted out and moved for you in a days time. Although it may not be as simple as that, you may still need to pack and organize and than organize again at the new home but the concept is that you can pay someone else to move for you.

Having money also means you can overcome sudden emergencies without too much inconvenience. Take for example if your car broke down in the middle of the road on your way to work, without money you may have to leave the car in place, finding a way to prevent it from being towed by the city at your expense. During the rest of your work week or until you can accumulate the necessary funds to have the car repaired you will have to find alternate means of commuting to work, this may mean carpooling with coworkers (which I recommend anyway, but not only because your car is inoperable) or it may mean taking public transportation which may not always be reliable in your area or even an option if you live away from a main arterial. With money you can get the vehicle towed to the dealer for repair, and get a rental vehicle to commute to work which essentially allows you to maintain a level of convenience.

While I don’t believe that having more money will necessarily make you happier because buying a huge LCD HDTV may be fun it may not leave you happy for long and thus wanting an upgrade or another fancy toy, having money does make our lives more convenient and if people were able to distinguish between the two we would all be in a better society as a result of this.