The debate has gone on for years. Does money make you happy? Does money buy happiness? The answer is not a straight one. However, only money does not buy happiness. Money that comes with purpose and meaning can help you find your happiness. Money is fuel to finding happiness. It is not happiness in itself. When it is, it is quite shallow.

Simply stated, money doesn’t make you happy because it is not supposed to. Money is not the source of happiness in life. When it is, it is a fleeting, superficial source. It won’t bring you the kind of deep happiness that you seek.

The reason you asked this question is because you have money and you don’t feel happy. You wonder what the hell happened and where did you go wrong in your understanding of life and happiness.

They said that when you were successful, you would be happy. They said that when you can buy enough things with your money, you would be happy. Didn’t they say that when you have enough things, people would love you, and you would be happy. But, none of that happened.

You don’t feel loved because when people seem to love you, they don’t love you for who you are, but they love you for the things you can buy them with your money. You don’t feel successful either because the work that you do to earn your money drains your soul.

There are reasons why your money doesn’t buy you happiness. The simple answer is it can’t. To understand this deeply, let us look us reasons why money doesn’t make you happy.

1. It is not supposed to buy you happiness

Money is not designed to buy happiness. It is a tool, just like technology. Does technology buy you happiness? Well, it does as much as a tool does. Similarly, money is a tool to help you lead your life.

It is not supposed to buy you happiness. Tools make life easier and convenient. They don’t buy or create happiness.

2. Money is fuel for life

Let’s just stay with the example of technology, to make the metaphor easy to understand. You are headed in a certain direction in your life in a car.

The car is supposed to be the purpose of your life and money is supposed to fuel that purpose. Your purpose would lead you to your destination, which is happiness.

Now, here is the complication. We are saying that money is fuel in the car called purpose. But, most people don’t have a purpose. Therefore, they seem to mistake money as the car and money as the destination.

3.  Money buys fleeting happiness

The happiness that money buys for you doesn’t live long. It is fleeting and short-lived. No matter how expensive a house or a car you would buy, you would not be able to find happiness beyond a few days because of those things.

They say that it’s people who make a home from a house and they are right. Buildings don’t mean a thing without relationships. A car doesn’t mean anything if you are always traveling alone in it, and you don’t have anyone to share it with.

The happiness that money buys lasts only a while, and then life takes over.

What matters really is if there is life in your life or not.

4. If you chase only money, it makes you its slave

If money is all you chase, and that’s majority of the world right now, it would make you its slave, and make you work for itself. That’s the reason for the rat race. People are chasing money beyond everything else, and it’s a rat’s race to nowhere.

Nobody knows what they are chasing the money for, since there is no purpose. Money is a resource, while it has become a master.

5. Money erodes purpose and meaning

Money erodes purpose. The more you focus on money, the more it would take you away from things that truly matter- purpose and meaning. What we need is purpose and meaning to live a life worth living. Money takes that away from us. It doesn’t only take that away, it makes us feel that those are only not needed since money becomes purpose, meaning and everything about life.

6. Money creates superficiality

The problem is that when people start believing that money would make them happy, they indulge in the opulence of it, to satisfy their belief. This is the reason the world looks like a shallow and a superficial world lacking depth.

To be happy, we need depth in people. Depth would only come if they ask themselves important questions about purpose, meaning and self-awareness. If we keep chasing money, we are bound to feel empty inside with all the things money can buy around us.

7. Hoarding of money creates an uneven world

I am convinced that there is no shortage of money in the world only if those who are hoarding their money are willing to part it with people who need it for projects that could make the world a more meaningful and happier place. The problem with people is that they are hoarding money and they would do it till the last day of their lives.

The unfortunate thing about these people is that they don’t even use their own money for their own happiness. They just keep it in the bank wanting to use it someday, and then they die one day, with all their money sitting in their banks.

Only if people understood that money is tool to make the world a better place, we would have countless parents who are willing to invest money in their children’s dreams, but we don’t.  We would have millions of angel investors looking for people with dreams to change the world, so that they could help them achieve their dreams, and be a part of those dreams themselves.

The thoughtless and ultra-conservative hoarding of money creates a world where some people have too much that they won’t do anything with, and the ones who need it for purposeful goals don’t have money to work on those goals. It is not a happy situation.

8. We are not making the right kind of money

Money is of two kinds– mercenary money and passion money. So far, we have been talking about the first kind of money-mercenary money. Briefly, when you work only for money, you are a mercenary. Money is your only objective.

The other kind of money is what I call the passion money. This is the money you make when you do something you are passionate about. This kind of money is difficult to make in the beginning and you are made to struggle by a society that works on mercenary money, but when you make some passionate/passion money, the happiness it brings you is beautiful.

You truly realize the meaning of happiness when you make this kind of money because this is where you have translated your dreams into reality. This is where you have made who you are, and what you do as one.

9.  Money makes the world go round

Money literally makes the world go round, and not in productive and happy ways all the time. In most cases, it makes the world go round in a counterproductive loop where people become robots chasing after it, not knowing what they are supposed to achieve with it.

Money is a tool. It is a resource, and that is exactly how we are supposed to treat it. However, we have given it so much importance that it has come to rule our lives.

10. Money can’t buy love

Money can’t buy love and meaningful relationships. Those are the true sources of happiness in the world. No matter how much money you have, if there is no one to love and be loved by, life is meaningless, vacant and empty.

Currency can’t buy love. It may pretend to by showering things on someone you love, but love isn’t materialism. The essence of love is the meeting of two people who understand, and more importantly accept each other as who they are.

Money can’t buy love, or relationships, or purpose, or meaning. It can’t buy what lives inside of us.

You see money may be able to buy a lot of things. Those things are tangible, you know, you can touch and feel those things. But the problem with happiness is that it is mostly an outcome of things we can’t touch and feel.

Can you touch and feel love?

You may be able to touch the person you love, but you can’t touch love.

Can you touch purpose?

You can’t touch purpose. Purpose is this thing without tangible matter that we can only feel in our heart. Either our lives feel like they have purpose or they don’t.

Can you touch meaning?

You can’t. Meaning is the outcome of feeling that we are doing what is consistent with our beliefs and that life matters.

That is the problem with happiness and why money can’t quite buy happiness. Happiness comes from things we can’t quite touch. Money can unfortunately, only buy stuff we can touch. This is exactly why money can’t buy happiness.

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani