Can money buy happiness?

The answer to this question in any textbook or self-help book is going to be straight forward. Money can't buy happiness. And there are some who argue otherwise, including me. But this question has more than what can be seen at the surface. Let me start with happiness. What is happiness?

Dictionaries say that it is the state of being happy. But to me, happiness is composed of different aspects. The most prominent are: Satisfaction, Quality of Life and Health. The spending of money to acquire these can be divided into two. One is the "selfish" way and the other is the social way. I will come back to first one later, but let me start with the latter.

Grantmakers in the arts

Michael Norton, at his TED talk, said "If you think money can't buy happiness, you're not spending it right." In the talk, he goes on to say that money can buy happiness only if we spend it in the right way. And according to him, the right way to spend money is to spend it on others, which is a valid point. He mentions that the surveys he conducted concluded that if the participants were asked to spend some money for others, they would generally be happier than those who were asked to spend it on themselves. He also states that the amount of money did not matter; the only thing that mattered was, for whom they spent the money for. This is not to say that we should just give away everything and become bankrupt, it means to say that helping others, even our friends and family, will make us happier. And we can't help anyone without money. This covers the satisfaction part of happiness.

Now, let me speak about the selfish way of spending money. I don't prefer the term selfish, but for simplicity's sake, I will just stick with that. Daniel Kanheman, a Nobel Prize winner, came to a conclusion after many researches and surveys, that the happiness of people increased steadily till their annual income reached about $75,000. This, after adjusting for cost of life, would be about 18 lakh rupees. But recent studies push that margin to around 1 crore a year. And I think the reason is Quality of life. This amount money is needed to live a luxurious life with a bungalow and a nice car. Any less will make us feel we could live a better life and any more would kick start the greed in us.

The next part is health. This is one of the most important aspects of happiness. No matter what we have, we cannot enjoy any of it without good health. And yes, to maintain a good health you need a lot of money. The private hospital sector in India is one of the most expensive in the world. To get a good healthcare service you need money, or even to eat a balanced diet with high quality and pesticide-free organic food, you need money. And we can directly observe this correlation in the mortality rates of rich and poor countries.

Following your passion in life is of utmost importance. And we should try to leave the world a better place than when we arrived. So we should pursue our passions and strive for the betterment of the world. But, if we think practically, every one of us wants to live a luxurious or at least an adequate life. And my saying is, life is short, so we need to squeeze the most out of it. We will never an opportunity to try any earthly pleasures after or time. Even if our souls move on somewhere, like some believe, our souls will only regret. So either to help others or to live ourselves a relish-able life, WE NEED MONEY.