Can Money Buy Happiness?

Can Money Buy Happiness?

A lot of people say “Money Can’t Buy Happiness” as an expression to avoid financial learning or in other words avoid savings and financial planning. 

Some say money is the root of all evilness and happiness is earned from health and lifestyle. Happiness from realising your dream, happiness in the form just leading a simple lifestyle? Some say, money can’t buy dreams, passion, ambitions, and PURPOSE. While this is true, money can probably help to make it come true. We need to ask ourselves this - would you love to have passion and ambitions alone? OR HAVE those passions and ambitions come to reality.

Give an example, Susan wants to realize her dream of helping the poor (Soup Kitchen) and that is a simple dream and life, but that requires quite a bit of money to pursue it sustainably and responsibly. Food, Ingredients, Shelter (the basic needs) all require some sort of financial help to succeed. If Susan starts it without much money - she will be burned out from financial burden (and eventually be sad). However, imagine with RM1 million on hand, to kick start this, she will be able to kick start this smoothly without any worries. So RM1 million is her price of happiness. 

Money can be used to purchase experiences and material goods that we enjoy – like traveling or owning a home to help the poor – and these are all important aspects of living well. Money can also provide security for ourselves and our loved ones. If you can find happiness earning very little, that’s great. But keep in mind, we live in a country where wages are not quite keeping up with cost of living (Inflation is a pain in the arse). 10 years back when Nasi Lemak Bungkus only cost RM0.50 now RM2.00. This gives us peace of mind as we face uncertainty about what lies ahead in this changing world.

 

All in all, there is always a price to happiness but we should not equate money to happiness. There is alot of rich people who are miserable (as they do not realise their dream).  Try to look beyond  this idea that money cannot buy happiness. The exercise of putting a price tag on your idea of happiness can give you very real steps to achieving your dreams. 

 

So, financial planning is always important in achieving what makes you happy.