Can Money Buy Happiness?

Michael Norton, the TED Talk speaker, discussed “How to Buy Happiness.” Norton is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School; he has also studied psychology. Furthermore, Norton did research on whether spending money on oneself or on others can make a person happy. According to him, people who spend money on others are happier than those who spend money on themselves. He wanted to convince his audience that happiness is in sharing or giving to others. First, he gained the attention of his public by starting his speech with humor. Similarly, he has conducted various surveys on how two groups of people, who felt differently, spend money on others like charity or giving gifts from different countries like Uganda and Canada. Although Norton’s attempts at stablishing credibility were somewhat ineffective, his arguments were mostly effect because of his use of logos and pathos.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton and colleagues from the University of British Columbia, Lara Aknin and Elizabeth Dunn found that spending money on others makes people happier than spending money on themselves. In fact, their studies found that how someone spend their money

Use your money for buying experiences not material items. Geoff Williams, a frequent writer for U.S News & World Report and author of several books wrote an article in U.S News & World Report entitled “Can Money Buy Us Happiness”. In this article Williams writes about the difference between buying material items and buying experiences and which brings you happiness including the possibility that a third option, buying something for someone else and not yourself is possible for buying happiness. At any rate, whether you choose material items or vacation memories, your long term happiness is at stake. Williams used ethical and emotional appeals to persuade his intended audience that buying experiences will enhance you long term happiness.

The human characteristics of greed and materialism are a disguise that provide an ephemeral distraction, which over time, creates dissatisfaction. If asked what a person’s overarching life’s objective is, most would answer to be happy and loved. Yet, the misconception that happiness and money are interchangeable is still widely felt.

A recent study shows that as an individuals’ level of wealth increases, their feelings of compassion go down, and their feelings of allowance, deservingness, and their idea of self-interest increases. According to some scientists, money can buy happiness, but what is happiness exactly? Money can make you feel everything is possible. Sad thing is, money will always leave you wanting more and more. In consequence, we will see how in the early 1920’s in The Great Gatsby and now humanity has focused on satisfying their ego and how that can somehow be quite destructive.

Defining happiness can be just as hard as achieving happiness. Some people find happiness through love, family or money. All three of these ideas can influence happiness, but do any of these have more power or influence of achievement or happiness over the others? Money seems to have the most influence in someone’s pursuit of happiness can suggest that money is the only thing that can make happiness. Money can only make a person happy on the outside, but one must have love and family for a person to truly be happy and money can’t truly buy that.

There is something about imagining the future which has a certain appeal to most people. For a consumer society like America, this imagined future almost inevitably contains more and more objects which will make our lives bigger and better. In America, the more things a person accumulates, the happier he or she is supposed to become. The more a citizen spends, the more secure and personally fulfilled that citizen will be. By following this credo, each citizen is able to carve for themselves their own peaceful and happy niche. Surrounded by a mountain of things, which, simply by their existence, proclaim this person as successful, the citizen is able to distance him or herself from others. “ I made it, so you should be able

Does money buy happiness? In the discussion of giving away money, we often learn a few things about ourselves. What are our values? Are these values, ethical? Are we currently satisfying our values or are we living selfishly? Peter Singer, author of The Most Lives You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do, has a way of getting his readers to evaluate questions comparable to the ones above. Peter Singer is an effective altruist who believes strongly in living in the utmost effective way possible for the benefit of others. This belief is important considering in today’s world, we have several million people who need aid in some sort, but we also have several people spending money on unnecessary items. We are all guilty of spending money on items

Many believe daily purchases cannot conclude to happiness, however, these people are not contributing their money the correct way. Consumers assets should be based on intimate traits and characteristics meeting our psychological needs and wants. People who spent more money on purchases that lined up with their personality traits were happiest (Close). Cambridge University tested 625 people over the idea that investing well-earned money with personalities resulted in the happiness factor. Starting with a personality test along with each response linking back anonymously to the recent bank transactions over six months (Connington). The five

In the informational text, “Can Money Buy Happiness?”, the central idea is by spending money unselfishly, can bring joy to both to giver and the receiver . For instance, in the informational text, Professor Elizabeth Dunn conducted a research in 2008. “She gave cash to two groups of students. She told one group to spend cash on themselves and the other to spend it on someone else. Which group turned out out be happier? The group that spent the money on others.” (Scope Magazine pg 26) According to the research, it is clear that spending money unselfishly brings joy to oneself, but does the character Jerry from, “President Cleveland, Where Are You?” agree with the central idea of “Can Money Buy Happiness?” Jerry would probably have disagreed with the central idea.

In his article The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People David G. Myers analyzes results of different surveys and researches in attempt to answer the question: “does money make people happier?” The conclusion suggests they do not. While many people have an opposite opinion, facts show the correlation between money and happiness weakens with the increase of income.

We all want to be happy. Some people are happy for just a few hours by taking a nap, others can find happiness by in a day by going shopping and some who inherit money can be happy for a year. In the Webster dictionary happy is defined as "feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation, etc." Many people believe that having money will get them the pleasure and enjoyment in life that will make them feel happy. They think that money can buy them happiness. This may be true but money can also brings stress, it consumes your life, and makes you greedy and self-centered. No matter how much money you have, happiness cannot be bought.

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness? Today, the argument can be made that happiness and consumerism are directly linked. It is fair to say that happiness is a relative term for different people. However, the obtaining of new and shiny things has become such a part of everyday life, that it provides happiness when people are purchasing something new, and causes sadness when no buying is taking place. For many, it seems to be a protective coating against the harsh realities of everyday stresses from a job, or family life.

MP Dunleavey, is the author of Money Can Buy Happiness. She is an award-winning personal finance author, editor, consultant, specializing in women and money. She is also a former columnist for The New York Times, and MSN Money. Dunleavey points out some good ideas about financial key terms to validate how spending money when makes you happy, makes a lot of sense. It’s a usual advice about retirement and paying down debt but that’s always a given. The best parts of this book are the parts that focus on happiness and evaluating if you are using money for its intended purpose.

There are many people claim that there is not any relationship between money and happiness. However, I believe that there is a direct relationship between money and happiness. Research shows that being able to provide our basic needs and higher-level wants leads us to a happy life. The relationship between money and happiness is like the relationship between food and body. “The importance of money in human life is similar to the importance of food for the body. Just like you can’t live even for a few days without food, you can’t survive for long without money.”(Singh, 2015).Having access to our necessities, being able to participate in leisure activities, and being able to help our friends, are things which make us happy; and we need money for having them.So, for being happy in our life,