Juliet Schor's When Spending Becomes You

How often do you wake up worrying about money? How often do your loved ones worry about money? How often have you heard, “if only I had the money?” How often do you feel that more money would solve all your problems and would make you happy? What if I told you that you were right, to an extent. Author’s across the discussion of happiness have tried to answer the simply stated, yet complicatedly answered question, “Can Money Buy Happiness?” Authors Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diner attempt to answer the question in their piece of the same name, by explaining that “Yes, money buys happiness…but it must be considered in the bigger picture of what makes people genuinely rich” (Biswas-Diener 160-161). This idea that fiscal wealth is a path to happiness

The texts, “High incomes don’t bring you Happiness” and “You can buy Happiness, if it’s an Experience”, completes the idea that monetary value does not bring true joy. In the passage, “High incomes don’t bring you Happiness”, the author states that bringing in an over excessive amount of money will not make one happy. The author said that an overall income of around $75,000 will complete one’s emotional well being, while anything over that will complete a life evaluation. Life evaluation is the idea that if one was to look at themselves while they’re in their deathbed, how would they rate their lifestyle. This is also supported through different statements within the passage, “You can buy Happiness, if it’s an Experience”. Within this study, it was proven that people enjoyed money, but often spent it on materialistic items which leaves them with a temporary feeling of satisfaction, while when they are given a fully paid trip to the Bahamas, the feeling of peace and joy lasts far longer than when they were to purchase an item of materialistic value. This

Growing up in a family where both my parents came from poor immigrant backgrounds always made financial success a priority and when there was no need to be frugal, my parents did seem happier. But did money buy my parents’ happiness or did money lead to their happiness? Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener attempt to answer that question in their excerpt “Can Money Buy Happiness,” where they claim that “[m]oney can be a help in attaining psychological wealth, but it should be considered in the bigger picture of what makes people general genuinely rich (Biswas-Diener 161). Although not explicitly defined by Diener and Biswas-Diener, “psychological wealth” is the overall measure of happiness, beyond just fiscal affluence, including positive ties with other individuals and joyful temperaments (Biswas-Diener 168). By extending Biswas-Diener and Diener’s idea of “psychological wealth” to include the perception of what wealth is and what wealth consists of beyond monetary success, such as achievements or fulfillment, there exist a copious number of ways to view wealth. One can be rich in more than finances and happiness is dependent upon the perception of wealth due to money being one of several paths, including deliberate effort and being positive, to “psychological wealth” which leads to happiness.

The audience in which Juliet Schor, Elizabeth Warren, and Warren Buffet write to is none other than the American general public who identify themselves within the bounds of the middle class. Schor, a professor at Boston College, writes in her excerpt “When Spending Becomes You”, to the American middle class about overconsuming in products that aren’t exactly necessities. Schor uses key pronouns in her second paragraph such as “you” and “yours” to directly involve the reader in the piece. She wants American’s to look at what they have and truly question where and how all this “stuff “came to be. Warren, a Senator, gives a deeper thought into why Americans may be spending more. She compares costs of items from the 1970’s to similar items today

At the end of the day, the affluent are still not satisfied with their wealth or material items. Source D provides a great example. Even though the couple has purchased everything they could possibly want, they still feel “something is missing.” What they are missing is not a tangible object. It is not something one could go to a store and buy. They cannot obtain happiness in a nice little box on a store shelf. There is no price on happiness. Source A believes “happiness is desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else.” Nothing can supplement happiness. True happiness is “something final and self-sufficient.” People with affluenza can never find this happiness through the constant purchasing of more stuff. Happiness is achieved in many different ways for different individuals but not through wealth. For example, the mother in Source I begins to understand this when she becomes older one Christmas. She realizes no matter how many gifts she may receive,

Although Americans do look better and feel better with the extravagant items they purchase, money doesn’t buy happiness for long term goals. Like many will argue, like Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson did in his 2013 article, “Yes, Money Does Buy Happiness: 6 Lessons on the Newest Research on Income and Well-Being,” money can only buy happiness for short term goals; it won’t last very long for everyone and it could lead to worse scenarios when the money is gone. Thompson (2013) included statistics on richer countries that are proven to be happier, explaining, “First, the lines go up. More money, more happiness. Second, the lines go up in parallel, more or less. Across language, culture, religion, ethnic background, the same amount of extra money seems to buy the similar amount of extra happiness.” Thompson (2013) found the same similar pattern in many other countries and concluded that they are more happy than poorer countries. Although poorer countries don’t have as many resources or many things like richer countries do, Seth Borenstein, in his 2017 article for The Independent, “Norway Beats Denmark to be Named the Happiest Country in the World by the UN,” can beg to differ. Borenstein (2017) says, “While most countries were either getting happier or at least treading water, America's happiness score dropped 5 per cent over the past decade” (Borenstein, 2017). That shows that America, one of the richest

As Austrian writer Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote,“To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.” History and literature have established that the ideal goal every American has wanted is for his thirst for material possessions to be reached, but even then, the individual isn’t truly happy. Money, and the things it can get you, have long been a part of American culture and the materialist culture of society have been examined in numerous ways from novels to the art of those like Andy Warhol. A life free from the economic woes that plague almost everyone seems like the quintessential existence, but material wealth is not a way to mend issues.

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.

Copeland, Mike. “Americans Are ‘Spending’ Themselves Into Unhappiness.” Baylor Business Review, Waco Tribune-Herald, 2000. Mike Copeland researches the transformation of spending money and the negative side of it which can lead to unhappiness. He aims to show the emerging compulsive spending habits of emerging generations that do not end in positive emotions. He proves this with new patterns of shopping which occurs mainly online and with credit cards which have many unknown yet common traps. Copeland only proves that compulsive spending can lead to unhappiness, but does not examine the possible stress relief, relaxation, and happiness that could also be a result.

College education brings greater happiness can be seen not only from a Sociology perspective. If the dependent variable (education) is changed from the variable” money,” more perspectives could be added to the research. For example, Lee (2006) an economist in his article “who says money cannot buy happiness,” argues both sides of the argument; money brings happiness and money does not buy happiness. He argues that economists discovered that money does not buy happiness, and, in contrast, however, he adds, even the implication that the accumulation of money is not a warranty of happiness, the proposition that money and happiness are not positively related… it is wrong” (p. 386). The author uses a Mexican fisherman and Harvard MBA vignette to illustrate that poor people can be satisfied, for example, the Mexican fisherman is content for the reason that he works only a few hours, by this he has enough time to be with his children, wife and friends, however, the Harvard MBA advices him to work more hours to have more money. By analyzing this vignette wo could infer that the people who spend their life pursuing money does little to improve their happiness. The vignette used by Lee becomes a paradox were people spent their youth trying to gain material assets, and by spending their youth they spend one of the most valuable asset an individual could possess. One more interesting concept that we could analyze from Lee’s article is that money making is addictive,

Does money buy happiness? Money has always been a topic that makes people either uncomfortable or boastful in the sense that they believe they have a great deal or not nearly enough of. Nearly 3 billion humans, half the world’s population, lives in poverty with 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty. According to The World Bank website, “...the degree of happiness in 24 countries found that self-reported levels of happiness were higher in poor and middle-income countries than in rich ones, seemingly confirming popular beliefs.” Why is that? It would seem that the richer, more fortunate people nowadays try to find happiness in materialistic items that only money can buy. On the other hand, the less fortunate are more content, finding happiness in the little things like food, toys, or even new clothes. Though the poor do not have much money, they are driven by pure want and happiness, rather than greed and physical item that motivates many of the rich.

When you hear the word happiness, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you think of material possessions like designer clothes and accessories, the newest iPhone with the highest possible storage capacity, or a shiny red supercar? Do you think the amount of money you have or your current financial status has an effect on how happy you are? Plenty of college students, myself included, would associate happiness with possessing items like these or just having a lot of money in general. In today’s society, one common belief about social class is that the richer and more money or things that one has, the happier this will make them. This belief is reinforced by countless advertisements we see and hear everywhere, whether that be on

Economists D. Mahadea and T. Rawat investigated the relationship between economic growth and happiness in which they found that although being rich does make an individual happy, this extra income would not have the ability to purchase happiness once an income threshold is reached, especially in developed countries. They concluded that

The case study discussed if money really buys happiness. The University of Pennsylvania found rich people are happier than poor ones, poor countries are not happier than rich countries. Nevertheless, to add to the complexity of happiness and money, in 1974, Easterlin found that only one’s relative income compared to peers and neighbors matters for happiness, not absolute income (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, & Cardy, 2014). Comparative relative income to one’s peers and neighbors is known as the Easterlin paradox.