Can Money Buy Happiness?

Happiness is a difficult word to define. Everyone possesses different perspectives of happiness from their own experience. Some people would say money can buy you happiness because they presume money could give them power, while others disagree. From my own perspective, I personally believe money could not buy eternal joy into your life. Money is a basic need in our lives to purchase our everyday necessitates. Having a lot of money could be used to purchase fancy and expensive goods, but the satisfaction would only be limited. Furthermore, money cannot buy you the emotions you get from love and affection. Money is desired by everyone, but it can’t buy you everything, for example: general knowledge or a deceased loved one and the memories made with them.  Happiness is not determined by what your bank account could afford, it is simply appreciating the small things life brings you.

Money can’t buy you happiness even though it is thought to be one of the most powerful things in life because everyone desires money, but yet money can’t even buy you life-long friends or a loveable family. Love is a feeling of deep affection; it is an incredibly powerful word. Love is an emotion in life that cannot be tarnished because when you love someone, there is no denying it. Friends and family can bring joy into your life that money could not buy. When you have a genuine friendship, they’ll stay by your side no matter what, but if you choose to buy your friendship with money; they’ll leave you once you have lost your valuable possessions. Those who are less fortunate live in smaller homes with fewer possessions, but some of them are more satisfied with their life than the wealthy because their love can still be found in their warm hearts. Bill Gates once said “when you have money in your hand, you forget who you are. But when you don’t have money in your hand, everyone forgets who you are.” According to a study done by Huffington Post, people with more money tend to be more well respected than those with less. However, you do not need money in order to be well respected.

Money can only be used to purchase material goods such as shelter, a bed and many more items. Many people presume that money can be used to purchase everything in this world, but what it can’t buy you is life lessons and knowledge. You can use all the money you want to get a good education and become an amazing musician or something, but you won’t learn how to deal with the real world. In reality, you’ll have to deal with many types of complicated obstacles and money won’t be able to help. Another example of what money cannot buy or bring back is a deceased loved one and the memories made with them. If you break something, money could bring it back. If you lose a valuable item, money could bring that back too. However, no matter how much money you have, you could never bring back someone you loved who passed away. Money cannot buy you everything you want in life.
Money is a basic desire in our lives that could be used to purchase everyday necessitates. Having a lot of money can be used to purchase fancy goods, but the satisfaction would only be limited. Many people believe buying life experiences and materials are worth spending money on. However, according to Ryan Howell, a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, neither life experiences nor material items will make shoppers happier than they were before purchasing something. Even with lottery tickets, everyone desires to win big so they could quit their job, live in a lovely mansion and spend the rest of their days doing whatever they would like. However, according to a study made by BBC News, people who had big wins on the lottery were extremely excited to hear that they have won a large amount of cash but later on they ended up no happier than they were before.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that money could not bring eternal joy into your life because purchasing materials will only result in a limited amount of satisfaction, it cannot buy you the emotions you get from love and affection and it also cannot purchase everything in world such as general knowledge and a deceased loved one or the memories made with them. Money can make life easier, for example, you can buy a fancy car to get you to places faster but an average car will achieve the same thing, however, it may not be as pretty or fast but it still achieves its ultimate goal; to get you to your destination. Money can also buy expensive goods but they will only provide a limited amount of happiness because after its novelty passes you would have to buy something better. In the long run, money cannot buy happiness because the most valuable things in life cannot be bought with money; they have to be earned such as friendship and love.

Original source: http://www.teenink.com/opinion/spirituality_religion/article/817789/Can-Money-Buy-Happiness/