{"id":513,"date":"2009-05-21T10:54:14","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T15:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2009-05-21T10:54:14","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T15:54:14","slug":"money-can%e2%80%99t-buy-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/21\/money-can%e2%80%99t-buy-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Money Can\u2019t Buy Happiness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 I heard a lot while I was writing The Richest Man in Town:<\/em> \u201cMoney can\u2019t buy happiness.\u201d I can tell you that there are a lot of miserable rich people out there, and it is certainly true that pursuing money for money\u2019s sake<\/a> will not lead to a satisfying life. But for RMITs wealth is not only a tool to achieve great things and add value to the community; it\u2019s also the reward for their hard labor, that allows them to pursue their passions and have a full, well-rounded life. Across the board, I found that having money is indeed related to happiness. And science backs me up: In April of last year, University of Pennsylvania<\/strong> economists Betsy Stevenson<\/strong> and Justin Wolfers<\/strong> presented a study at the Brookings Institute<\/strong> in Washington, D.C., on just this subject. According to the New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Stevenson and Wolfers found that 90 percent of the households in America that have incomes of $250,000 or more call themselves \u201cvery happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

This seems obvious\u2014as Mae West<\/strong> put it, \u201cI\u2019ve been rich and I\u2019ve been poor and believe me, rich is better!\u201d But there\u2019s a catch. Christel DeHaan<\/strong>, the richest woman in Indianapolis, who started a typing service to make extra cash and parlayed that into a multinational company she later sold for $825 million, is a trustee of the University of Indianapolis<\/strong>. In her address at the university\u2019s 2008 commencement ceremonies, she cited a classic Northwestern University study,<\/a> which found that lottery jackpot winners were no happier than nonwinners. The people you would think would be the happiest\u2014hey, they won the lottery!<\/a>\u2014were no happier than the rest of us poor slobs. Which makes us poor slobs feel better, naturally, and goes to show that money indeed won\u2019t buy happiness.<\/p>\n

A common stereotype of the wealthy is the idle rich kid, bored and jaded. The emphasis here is on \u201cidle.\u201d Those who inherit wealth or win it in the lottery are much less likely to be happy than those who earn it. Even the RMITs, for whom money is tied to their hard-earned self-worth, deal with this pitfall. John McAfee<\/strong>, the richest man in Rodeo, New Mexico, made a half-billion-dollar fortune from his antivirus software company. Money, he told me, \u201cinevitably brings stuff. Stuff that we don\u2019t need, stuff simply to fill some gaping hole within ourselves that can\u2019t be filled with, well, stuff.\u201d McAfee acknowledged that it is hard to eschew society\u2019s measures of success, but told me that now that he\u2019s figured out that the stuff is not so important to him, he is much happier. For him, as for all of the self-made RMITs, wealth isn\u2019t just more money to spend on stuff\u2014it gives you something to do.<\/em> And that is far more satisfying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 I heard a lot while I was writing The Richest Man in Town:<\/em> \u201cMoney can\u2019t buy happiness.\u201d I can tell you that there are a lot of miserable rich people out there, and it is certainly true that pursuing money for money\u2019s sake<\/a> will not lead to a satisfying life. But for RMITs wealth is not only a tool to achieve great things and add value to the community; it\u2019s also the reward for their hard labor, that allows them to pursue their passions and have a full, well-rounded life. Across the board, I found that having money is indeed related to happiness. And science backs me up: In April of last year, University of Pennsylvania<\/strong> economists Betsy Stevenson<\/strong> and Justin Wolfers<\/strong> presented a study at the Brookings Institute<\/strong> in Washington, D.C., on just this subject. According to the New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Stevenson and Wolfers found that 90 percent of the households in America that have incomes of $250,000 or more call themselves \u201cvery happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[160,7,153,157],"tags":[173,175,177,30,176,181,174,180,17,179,182,90,178,172],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}