There’s a lovely story I want to share with you. It is an old Easter story about a family who went to great lengths to scrimp and save so they could help raise money for the poor.
A friend shared this story on the back of the findings of a new study that claims “the almost universal view that money doesn’t buy happiness” is not true.
‘The researchers Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan, polled 1,014 individuals and found that “happiness and life satisfaction are almost perfectly correlated with income”.
To put this in perspective, when people hit the $100-$150k threshold, everybody was either “very” or “fairly” happy, and nobody described themselves as “very dissatisfied”.
Apparently this correlates with other surveys done across 25 countries from Iran to the UK which found that life satisfaction rises logarithmically as GDP per capita increases.
As one report summed it up: ‘The evidence is “overwhelming”: wealth is good for one’s well-being; the more you have, the happier you are.’
I fall in the category of skeptics who argue that 1,014 individuals are not exactly a representative example. That may tell you more about my relationship with money than the results of the survey!
There are many sayings and beliefs about money:
Money does not grow on trees.
Money is dirty.
Money is the root of all evil.
You can’t take it with you when you die.
Money doesn’t buy you happiness.
Rich people have so much because of their scheming ethics.
And of course, the very wealthy are often called ‘filthy rich’.
These are just a few of the ones I‘ve heard during my growing years. No doubt you have your own favourites to add to that list.
Money is an emotive word. It seems we ‘love to hate it’; or is it ‘hate to love it?’
Money is a great teacher. I would hazard there are as many money stories as there are people on the planet. Each a tale of a defining time in the story teller’s life when money was the catalyst for a life changing moment.
For me, the Easter story sums up our convoluted relationship with money. Be warned. My friend says she always feels tearful when she reads it.
More than anything else, this story shows me wealth is a state of mind. And that is good for your well-being.
