To What Extent Can Money Buy Happiness

Can Money Buy Happiness?

As a young child, it always seems like material things can bring happiness. It’s one toy on to the next. First you have to have this princess doll and then next you need this art set, but once you get those things they instantly become not as important. Every year we went on a vacation to Hilton Head Island and I begged my parents for a hermit crab. I thought that this one little crab would make me the happiest girl in the world. Each time we would enter the store where they were sold I would gaze into their cage and watch them scramble all over each other. Soon enough I was able to buy it with my own money one year. Less than 24 hours later, it had died on the car ride home. As I sat in the car I began to wonder whether or not that crab had actually made me as happy as I thought it would in the years prior. I

It’s a question that’s been around for decades. And despite what you may believe, it actually can. If you spend it in the correct way. Using money to buy happiness in the wrong ways can end up becoming a paradox. The more you make, the more you want and the more you have, it becomes less effective in bringing happiness. Buying a new fancy car or tv might bring you a short burst of joy, but as humans, we follow a pattern known as the “hedonic treadmill”. To picture this “hedonic treadmill” you need to picture a graph with a line that waves up and down. The peaks of the waves are moments of great happiness and the lowest points are moments of great negativity or sadness. Despite this, the line will always go back to the center point, a stable level of happiness. After each event, it always goes back to a stable level (Audiopedia). These short bursts of joy that we receive the day of buying a luxury item won’t cause happiness in the long run. Instead, we often end up disappointed in our purchase because it fails to bring us happiness and we repeat the cycle again by buying another luxury item