Money Can't Buy Happiness: My Opinion

Hey, I’m discussing a topic that effects every single person in this room it is arguably the 2 most important currencies in our lives… money and happiness the question we’re focusing on more specifically is. Can money buy happiness. We must ask this question to find out, is there a direct way that wealth relates to our happiness in a way that we can use to our advantage. it is tough to say weather or not money can buy happiness because it is actually quite hard to actually define happiness everyone has their own understanding of it from past experiences. Now some would argue that money gives you your fundamental needs like food and shelter which are prerequisites for actually experiencing joy however happiness is a complex emotion with a large combination of underlying factors that effect weather a person is overall happy.

In my personal opinion. Do I believe that money just buys you happiness? Well yes and no its not about how much money will make me hay its more about how can I spend it right I don’t think money gives external joy when you’re thinking about yourself it is a necessity in our life’s and having lots of money in your bank account allows you to buy branded things like channel or louis Vuitton but other than that the satisfaction becomes limited. This is where I contradict myself a little bit because I believe strongly that money can have a stronger impact on happiness if you spend the money on others rather than yourself.

Now think back to when you bought or received something for yourself it could be your phone or the bag your wearing. Most of you would’ve felt ecstatic right? Well researchers at Stanford university concluded that the anticipation to buy something gives us a surge of dopamine stimulating joy but after you’ve made your purchase it wears off, so you revert back to your mundane unhappy self. You might be thinking to yourself “oh ill just buy something else an ill be happy again” well it’s not that easy you see coz if it were, then millionaires that can afford whatever they want would just be happy all the time which is extremely untrue. People like kylie Jenner who if you don’t know her is the youngest self-made billionaire so ya know she’s pretty rich and in an interview, she was asked if “money has changed her happiness and freedom” which she replied with “I think it actually did the exact opposite for me. It made me realise that I could get a new car anytime I wanted but the happiness only lasts so long” so you see the whole theory of ill just buy something for myself to give me happiness is not true money cannot buy true happiness when your thinking about yourself.

Mabey the reason money doesn’t give us happiness is that were always spending it on the wrong things in particular were always spending it on ourselves because money often can make us kind of selfish only thinking of ourselves. researchers at British Columbia university had this same idea so they approached students on the campus and they gave them either 5 or 20 dollars and they asked them to spend it by 5pm that day but some of the students were told to spend the money on themselves while others where told to spend the money on someone else by the end of the day the people who spent money on themselves spent it on normal things like coffee makeup and jewellery while the students who spent money on others decided to spend their money on lunch for their friends, donating to charity and things for their family and the big question here is which group of people on average left happier at the end of the day what did they conclude when they called them back at the end of the day it turned out that the people who spent money on other people were remarkably happier then those who spent money on themselves it didn’t make the students who spent money on themselves less happy it just didn’t do much for them. There is a clear trend of if you spend money on others you find yourself significantly happier than if you were just to spend it on yourself.

In conclusion, I believe that wealth doesn’t really have any effect on happiness when thinking of yourself but I do think that it can in fact have a positive impact on your happiness if you spend it on other people so buy your friend lunch or donate to charity you might feel happy.