Does Money: Can Money Bring Happiness?

There are many arguments whether money can buy happiness or not. However, along our lives, we will find that money and happiness have a relationship in certain aspects in our lives such as education, work, and success. As stated by Gretchen Rubin, I believe that money can bring happiness only if spent wisely on important factors in our lives such as family or health. I also believe that our happiness is in direct correlation between our attainments and our aspirations as stated by Diener and Biswas-Diener. In the following passage, I will be elaborating on the claims made by Gretchen Rubin and Diener and Biswas-Diener to ultimately show that money does not harm our happiness or our lives in general. In this passage I will be covering the perspectives …show more content…
They come up with a very unique equation that represent the correlation between money and happiness. The equation shows that happiness is equal to what we have (attainments) divided by what we want (aspirations). As stated by Diener, “This formula makes sense. It means that it doesn’t so much if you make $20,000 a year or $100,000, if you drive a new BMW or an old Chevrolet, what matters more is that your income is sufficient for your desires” (170). What Diener and Biswas-Diener is trying to say is that money doesn’t affect happiness, it’s one’s aspirations. Someone can make $200,000 a year but if that person’s aspirations are expensive like expensive living, cars, and vacations, the income won’t be enough to support their aspirations. However when someone who only makes $50,000 a year and their aspirations are minimal, then their income is sufficient for their aspirations and thus more happiness. If our aspirations is more than our income, we will be stressing over not having enough money to meet our desires. If however our income is sufficient for our aspirations, we will have a feeling of satisfaction rather than