AIBU to think, can money buy happiness? in some ways, it absolutely can!

But lots of others who could afford yearly full body scans, private care and surgery, have been saved by early intervention. Not all millionaires prioritise their health by having scans, and overindulgent life styles may have led to health problems.

Money definitely eases stress. Where I've seen issues is when people expect money to fill a fundamental hole within them - usually around wanting validation or not feeling 'good enough' - and when it doesn't they fall apart. No amount of money is ever enough to fill them them. They work and work and work in the hopes the next 100 thousand, the next million will finally make them feel worthwhile and it never does.

People say money gives you choices but the more common situation I've seen is that it gives people constraints. As they earn more they buy a bigger house, a bigger car, send their children to private school etc until their life is so expensive it is a massive burden. They must maintain it so they have fewer choices rather than more - they can't leave their job, they can't even go off sick, because their budget is so tight.

I've also seen people with certain expectations around what life 'should' be at a certain income/wealth level, who are so unsatisfied with everything that I would say money has definitely diminished their happiness, rather than increased it. There was a guy on the radio recently talking about 'struggling' on £200k a year. A person with that mindset will never be happy.

I have been incredibly poor, not enough to eat, or pay for bus fares poor, so I can compare the two.
In my opinion...money can buy lots of nice comforts, lovely holidays, better health care, and all that makes for a far more comfortable lifestyle.

However, happiness comes from within, all the money in the world can't make a terminally ill person better, resurrect the dead, make a sour relationship healthy again, mend a broken heart...etc etc, so for me, money cannot buy happiness....just comfort.

Absolutely money can buy happiness, and it's dishonest and disrespectful to try to pretend otherwise.

No, it was because she won the lottery.
Not sure how you can equate that to a 'sin'...unless you view all forms of gambling as sinful.

Yes it brings peace, stability, convenience and if anything goes wrong you have options or can at least be miserable in comfort

It can buy access to healthcare, but not health, otherwise millionaires wouldn’t die of cancer, or suffer with poor MH.

Having money also means added pressure and responsibility imo. Responsibilities to ie your money to “make your mark/make a difference”. If you have no money then that make can be significantly smaller/lower expectations.

i also think there is a feeling humans get from working towards something and achieving something. If you’ve never had to do that because you buy what you like when you like, you miss out on That valuable emotion (and end up going to Epstein island). Your friendships are more likely to be fake too.

There’s studies and there’s a certain sweet spot of enough money to be happy - no stress if the car brakes but not getting helicopters to work.

Why are you laughing when you're well off and people have shared how poverty is affecting their lives?

@OrdinaryMagicOfAcorns if I can just say too that there are plenty of us ‘middle class kids’ who have been given jack shit too , and are in similar positions to yourself - the idea that because you come from a middle class background ( I actually come from probably a lower middle class background - dad a roofer, mum a teacher in fits and starts) I actually had jack shit given me . My H comes from middle class background, father very much alive in 80s ( abd is lovely) but no we haven’t had house deposits etc -

You need to look up the meaning of "patronising".

What’s in it for her, if she does well, are options. Just like with money. And we all should have options.

What a patronising and snobby thing to say. Or could that instead be about envy?

You know what, with the amazing powers of your positive thinking why don’t you go something magical for the world? Wipe out nuclear weapons? Save the women of Afghanistan? Stop climate change and bring back emperor penguins from the brink? Or our own red squirrels? Why do we have to listen to so much magical crap telling us serfs. To suck up yet more serfdom? I can’t even have the freedom to tell this baby boomer man to stop whining about the precise consistency of a boiled egg.

No shit Sherlock

Meanwhile I don’t know if my kids are set up for school as I was supposed to go to bed early but had to get up again to get them into bed because my useless self centred prick of a husband can’t sort it, and I can’t divorce him because he pays for the house. But yes. Positive thinking solves everything. If you’re born rich.

What kind of world is this for my beautiful bright eyed baby daughter who is now a depressed teen asking me why and how it’s worth it.

Shes working hard at school too, doing GCSEs, going to get a handful, WHY? Whats in it for her? What was there ever in it for me?

Yep you’re right. Thank you for the privilege of your fucking insight.

Getting up at 5 am for work, work, work, which is all I’ve ever known, work for pittances that is all my life’s entire work is worth, stress about how to find the time to learn more to be able to do more work work work, watch those who worked for nothing get given it all, be a body slave to those who were just 5 years older than me and so were equipped to actually buy a life with their work, but all I really need is more positive thinking. So I’ve been told by the fucking well off middle classes since forever.

Fuck that and fuck the landlords who stole everything g from me.

I’ve never really believed in the notion that ‘the universe gives you what you give out’ and this idea of the law of attraction but in your case I would venture to say that if you are walking around all day being so bitter and miserable that you will never be happy.

Whoop de doop. A few coins to the serfs from Musk, the first person on earth to get a trillion dollar paycheck. Most of it achieved from his privileged birth position of wealth.

Im feeling particularly sick this morning. I was born poor, barely enough food, always hand me down clothes and never enough of them, but was educated among the well-off. I worked through school, worked up a bit, as much as I could knowing myself inferior to those born wealthy, always worked and tried harder than they did for everything: only to watch everything taken away by fucking boomer buy to let landlords. I stupidly then thought I was getting somewhere and could make a bit of space to have kids, bringing more lives into this filthy exploitative world, and had to move to a cheap region to buy a house to try and give them a future. And so I’ve been working hard ever since trying to make a future for them, with my education worthless, my career thrown away, working next to people who never tried because work and skill pays nothing nowadays. I never get enough sleep. The only work I can do has to work around kids and so I’m on 13 hr shift work in hospitals, nights and days mixed, with mostly foreigners because no one else is such a mug. Sick of working for the benefit of those entitled boomers listening to their fortunate lives and complaints about the inadequacy of our service, particularly from the bastard privileged men.

How much easier my life would be if I’d been born into wealth and had been given a house deposit or even a house, like the well off kids I grew up with and watched in my old work: or tbh like the very poorest who never tried and got given it all on the state. I could have stayed where I was living and fought for my old career.

They have donated some of their money, more so Bezos.

Yes it does. It buys you peace of mind. The ability to plan. To indulge yourself.

Those who say it doesn’t buy happiness have probably never been without it and have never faced unpayable bills.

But the wealth wasn’t because of her work. I think you know what it means.