Money can buy happiness.
But you have to know where to spend it.
It's not like you can walk down to Walmart and get a hefty serving of happiness from aisle 10.
You can't pay a guru to make you happy.
You can't buy happiness off the shelf.
BUT…. You can use money to find happiness.
Absolutely.
Happiness is earned, not purchased.
The thing about money is how it can give you the time and freedom to earn happiness.
The other crucial thing about money is the amount of stress and fear it can remove. For most people, removing their money problems is a prerequisite for getting to a mental place where happiness can grow.
Happiness removes stress if you use it properly.
As Biggie Smalls said, "Mo Money, Mo Problems."
This ends up true for many that fall into the trap of using money to pursue more.
That's backward.
You should use money to simplify your options and choose only the absolute best ways to spend your time and focus.
The trappings of success often lead to more, which further confuses and complicates.
The way to use money is to eliminate all the noise in your life, so you have space to pursue the signal.
Noise manifests in doing things you don't want to do and dealing with people you don't want to deal with, and worrying about things you shouldn't have to worry about.
Money helps you remove this noise.
For most people, simplifying their life and removing noise would be a huge step in the happiness direction.
If you haven't earned money, you are not likely to find happiness
Children born into wealth are at a disadvantage.
What's funny about our culture is how the narrative is the opposite.
This is a simple misunderstanding of the duality of nature.
Like most politically correct beliefs, a bit of critical thinking and a baseline understanding of natural laws quickly dispel these bad ideas.
Your appreciation for life is defined by your struggles.
This is the duality of yin and yang you find in Taoism.
You can optimize this and seek to build more appreciation from life while trying to mitigate struggles, though I don't know if you can find genuine appreciation for life if you haven't experienced loss and hardship.
When it comes to money, if you didn't earn it, you can't appreciate it the way someone who worked for it does. There's just no way to replicate this effect artificially.
This is why most lottery winners end up broke and why many end up worse off than before.
It's why many wealthy people end up depressed and struggle to find meaning in their lives.
It's why life is a journey and not a destination.
Yet, our culture has this flawed idea that life is about a destination with a pot of gold at the end.
Yet every story about a successful person struggling is brushed off—/ya right./
Money is not the destination, happiness is the destination, and money can either help you get there faster, or it will move you farther away.