Does Money Buy You Happiness?

I see so many contradicting studies and statements about this.
Money buys happiness, money doesn’t buy happiness, wait, yes it does…on and on we go.

It leaves me wondering…does it?
When you’re struggling to pay bills and canceling vacations because you can’t afford the hotel, it feels like more money would solve half your problems. And yes, I absolutely bought MegaMillions last night.
While some live off debt (money isn’t real anyway, right? Can’t owe money in the afterlife), others struggle to stay debt-free (sadly, it’s me) and live a not-so-glamorous lifestyle.

I wish there were a clean answer I could staple to your fridge.
There isn’t. But there are some good answers, better than the headlines, and they start with a simple truth most of us never learned in school.

Two kinds of “happy”

There’s the way you think about your life when someone asks, “How’s it going? All things considered?”
Let’s call that the balcony view.
Then there’s how you feel in the hours you’re actually living: your day-to-day moods, the little rises and dips that come and go like weather.
Let’s call that the street view.

Years ago in 2010, researchers proved that as income climbs, people’s life evaluation tends to rise steadily with it, more money, more sense that life is on track.
But daily emotions don’t move the same way forever.
Below a comfortable income, not having enough hurts (a lot).
Then, for daily feelings, the curve seemed to flatten…like once you weren’t actively worried about money, extra dollars stopped making Tuesday afternoon feel better.
That was the famous “around $75k” finding you’ve probably heard about.

Cue a decade of debates…and inflation.

Then newer work landed with a thunk: using moment-by-moment reports from thousands of people, a new researcher found that daily well-being keeps rising with income even above that threshold, with absolutely no clean ceiling for most people.
More money didn’t transform people into confetti cannons, but on average it nudged the day-to-day up, bit by bit.

The twist?
In 2023, the two camps teamed up and reconciled the fight, because why not?
Their joint take: for most people, higher income is associated with higher day-to-day well-being all the way up; for a smaller, very unhappy group, more money stops helping past a point.

In other words, both the “keeps rising” and the “plateau” were true, but for different slices of people. Context mattered. A lot. And it also sounds like they were tired of fighting and just decided “okay, we’re both right.”

So, big picture: money can buy some happiness, especially when you don’t have enough.
It tends to lift the balcony view and, for most people, brightens the street view too.
But it’s not a completely unanimous potion, and it works very differently depending on who you are, how you live, and what hurts.

The lottery myth (and the truth)

Ask the internet about lottery winners and you’ll get the same meme:
“They win big, blow it all, and end up miserable.”
A 1970s study gets dragged out like an old story at Thanksgiving you’ve heard one too many times: lottery winners weren’t that much happier than anybody else; accident victims adapted faster than you’d think.
Hedonic treadmill, cue the shrug.

But the modern, large-scale data paints a much sharper picture.
Following thousands of Swedish lottery players over years, economists found that people who won big experienced sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that lasted more than a decade.
Not fireworks every single morning, not a daily euphoria drip, just a durable lift in how life feels as a whole.
Day-to-day moods didn’t skyrocket, but the balcony view improved and stayed improved.
So…we’ve been lied to.

Money from the sky doesn’t turn Tuesdays into a musical number.
But when you remove a stack of financial pressure…mortgage, medical bills, “can we afford this?”…people tend to like their lives more.
For a long time.
That’s what the data actually says.

Why the headline answers keep fighting

Because they’re talking about different questions.

“Does money buy happiness?”
If by “happiness” you mean life evaluation (how you score your life overall), then yes, more money generally helps. Duh.

“Does money make you feel better today?”
For most people, yes, the street view rises too, especially when money removes all that friction.
For a minority stuck in deep distress, more income helps only to a point because the pain isn’t primarily financial, it’s actually grief, illness, loneliness, untreated anxiety, a life on fire for reasons a paycheck can’t reach.
They’re unhappy. More money won’t fix that.

“Why doesn’t more money always feel like more joy?”
Because we adapt.
The extraordinary becomes Tuesday; the new car becomes “my car.”
Our brains are great at normalization.
That’s truly adaptation at play, it’s the treadmill that returns you to baseline unless you change the track you’re running on.

“Then is wanting more money just a focusing illusion?”
Often, yes.
We zoom in on income and forget the rest of the pie: sleep, friends, health, purpose.
We imagine richer-us living a very different life, then spend our extra hours…doing the same things, just with nicer coffee.

That’s why the “does money buy happiness” question feels slippery.
You can’t answer it without asking: whose happiness?
Which kind?
And how is the money used?

What money actually buys (when it works)

Not bliss, bandwidth.
Not dramatic fireworks, just fewer fires.

When the basics are shaky (groceries have me sweating), money is a painkiller and a seatbelt.
It quiets the alarms: food, rent, car repair, dental work you’ve been avoiding.
It buys safety, options, and sometimes time…which might be the most underrated purchase of all. Our only true priceless resource.

There’s this elegant set of studies showing that people feel happier when they use money to buy time: outsourcing the chores that choke their weekends off, paying for help that gives back an hour with their kids, or a quiet morning that isn’t a sprint.
Time affluence beats stuff, over and over.

And generosity?
It’s not just good manners.
Spending on other people lights us up in ways buying for ourselves often doesn’t…think small, human scale: picking up a friend’s lunch, helping a stranger, surprising your partner with something thoughtful.
It’s old news to the science crowd; it still feels like magic when you do it.

Experiences beat things, too…not because things are bad, but because we share experiences, retell them, stitch them into our memories.
That concert, that road trip, that cooking class with flour in your hair, they keep paying out in memory.
The couch mostly turns into, well, a couch.
Same with a car.
So the lever isn’t “have money → be happy.”
It’s “use money to remove all these damn stressors, buy time, build connection, and create meaning → feel better, longer.”

The floor matters more than the ceiling

The easiest part of the research to understand is the bottom of the curve: not having enough money hurts.

It compounds pain.
If you’re struggling, a raise feels like opening a window in a stuffy room.
That’s why “money doesn’t buy happiness” sounds like a luxury-brand slogan when you can’t cover the dentist.

Above comfort, more income still tends (on average) to nudge well-being up for most people, but slower, and only if it’s not swallowed by lack of time, lifestyle creep, or loneliness.
The returns become less about the number and more about what the number actually does: frees your calendar, stabilizes your home, lets you say “no” to the job that eats your soul, and “yes” to dinner with people who actually know you.

And then there’s inequality and cost of living. How far a dollar travels where you live, whether you feel safe, whether you’re constantly comparing your inside to someone else’s outside.

A quick map for using money to feel better (not just richer)

Not a moral list, just a practical one.

Stabilize first.
Three months of expenses in cash beats a shiny purchase you stop noticing by Wednesday. Future-you sleeps better when present-you has a cushion. You never know when you’re going to get a flat tire.
Retire the expensive stress.
Pay down high-interest debt. It’s not just math; it’s mental health. Tiny, boring wins stack into calm.
Buy time like it’s a necessity.
Groceries delivered when the week looks loud (thank you Amazon Fresh!). A cleaner twice a month if you can swing it. Childcare help. Trade money for hours you’ll actually feel.
Buy experiences you’ll replay.
Little ones count. A picnic, a day trip, that class you keep meaning to take. Experiences compound in memory in a way objects rarely do.
Give some away.
Doesn’t have to be grand (or a grand). A neighbor, a friend, a cause, the science is old; the feeling is new every time.
Protect your people.
Insurance that won’t bankrupt you, a living will. These unsexy grown-up things function like seatbelts. You rarely “feel” them…until you would’ve crashed.
Avoid the treadmill by changing the track.
Lifestyle creep is a magician; it makes raises disappear. Choose one or two permanent upgrades that give you joy (not status), then lock the rest into savings, debt-slaying, or time purchases.
Treat “more” as a question, not a goal.
Ask: What am I trying to feel? Secure? Free? Less rushed? Loved?
Then spend toward the feeling, not the flex.

But what about the dream number?

Everybody’s got one, enough to loosen that knot on the upper left hand side of your back and make life feel magical again.
You picture waking up inside a different story with more light.

Numbers matter.
Let’s not pretend they don’t. But the number is a tool, not a personality.
The research keeps circling the same lesson: the how beats the how much once your basics are truly solid.
Money buys happiness best when it buys time, freedom, and connection, and when it spares you the kind of stress that eats sleep for breakfast.

Will you adapt to some parts of it?
Yes.
We are gold-medal adapters.
Which is frustrating until you remember: adaptation is also how we survive the bad stretches.
Hedonic treadmills run both ways.

The honest answer, then

Does money buy happiness?

Yes…some.
Unevenly, and more like insulation.
It warms a cold house, while also fixing the leaks you’ve been ignoring.
It buys a Saturday you’re actually present for, and a dinner you can buy without checking the TD app.
It moves you from “barely” to “mostly,” and sometimes from “mostly” to “a little more.”

It raises the balcony view for most of us, and for many it brightens the street-level days, too.
But it can’t carry the whole load on its own.
It’s not a substitute for friends, or health, or a way of working that doesn’t grind your bones.
No number rewires a lonely life, and no raise replaces a hand to hold.

And those lottery winners?
The sky money didn’t turn them into cartoon heroes, but it did make their lives feel better for a long time, because fewer fires, more choices, less “no.”
That’s the part we can copy without buying a ticket: use whatever money we have as a tool for stability, time, generosity, and meaning. Don’t use money as a personality trait.

So if you’re struggling right now and it feels like more money would fix half your problems…yeah.
It probably would.
Start there. When you can breathe, spend like a scientist of your own joy.
Buy time, buy moments you’ll retell, buy the ability to say no, and even give some away because it quietly rewires the day.

Then ask: Is this purchase buying me the feeling I wanted?
If it’s not, try a different route.

Because happiness isn’t for sale in a single aisle…but the parts that are?
They’re worth every careful dollar we point in their direction.

Here’s to hoping that MegaMillions hits!

Reads You Might Enjoy:

Sources

Brickman, Philip, et al. “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 36, no. 8, 1978, pp. 917–927. Gwern Europe

Dunn, Elizabeth W., Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.” Science, vol. 319, no. 5870, 2008, pp. 1687–1688, doi:10.1126/science.1150952. Harvard Business School

Kahneman, Daniel, and Angus Deaton. “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-Being.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 38, 2010, pp. 16489–16493, doi:10.1073/pnas.1011492107. PNAS

Kahneman, Daniel, and Alan B. Krueger. “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion.” Science, 2006, doi:10.1126/science.1129688. Science

Killingsworth, Matthew A. “Experienced Well-Being Rises with Income, Even above $75,000 per Year.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, no. 4, 2021, e2016976118, doi:10.1073/pnas.2016976118. PNAS

Killingsworth, Matthew A., Daniel Kahneman, and Barbara Mellers. “Income and Emotional Well-Being: A Conflict Resolved.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 120, no. 11, 2023, e2208661120, doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120. PNAS

Lindqvist, Erik, et al. “Long-Run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-Being.” The Review of Economic Studies, vol. 87, no. 6, 2020, pp. 2703–2726, doi:10.1093/restud/rdaa028. Oxford Academic

Van Boven, Leaf, and Thomas Gilovich. “To Do or to Have? That Is the Question.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 85, no. 6, 2003, pp. 1193–1202. PubMed

Whillans, Ashley V., et al. “Buying Time Promotes Happiness.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no. 32, 2017, pp. 8523–8527, doi:10.1073/pnas.1706541114. PNAS