Does Money REALLY Make You Happy

I think a lot of people live with the false belief that money really is the root of all evil and that the more money you have, the more problems you have. And sometimes that's true. Sometimes, you know, the more money you have, usually the more things you're doing and the more chances that you're going to have something bad happen. It happens all the time, trust me. But I firmly believe that having money isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can be a good thing. Now, does it make you happy? Just having money won't make you happy if you are a miserable person. If you're depressed, then you get more money. You're just gonna be more depressed, okay? It's just gonna make you more of what you are. So if you're a happy person, you'll get happier. If you're a generous person and you're making a lot of money, guess what? You can do a lot of great things for a lot of people. You know, we all grew up. You know, I grew up in the 80s, and, you know, my parents weren't about flaunting money. My grandfather grew up in the Great Depression. He was like, you know, always make people. Don't make people think you have any more money than you do. Make them feel like you don't have more than a pot to p. And, you know, even with me, with my business, I work a lot and, you know, my mom will sometimes, you know, make the comments of, like, you know, it's not always about work. It's not always about money. Like, you know, it's really about having family and people in your lives, and all those things are important, too. But let me tell you something nobody taught me when I was younger. You know, when you grow up, you need money to do things. You need money to buy things. And when you have more money, you have options. Having options is a great thing in life. It might not always make you happy, but it definitely decreases stress. I noticed when I started making more money, over $100,000 a year, that life became so much easier. I didn't have to stress so much about things, but there were still some stresses. Even making that much money, there's still. I couldn't do everything I wanted just on a whim, but I had a lot more flexibility. I could hire a personal trainer. You know, when I was working on my business, I wasn't focusing on my physical health so much. I used to be a boxer, so I was really in shape and really fit. And then when, you know, I quit doing boxing to really, really dive in and focus on my business. From the age of 27 to about, like, 35, I was like, I didn't feel so great about myself. It wasn't working out. And I was like, okay, I need coaching. I need help. And it was nice to be able to be able to pay and afford a personal trainer. If I hurt myself one time, I hurt my back. I was, you know, it's getting old. I was taking the laundry out of the. Out of the dryer. Okay. If you've ever pulled your back taking laundry out of the dryer, let me know in the comments below. But I really, really hurt my back. I had never hurt my back before in life. And I was like, I need to go to a chiropractor. I need to get massage. I was able, you know, the chiropractor is covered under my insurance, but the massage wasn't. And it was like $125 to go for the. And I went like five or six times because it was really helping me. Whatever I pulled in my back, it was helping me relief that muscle. So being able to just afford to take care of myself when something happened to me was amazing. Not only that, with money, you can outsource things. You know, a lot of people, they're doing everything in life because they can't afford to outsource. What do I mean? Mowing your lawn. Mowing. Okay. Lawn care, landscaping, laundry. I still do my laundry, but we used to outsource our laundry when we're. When we lived in Medford, I used to. I used to have someone come and pick up our laundry, fold it, and bring it back. That was awesome. I still need to find that service again. But we didn't have our. Our laundry wasn't in the unit like it is now. So it's a little easier for us to do our laundry. But groceries, Ordering your groceries ahead of time, having them delivered, saves a lot of time. House cleaner, that was a big one. I am not the cleaner in the relationship. I'm the one who makes the mess all the time. But my wife, this was. This was years ago when we first started in business. And, you know, my wife is like, I need you to help out in the house more. Like, I need you to clean more. Because she was the one doing all the cleaning. And I said, listen, I do not clean. It's just not something I do. But I will pay for someone to come in and. And clean for us. This way, when you do clean, it is not so much. And since then, we've always had a cleaner. And it Was a really, really hard thing for me to get her away from because she felt, you know, that middle class mentality. She felt like she should be cleaning her own apartment, like our parents clean their apartment, so we should clean our apartments. But I would rather take that time and invest it in my business, Or I'd rather take that time and go for a walk outside when it's nice. Okay. These are things that money can buy to give you more time and relieve stress in your life. So there was a study years ago that they just redid, but it was saying that $84,000 a year on average, was what someone needed to make to be happy. And then once you got above that, your happiness didn't really increase that much. And I bet if we adjusted that for inflation today, probably be about 100,000, $120,000 a year, and your happiness doesn't go up after that. And they found in this study that that wasn't necessarily true. They found that progressively it did go up more. And I can talk from personal experience that it does go up. I am way happier now with, you know, the amount of money I make than I was two years ago, than I was five years ago. Definitely. Than when, 10 years ago? Absolutely. Because the more money you have, again, the more options you can do things for people. I remember we went out to a restaurant, this was just after Covid, and we were up in Portland, Maine, and we went to this bar and we ordered, you know, some beers. We probably spent like 50, 60 bucks on beers. There's a waitress there, she was super nice. Like, she made us laugh. It was dead. Like nobody was there. It was horrible. And, you know, we paid the bill and then we looked at each other like, we're gonna leave her a really nice tip. Because when we were younger, when Megan and I first started dating, we said, you know, when we make money, when we get enough money, if we see someone that deserves it, we want to be able to give them a good tip. We want to be able to, like, make someone's night. You see those news articles where someone gives, like, you know, $1,000 tip or something? Well, we didn't give her a thousand dollar tip. I had a hundred dollars in cash in my wallet. So I gave her all my cash. So on, like, you know, a $60 bill. I think we gave her $100 tip. And we're like, it's dead in here. Like, she's showing up, she's coming to work, she's awesome. Her attitude was great. And we're like, let's just give her a hundred bucks. And that's awesome. That's awesome. I've had friends who've been doing fundraisers, like people who did fundraisers for their schools or I had friends that were just doing fundraisers for different things. And you know, their goal would be like a thousand dollars and they'd be at like 500. I'm like, cool, here's the other $500. And they're like, holy shit. Like, I can't believe you did that. But that's the cool thing about money, is that you can look at something and be like, this person needs my help. Let me just give them some money, okay? Oh, they're raising money for this. Let me give. You can be more generous. And I think doing stuff like that really does make you happy. So bottom line, with money, you know, you will become what you want to become the more money you get. Alright? So if you're an asshole, you're gonna be more of an asshole. And unfortunately, the assholes make more noise and the negative news gets the most attention. So most of the time we think if you're rich, you have a lot of problems and you're an asshole. But that's not necessarily the case because if you're a good person with a good heart and you make a lot of money, you're going to do good things. And yes. Do you have more problems all the time? Okay, I've had cars crash through my business. I've been sued by people. You know, there's stuff that happens when you get more successful in life, but it's well worth it for the options and the lack of stress and the flexibility that you can have. One of the best things that happened for me in regards to money was actually my wife. She was a nurse. She worked through Covid and it was horrible. It was horrible her working through Covid and it just got to the point where it was just becoming way too much. And I said, you know what? If you want to quit your job, I want to know a music school that's hiring. Because I was like, you know, I was trying to get out of the music schools more and focus more on the online business stuff. And I was like, there's a music school that's hiring. I need someone around the music schools. Do you want to do that? So she decided to quit full time nursing. And now she works with me in the business. And she's there today, she's working, but the difference is she gets to choose. And I said this to her 10 years ago, wouldn't it be nice if one day you did nursing because you wanted to? You could choose what you wanted to do for nursing. So that's what she does now. So I am so excited that I was able to give her that gift of being able to choose when she wanted to be a nurse. And she's so much happier with her job and so much more happy with her nursing career. She's like, it's so much easier to go in and go to work when I know I don't have to go back the next day. So think about the things you can do for your family and your friends when you make more money.