Money can remove sources of unhappiness but doesn't determine overall happiness. Scandinavian countries report high happiness with less focus on luxury, while competitive cities create more pressure. Personal qualities matter more than wealth.
Chapters
Does money bring happiness? Listen, I'll tell you one thing. It gets rid of a lot of problems that can cause unhappiness. If there is any popular opinion that says you don't need money to be happy, of course you don't need money to be happy. There's a lot of people in the world who don't have any money that are very, very happy. And there's some cultures that are much happier than others, just in general. I mean, if you look at the Scandinavian countries, they're not competing with each other for social media kind of thing, for brands, for luxury brands and labels and things like that. And they're very, very happy. So it depends on really the environment. If you're in a major cosmopolitan city, you're going to be much competitive for different things than other people are that are in rural cities, are not involved with the same interaction with luxury items. So I think it's absolutely possible to be very, very happy without any money, and probably more people are happy without money than people who are happy with money, because there's just a lot more of them. But I don't think money dictates happiness. If you have a good heart and a good aura, then you can be happy. You don't need to be rich.
