How important is money in your life?

There was a scientific study I remember reading about that indicated that while the old adage "money can’t buy happiness" seems to be what people agree on, money CAN make someone a little more happy. 😉  In other words, money can’t make a depressed man instantly happy, but a little bit more of it can make an "ok" man feel even more ok. 🙂

It’s the little things, really: getting a surprise tax refund; finding 100 bucks in an old envelope stuffed somewhere for a "rainy day" long since forgotten; or even getting a Christmas bonus you didn’t expect.  All of these could help make ordinary people just a bit happier.  The basic conclusion of the study is that many people say that money won’t buy happiness, but they acknowledge that just a little bit more of it could make their lives a bit more ok. 

Hmmmmm…..

Seems a bit contradictory to me. 🙂  I mean, are we all just being trained since birth not to care so much about money, only to find, later in life, that it *gasp* actually DOES make us feel better?  Who here DOESN’T want a bit more money?  Who here wouldn’t feel happier having less worries about bills?  Raise your hands, anyone… ?

I used to be such an idealist, thinking money wasn’t so important.  But now that I’m old enough and wise enough I know that money is DAMN important.  I mean, even if you want to help others, wouldn’t you be able to accomplish so much more if you had more money to help them with?  Why is there such a social stigma against acknowledging the importance of money? 

It won’t solve the world’s problems by itself, but it’ll HELP solve a ton of problems, both at an individual and a societal level.  I just feel that some of the really great people who could be helping more are rejecting the call for money because they feel it would demean them somehow, or that it would make them a "sell-out".  My thinking is that it would make them all the more effective.  What’s so wrong about going commercial anyway?

Imagine the good Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa could have done if they had Bill Gates’ spending power.  Just imagine that.  How many more people could they have helped?  How big an audience could they have reached with their messages?  The fact that they achieved so much with so little only shows, to me anyway, that they could have done so much more.  I don’t know.  Call me a realist or a cynic, but I just want to believe that if only the richest people on earth all agreed to change the world, the world WOULD be changed.  Never mind if only a tiny minority showed up to the meeting.  After all, Bill Gates by himself is worth more than 50 million Ethiopians could make in 10 years.  (I’m not making that up.)

I’m no longer as idealistic as I used to be, but I don’t feel that I’ve sold out at all.  In fact, the more money I make, the more I realize I have power to help people in this world and to make myself happy.  So I guess I’ll just keep on trying to make more money.  Of course, to some people this could all just seem like one long rant to justify why I’ve given up my altruism in favor of financial success.  To them I say, how many more people could YOU help with an extra billion dollars?

Have a nice day, everyone. =)