My Personal Experience

Money is one of the most important things in our lives, next to food, a home to live in, transportation, amongst many other things, but of course you wouldn't be able to have these things without money. I understand many people believe money can buy happiness because without money we wouldn’t have the many things we appreciate in life now. I believe money can’t buy us happiness. Money gives us instant gratification, will never be enough, and I believe in some ways money can negatively consume our lives.

There is nothing wrong with using money to bring some joy into our lives, but we need to realize the importance of true happiness.

My personal experience with money has been average. I’ve never been poor, but I’ve also never been filthy rich. I’ve had enough to get me through 17 years now. There have been days where my family and I have struggled, but nonetheless we’ve been able to live a pretty average and happy life. Now when I was younger I would make smart remarks saying “money can’t buy us happiness, but I sure wouldn’t be sad if I lived in a mansion” or something along those lines. This is the mindset I had on money. I stopped this after I met my father. My father hadn’t been in my life for 12 years and he showed up out of nowhere trying to “fix” things, so I decided to hang out with him and try to make our situation better.

While we were out and about I would point to things and say how much I liked it and before I knew it he was telling me I could have it or just would buy it. In the moment it felt nice getting everything I wanted, and it did make me feel happy but only for a split second. I realized he could buy me the entire world, but I would never truly be happy because at the end of the day I wanted a loving father and not a father who wanted to buy my love. From then on the way I viewed money had completely changed. I still appreciate money and all it does for us, but money can’t buy happiness.

As humans we will always want more. It’s just human nature. We want something, we get it, and then we want more bigger and better. In many ways this can be good an example would be someone completing high school, but still wanting a higher education so they pursue college. Now with money I believe this “wanting more” attitude can lead to poor choices that one might later regret. For example if someone becomes completely desperate for money they could end up stealing, this could lead to them being arrested. Which would consume your life by getting thrown in jail. You could buy everything and end up being miserable because the idea we have in our head that what we have in not enough.

At the end of the day money is an object. You can spend as much or little as you’d like on things you enjoy. We’ll always want more and having more will always help make our situations better, but we can’t allow money to consume our lives. We can’t and we shouldn't’ rely on money to make us happy. Yes, money can bring us happiness, but the point is money can't buy happiness. Being happy is an emotion, something you feel and not something you can buy. You can’t put a price on happiness.

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