The untimely death of Margaret Loughrey would suggest not.
Better off having poor health and enough money (I don't mean being rich) than having poor health and also struggling financially though.
But very good point by Mad Maxx I think - wealth doesn't change the past for those who have experienced trauma. It does pay for therapy however - and you could leave a stressful job, do things you could otherwise only dream of.
In short, the same problems could be faced by a poor person or a well-off person, but the poor person has more things to worry about due to their financial situation, and fewer possibilities in life.
Money may not buy total happiness but it buys some comfort at least.
Money doesn’t bring misery or happiness.... what you do with can bring either....your choices with money can enable both.
a cousin of mine in the US is minted, like seriously so from his work.. he’s a lawyer, he’s 61 and semi retired, he keeps as part of his retirement deal, one mid size corporate client, owned by a friend and is for something to do...he owns a nice mansion in New York and has an apartment in Florida...
hes generous but responsible, he thought about building a home gym but decided to just join one instead, didn’t want to just be stuck at home, goes to an Irish bar to watch the premier league, coaches an underage soccer team...
he spends money on savage holidays, a new car, a Mercedes most years,
money buys security....health, wellbeing and peace of mind... happiness
I know a couple who sold a company for around £40m in 2004. They had worked their arses off for years to get the company established and never enjoyed themselves. They sold out when they were mid 40s and kicked back and enjoyed life. Had the absolute best of everything - built a 10,000sqf house, apartment in Marbella, the best of cars, husband bought racehorses etc.
Long story short he blew the whole lot by 2016. Bad investments were doubled down on and everything unravelled. He had some money stashed but not enough and they have the house left but they’re currently trying to offload it.
In the pub recently the wife was asked if the pandemic has made them appreciate their health and to be fair she was fairly quick to come back with the line that when they had the money the pandemic wouldn’t have bothered them. They had as she called it “fück you money” and didn’t have a car in the world and got to do and see things that you can’t do without money. They’re unhappy people now because that lifestyle is gone and they were the architects of their own downfall. Long story short, absolutely money can make you happy. Money makes the world go round.
I say being minted would make you fairly happy.
No need to worry about money. No need to save for anything. Anything you want you get. Like what are most of us going to do tonight? Maybe have a few beers, maybe a takeaway? If you're rich you can just fire up the private plane and go anywhere. No Chinese chicken balls for you. You can sip an overly priced wine off the Spanish coast.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy out many causes of unhappiness. What's left after that are the things that money can't fix.
Money probably can't buy happiness, but nice sum would make my live a lot easier.
No ,because it can't change the past
Of course if someone is happy already, more money will probably increase their happiness
The god honest truth, I have a mate that has 40 - 50 + million after selling a successful company. Maybe 2-3 years ago. Married has kids has everything they could ask for. Anytime we're out, the first thing always said is "I'm miserable" we try not to go on about it but the chap hates everything about his life. It's mad really.
It's also mad thinking even if some people had 0.1 % of it could bring some happiness and get them out of a hole.
To quote Only Fools and Horses...
Grandad: Money isn't everything Del Boy..
Del: well, yeah, but it takes the Sting out of being poor....
Turns out that more money does bring more happiness. They use to think it plateaued at $75,000 a year.
But it's diminishing returns once your have enough to remove the worries for you, your family and friends. At that stage money brings freedom.
A lot of us are going to be very unhappy at the increased taxes to pay for the pandemic.
The world’s billionaires have a collective net worth of $13.5 trillion ―up from $8 trillion at the beginning of the pandemic, a gain of nearly 69 percent. That's enough to give the poorest 5.4 billion people on the planet $1,000 each, life changing money as even the richest of those are on $10 a day. Half of humanity is living on less than $5.50 a day
If we left Jeff Bezos with billions of dollars more than Branson we could take take everyone worldwide out of extreme poverty for a year. Or if we took all their money and gave it to Jeff he still wouldn't have enough. Money doesn't bring happiness to those who won't ever have enough.
No IMO it doesn’t. Yes, money can bring you peace of mind and relief from the many stresses of everyday life, but money doesn’t help you with two very important things, which are health and happiness. As is often said “ your health is your wealth” because being ill trumps any wealth.
It's probably possible to hide a lotto win, as it's really not that large amount usually. But hard to hide a euro millions win.
If someone's unhappiness is caused by being broke/in debt, yes. And all they need is to be no longer struggling, not rich.
Stress and long hours is causing me to look for a job with fewer hours, which would obviously mean less money, but I've done the sums and I'd still be comfortable.
Can wealth buy happiness? Depends on the person I suppose/how long they've been wealthy.
Money affords you choice. So while I dont think money itself can make you happy having it gives you the choice to live your life in a way that does make you happy.
That's why you shouldn't reveal your win.
Can money buy happiness? No.
But it can buy jet-skis and I've never seen an unhappy person on a jet-ski.
100%. Once on the bike I can leave all the issues behind me. Riding a motorbike is one of the best therapies for your mind :)
Absolutely. If I won a huge amount I'd have no problem hiding the fact. Nobody really knows what I do or where I am from one day to the next. I live between Dublin and mainland Europe so could easily purchase a big swanky penthouse in Fitzrovia in London complete with Bentley underground and ponce around the city drinking in fancy places and flirting with rich divorcees. Coming back to Dublin to visit the mother would be no different to any other time. I wouldn't be driving up in a Ferrari. Sure I might fly in in a private jet but then I'd just take a taxi to the house or maybe a fancy chauffer driven BMW but no curtain twitchers would suspect anything. My dublin flat is in the city centre so I'd pull out of there and buy a nice pied-a-terre around Stephen's Green or somewhere. I'd be completely anonymous...just loaded. I don't do drugs even though I can afford to in my current capacity so an 8 or 9 figure bank balance isn't going to change that. I'm fond of beer so would probably just go on benders in fancier places. I'm probably a bit long in the tooth to being an international playboy so I'd have to settle for pastimes like travelling, photography and try to stay fit because without the routine of work I can easily fall into a sedentary lifestyle. Keep fit and active and eating well and getting plenty of sunshine will ward off the demons of depression and loneliness that can come with suddenly being completely different to your peers.
This Loughrey woman seems to have been a bit nasty what with that whole cricket club business and bullying an employee. When you go from the breadline to being minted like she did you need a lot of advice and counselling to make the adjustment. How the hell can you expect to still live in the same sh1thole one horse town in a council house surrounded by scratchers when you've suddenly 27 mil in the bank. It's not possible.
Money can alleviate misery. It can also bring misery. The problem with some lotto winners is the they are suddenly switched from a position of relatively little wealth into having to manage sums they never had to handle before. One of the early lotto winners in Ireland was a surgeon who said it was not enough to retire on. He threw a party, put the rest into his pension fund and forgot about it. The difference between him and the other winners is that he would not come from a social circle where his relations, friends and neighbours would approach him for money. Some winners have had distant relatives approach them to pay ESB bills. How do they go to the pub and nudge someone to buy their round when everyone knows they are a lotto winner. people who earn the money through business are generally careful to conceal it and not be conscious of it.
I don't do the lotto so it is not a problem I will ever face.
Money buys you freedom. This frees you up to be happy.
If you have loads of cash then you can have an easier life. No worries about paying bills etc. There's also a rich person line for most things, no queuing or waiting like the average Joe if you know how to operate.
Of course, if you were miserable to begin with, money won't change this.
I have experience at zero cash and essentially looking for ways to waste money for entertainment. The way it has worked out for me is that accelerating is happiness much more than absolute speed. Heading up to a new level of wealth is not happiness, it is euphoric. You find yourself in a financial position where the maths you did before don’t even apply anymore. Then it goes up again and the equation becomes absurd again.
That’s happiness, no question about it. Hanging around with the levels that rocked your world a while ago absolutely becomes the base level. You need to jump up again to experience the same thing again, and I assume people get caught up in that. I didn’t because I challenge myself with other things. And I have failed so far in other areas, but I’m still looking for that buzz in various investments I guess.
Am I happy now? Yes. Would I be happier if I doubled my net worth tomorrow. 100%. if I showed up broke tomorrow I would be very unhappy, but if I had been living in that space and never knew anything more the I’d be cool for sure. Looking for status beyond your financial position is the real shell game. That is what eats you alive regardless of net worth. I am still chasing the dragon in a sense because I am looking at stonks half the time, but I’m think a straight forward simple life is probably the key to being happy longer term. Just drop the dice.
I think the first mistake people make when they win the lottery is telling the newspapers and the public that they won the lottery. It puts such a massive amount of pressure on you. You don't have to go public.
The second mistake is touching a penny of the money for six months. Everyone has heard about the lottery winners going bankrupt, or divorcing their spouses etc etc. It's natural to want to go on a spending spree or jack in your job, but you have to let the win and the money sink in. Have a real think about what you want to do with it. "I have worked out exactly what I would do with a euromillions win, that I hope would avoid any of the pitfalls like the poor lady in the north fell into, while maximising the "happiness" out of the win.
The first thing I would do is talk to an expensive financial advisor. Not the lad on the high street who does the local builders tax returns and administers pension schemes. I mean a Goldman Sachs wealth manager. The ones that the actual old money rich people use. Decide what income you would like to have every year for the rest of your life, and what kind of house you'd like to live in, that doesn't put a huge gap or wedge between you and your mates lifestyles. No point in living in an eight bed mansion in Killiney if your mates are bursting out of their three bed semi in Inchicore. Even if you have paid their mortgage off. You'll have nothing in common anymore, and the the nice house won't make up for the missed nights out.
Work out how much it will cost to pay off family & friends mortgages. I'm a solicitor myself, so I would be telling them that anonymity is the price they have to pay to get this windfall. I would buy the debt from the bank, and then write it off five years later. If I find that I have to move house and hire security for my children, because they couldn't resist a €10k payment from a tabloid to reveal our identity, I'll foreclose. It sounds heartless, but they don't have to take the money, and if they are good friends/family they won't want to jeopardise our safety. And if our safety has a price to them, then I have no qualms whatsoever about foreclosing.
Keep a reasonable nest egg for emergencies in the bank. Set up your fund to pay you a nice stipend every year. Buy your new house. Pay out everything you want to pay for family/friends over the same few days. Then give the rest anonymously to charity. Even if its millions. Tell your close friends and family what you are doing, so that they don't think you are some bottomless pit for money and they won't automatically think they can come to you to pay for Disneyland or their new kitchen.
Everyone else might wonder where you got the money for the new car, and new house and a few new clothes etc. Tell them a distant relative died and left you with a reasonable inheritance. And say nothing else.
Job done. Financial security, the knowledge that you never again have to work in a job you hate because of finances, enough money to go on nice holidays, and your close friends and family will be a bit more flush with cash too so they can join in on the fun. And you sleep well at night knowing an orphanage in Ethiopia or cancer research or the local hospice can go on for a few more years because of you.
So yes, a lottery win can make you happy, if you are not an idiot about it.
More money doesn’t equal more happiness. Money is only a symbolic goal that represents happiness. However, money will give you more freedom to find purpose, meaning and satisfaction.
Where most people go wrong is that they will make money their god and will not find direct fulfillment in the pursuit of money. When they realise this, it leaves them miserable.
Many celebrities have as much money as anyone could ever dream of, yet it seems like they commit suicide at a higher rate than the general population
Enough to but an average house and a car would do me fine, anything above this would probably lead to grief.
I think id be lots happier with lots more money.
Id definitely be more unhappy with less money.
Money buys you the time and headspace to focus on the things that do make you happy. Whether you choose to focus on those things is up to the individual. But money gives you the opportunity to be happy - puts happiness in front of you to be taken.
A lack of money can most definitely take that opportunity away
Personally I do not want to ever be rich, but I suppose whether or not it gives you happiness comes down to what type of person you are and what you do with it. I'm quite a lazy person, so if I have more than one or two weeks off work I tend to get very bored and stay at home wasting away the days. I worry that if I ever got rich out of nowhere (as in became a millionaire) I'd end up just staying at home doing nothing for the rest of my life. Other people might use that kind of money to set up businesses or get involved with charity work or do something else with the money that fulfils them.
This is probably a stupid metaphor but the way I think about it is by comparing it to cheating in a video game - if I use a cheat to give me infinite money or infinite health or something then it sucks the fun out of the game for me. I only desire to ever have enough money so that I'm comfortable and don't have to worry about it. If I want something expensive I have no problem saving up for it.
Is it every time though? Or is it for some people a bit like sex with contraception when they say "But we did not want to get pregnant!". As in the activity of entering into the lotto itself was the desire - with little or no expectation of the unlikely outcome ever actually occurring.
For some people it might be the activity of checking the numbers - talking to others about it - imagining "what if" scenarios - and just participating. But I wonder how many of them actually sit down and think about the implications of winning the full jackpots and if it is what the genuinely want? My own mother used to play a single quick picks sometimes and then never actually bother to check the numbers. She could never explain why she did this or what she got out of it. There are some unclaimed jackpots. For all I know she was one of them.
So I dunno - people are seriously weird sometimes. I would not assume to know what anyone's desired outcomes are from anything they do sometimes :) But I can kind of understand what the guy may have been trying to say with that sentence even if the sentence sounds ridiculous. It sounds like making a distinction between "having a lot of money" and all the other implications of being "rich". Having a lot of money is just a bank balance. Being "rich" is a state of being - socially, mentally, and so forth. I suspect many people playing a lottery would very much love a lot of money - but have not even considered the state of being "rich".
Exactly, have you ever seen a sad person riding a motorcycle ?
money gives you more choices, if you make bad ones without money you'll make bad ones with money. If all you have is being rich then you won't be happy as your life will be based on consumption and getting that dopamine hit from newer flashier things. Maslow was on the right track you need to have more than just money and things to be a happy person.
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