Money can’t buy happiness: it’s a rarely questioned truism. It also tends to be most enthusiastically embraced by those who have never gone without it. No matter how attached we are to the idea that money can’t buy happiness, though, the current IPL auctions show almost the complete opposite.
On a typical day, Karn Sharma would’ve probably bought an Mi. But today Karn was bought by MI!
You can obviously ride the high horse and claim that money isn’t important for happiness, but the fact of the matter is that you’ve never had enough of it to make that assumption.
It’s one of those topics – like why cats purr and why some people are lefties and others are righties – that we don’t have precise answers for. Straight from childhood, we are told in the famous advertisement of MasterCard that money can’t buy happiness but for everything else there’s MasterCard.
Well, this narrative falls flat and we all come to terms with this in our adulthood.
IPL’s business masterstroke is that it created an amazing synergy with industry and commerce. It was a way of allowing corporate India into Indian cricket’s dressing rooms. Never before have sponsors paid serious moolah to get their company logo on a player’s t-shirt. Some of the biggest companies in the world wrestled to be sponsors of the game.
Everybody agrees there will never be a recession in the entertainment industry, and the IPL is just that – a heady cocktail of Bollywood and cricket that promises entertainment, entertainment and entertainment.
What we do know is that how you use your money can have a dramatic impact on your happiness.
All my adult life, I’ve wanted Zlatan Ibrahimovic to join Manchester United. And this wish of mine turned into a reality only this year. How did it happen? United agreed to pay Zlatan’s astronomical weekly salary and guess what came out of it? We were all happy. Zlatan has been in great form and United have been a much better side with him in the ranks. This is making millions of fans happy. So yeah, money did buy a lot of happiness.
Spend Rs. 1000 on a theatre ticket and Rs. 1000 on a pair of blue jeans. Which is going to make you happier? Assuming you like both, the ticket has the edge. There’s a lot of research on buying experiences, and one finding in particular is that spending the same amount of money on an experience makes you happier than spending that amount on a material thing.
If money doesn’t make you happy, you’re probably not spending it right.
Money is a tool, and we use it to purchase high quality food, fresh water, medical and dental care, and access to gyms or fitness classes that help keep us physically healthy. It takes funds to buy books, magazine subscriptions, or adventure trips.
Money pays for the gas, air fare, and admission fees required to see those sites our souls thirst for (you know, the naughty kind).
Money doesn’t just shield us from obvious daily stresses, this study tells us, but can actually buy us the most basic of our psychological needs – human connection. The higher our income, the less likely we are to experience loneliness.
The relationship between money and happiness is a complex one, but it seems that money can buy delight. For those who can afford it, at least. If you’re trying to argue that money doesn’t help you, you’re wrong. Money can buy things that make you happy. Money can instill some extra confidence in you and that can help you make friends.
Money quite literally buys you happiness and you’re virtue-signalling self needs to correct itself.
