Can riches buy happiness? Wealth can buy many luxuries, but not happiness. Money cannot buy contentment. Money can surely buy us time with a psychiatrist with who we can talk about our unhappiness, but no amount of money can buy us happiness. Sometimes more money, and status can rob us of happiness. Think of many very rich people. They cannot move around like ordinary citizens. They will be immediately stared at. They have lost a lot of freedom in quest of money and fame.

What gets us happiness? We get happiness by doing what we like. We don't get happiness by forcing us to do what we don't want to do. Our happiness comes from our satisfaction of doing our heart felt desires. Our contentment comes from that. Money can destroy friendships, and break family relations. The more money you have, the more people expect from you. If you refuse, your relationship goes downhill. Sometimes I wonder if we have more than our minimum requirement of money, will we be happy at all?

If you have a giving nature, money can buy you happiness of a different kind. When you visit an orphanage, and are able to donate as much as they want to feed the small kids, you will feel a sense of genuine happiness. Money can make you do good things in life that make others happy. When you make others happy, you become happy.

Money can help you do that. No expensive dinner can make you feel as happy as the smile on the face of parents to whom you have given money for their children's medicine.