Money doesn’t buy happiness, so why do we treat it like it does?
We’ve all done it. We buy something we think will make us happy. Sometimes it brings us a measure of happiness or satisfaction. Other times, the feeling we think we’re going to get falls flat, almost as soon as we bring the item home.
As humans, we have a complicated relationship with money. We need it to survive. And we can become unhappy if we don’t have enough of it to pay our bills. But it becomes a crutch when we use it to fill an emotional need or fix a problem.
Finances are the number one cause of stress for Americans, with 77 percent of American households dealing with some form of debt.1 With the average American being more than $104,000 in debt, managing mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, credit card debt and student loans.2 It’s no wonder that money is a major stress factor.