Transcript:

Caroline Woods: I think even the bigger question is, to what extent does money even buy happiness?

Morgan Housel: Some of the research that we have in behavioral finance is that if you are already a sad, depressed, anxious person, earning more money is probably not going to do a lot for you if you are already a happy, content, joyful person.Earning more money can massively enhance your life. It basically leverages who you are in either direction. And so there is a long list of things that you can purchase money and use money to give yourself a better life that exists. There is an even longer list of what it will not do for you, and I think there are a lot of people who will wake up in the morning with a little bit of a hole in their life, they feel a little bit unfulfilled, and the knee jerk reaction is very often, if only I had more money, these problems would go away. To some extent that can be true. This is not Black and white, but it is too easy to make that assumption when there’s actually bigger things in your life that are causing the problems. That money will not play much of a role in enhancing.