People love to say “money can’t buy happiness.” But is that actually true? Or is it simply a narrative repeated so often we’ve come to believe it?
1. Move Somewhere Better for Your Kids to Grow Up
With more money comes the freedom not just to live in a bigger McMansion. It also comes with the freedom to design a better life, for both you and your children. (Psst: Lifestyle design is a recurring theme among ways to buy happiness.)
2. Buy Security for Your Family
Use your money to buy excellent health insurance for your family. If you’ve reached financial independence and quit your high-octane job with all its benefits, try these options for health insurance for early retirees.
3. Switch to Your Dream Career
Even among middle- and high earners, many feel stressed out and work more than 40 hours each week. Why do they keep doing it? Because after years of lifestyle creep with every raise, their living expenses demand that high-salary job. You probably know this phenomenon as the golden handcuff.
4. Volunteer
Once you reach financial independence, you can cover your living expenses with passive income alone. Which means you no longer have to work for a paycheck at all if you prefer, and you can volunteer full-time.
These are all life experiences we could never have had without money. Spend your money on experiences that broaden your horizons, rather than on material items that offer only a quick bump in happiness.
6. Treat Your Friends & Family
It makes me happy when I treat my parents or my siblings to dinner every once in a while. It makes me happy to occasionally pick up the bar tab when I’m out with friends. Not often enough to rub it in anyone’s face, or so that people come to expect it. But it’s nice to be able to treat your loved ones sometimes, with no strings attached.