Does money bring happiness? This is the big question we’ve probably all asked ourselves at some point in our lives. Especially if your checking account hasn’t reached zero yet so much that you don’t care. There is something much more than just a financial issue behind this question, and we enter into the realms of individual perception of the way they live life.

Harvard professor and author best sellers Titled ‘Smart maturity: How to achieve success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life’, Arthur C. Brooks gave some keys in the podcast Street Achieving material happiness without interfering with emotional happiness.

Being realistic: money is needed. I might be naive at this point and tell you that money doesn’t matter, what matters is how you feel. I am sad. Supply companies, banks, oil companies, supermarkets, etc. You will continue to need money as long as it demands money from you in return for the service. So the answer is yes, money is needed.

The real dilemma of the question that concerns us is how much money do you need to balance the scales of financial happiness and emotional happiness, understood as the state in which money is not a permanent cause of anxiety. “People who say money doesn’t buy happiness tend to have that,” Professor Brooks said.

Does money bring happiness, or what do you do with it? According to the economics expert, money is associated with success and success with happiness. “Some people think: Look, if I follow this path, I will be more successful, then I will be happier. These paths truly lead to success and achieve fame, money and prestige. But instead of happiness, they find disappointment,” says the author.

Instead of answering the question of why you want the money, the expert suggests asking yourself what you want to do with the money to be happier. “I spend a lot of my time helping people understand that their goal should be happiness, and that to achieve that, they have to make decisions that aren’t always going to be the most obvious or profitable.”

You want to have more money to spend more time with your children, but does earning this money prevent you from spending more time with your children? Professor Brooks is clear: “Buy experiences with people you love, take time and spend it with people you love, give your money to causes that make you feel good, and save money. All of these things actually bring real happiness. These are the ways to buy happiness.”

Science supports this. In a study they conducted at Princeton University, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton discovered that people with higher incomes had higher levels of satisfaction with their lives because the money allowed them to meet their basic needs without stress.

But they also discovered that this improvement continued to increase until it reached $75,000 per year. After this point, satisfaction levels remained the same and no longer increased in proportion to income level. Other later studies put the figure at $95,000. That is, once financial happiness is achieved, the level of satisfaction depends on what is done to achieve emotional happiness.

He didn’t go to Harvard, but my grandfather gave the same advice.. Arthur C. Brooks stated in his interview that the important thing is not to make a big income, but to keep expenses at bay. With all due respect to the Harvard professor, my nearly illiterate grandfather used to tell me with the wisdom of his years: “It is not the person who has the most, but the person who needs the least.”

What both wise men mean is that the propensity to consume leads to an increase in the level of expenditure in proportion to income. In other words, if you win €1,000 you’ll need €900 to get ahead, but when you win €10,000 the general tendency is to look for expenses totaling up to €9,900. On a different scale, but you are the same.

Key: Cut unnecessary expenses. One of the keys Brooks gave in his broadcast Street, avoiding financial mistakes and reducing bad spending habits. One of these bad habits that needs to be eliminated is spending. ant: Small amounts of just a few euros per month unknowingly turn into hundreds of euros per year. It’s like having a torn pocket from which money slowly pours out.

Don’t make financial mistakes: lose money. The economic expert also focuses on the financial risk posed by credit cards and even consumer loans. Asking for a personal loan to go on holiday or finance a bigger car than you can actually afford is a mistake, says the expert. These are (sometimes intangible) goods that cannot be depreciated, so those who want them become poor.

Brooks has the same regard for credit card misuse. Some act like debit cards, allowing you to group expenses to collect at the end of the month without paying interest. Although this formula does not earn interest, it creates a false sense of security that must be taken into account when closing accounts to prevent overdraft balances from occurring.

The expert recommends avoiding postponing credit card payments at all costs because a certain percentage of interest is applied to the collection. Again, these are poisonous formulas for finance.

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