Wednesday, September 8, 2010

What can money buy you?

It's all over the newspapers~ front page....
                                                                 Big news!

                            Money can buy you happiness!

The local paper says that the amount of money that can buy you happiness is $75,000. That is pretty specific, wouldn't you say?

How much would it suck to make only $70,000? Would you only be happy on alternating days, or maybe not happy on Sundays and Thursdays?

Once I found a twenty doller bill in the pocket of a borrowed coat ( my moms') and I was happy all day long!
And nothing beats the happiness when you roll up to the take out window and open your wallet to find you don't have enough money to pay for your order- then you look under the seat or in the glove box and find another doller! Sheer Bliss!

I keep pennies and nickles in a box on my dresser. The Hubby gets the quarters. Sometimes I get a quarter in  change, and I'll throw it in my nickle box- you should just see my hubby smile when he finds it!

The most amount of money that has ever made me happy was $4500. That bought me a really nice horse.
The least amount was a penny, found when I needed to balance my checkbook.

My happiness right now is running pretty cheap. I don't have a J.O.B.  and so I have NO money- yet I am about as happy now as I have ever been. NO worries about how to pay for anything- I have resigned myself to the fact that I won't be paying for anything. Voila! Problem solved- that makes me happy. 

I guess to the folks that judge happiness in monetary terms, $75,000. seems pretty damn cheap. That won't buy you  a house or even much of a car these days. And if you totalled up the money you spend a year on groceries for a family of four, you might come close to this number, but buying happiness... c'mon!

Now if I were going to put a number on happiness I would have to come up with some kind of formula...
Like...
Take the number of days in a week, multiply that by a thousand, add in the price of real estate in San Franciso in 1999, add the national debt, then divide that number by the age of your grandpa when he died.

What number would make you happy?


 

 

7 comments:

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

I really enjoyed reading this post. If you want work, you could look into freelance writing publishing essays like this. It's also good to know that you can be happy without money. I'm certainly not happy making money since I basically exchange being nit-picked all day for my salary. In my case, the question would be how much of your self worth are you willing to give up to make money?

Vaquerogirl said...

Thanks Nuz! I've been working on a book and a few articles too.
Thanks for the encouragement!

Carolyn Plath said...

I decided to be 13's friend years ago----but does 13 make me happy? Oh, I guess sometimes it does. Other numbers that make me happy are actually words: bazillion and googooplex.

Unknown said...

Three. My hubby, and my kids.

Two. My horses

Four. My mom, grandma, sister and dad.

100+. All the people I feel a connection to.

Good thing there are plenty of numbers.

Today I played the lottery. Because I like the think of how I'd bring all my numbers together.

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

So if it takes $75,000 to make someone happy...how long before they are no longer happy and wished they were making $100,000?

And where does it go from there?

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about such trivial things as money these days...Just have to worry about getting where ever I need to be on time.

LOL-I hope ya got the sarcasm. ;0

Maia said...

Money never bought anybody happiness. Relationships and the feeling I get when I know I've made really good art, that's what makes me happy.

However, I don't think I'd cry too hard if I won the MegaMillions, because then I'd have the one thing that money can buy, freedom.

PS: You weren't involved in that Godawful fire, were you.

TjandMark/AKA PearlandHawkeye said...

Three seems a likely candidate... the holy trinity, my wife and me and god, our three children, my three careers, my three siblings... And yet, I would describe happiness and freedom as states of being unaffected by income or worldly success. And I DO understand the strain of paying bills through sweat. Paid debts have a sweet aroma all their own... but debts we truly owe that we can never repay which are written off because our judge is also our best friend... relief beyond belief.