Is It More Important To Be Rich Or Happy?

Is It More Important To Be Rich Or Happy?  By JD Roth

Sometimes we in the United States forget how privileged we are. Because of our relative wealth, we can make claims like “it’s more important to be happy than it is to be rich”. In this guest post, Saravanan P of Engineer’s Finance argues that for the poor, money is more important than happiness.

Though this post has been heavily edited, keep in mind that English is not Saravanan’s native language.

Being happy is a state of mind and heart that does not matter whether we are rich or poor. But we can only make statements like “It’s more important to be happy than it is to be rich” when we are rich and not poor.

Being rich always gives us the power to do things at the time we want. In short, it gives us freedom.

Sometimes I think I know just what it means to have money more than Americans do. I have seen people here in India struggle to earn two to three dollars a day working for more than 12 hours. It’s hard, but still people do it.

If we were to ask these people whether they are happy, they would say they are, but are they really? They assume they’re happy and move on with the life. For them happiness is merely having their bread and butter.

If you are poor, you yearn for food and nothing else — money matters more than happiness because without the minimum of money, you don’t eat. After you are rich, you tend to say that happiness is more important because your basics are already met. In fact, perhaps most rich people cannot even imagine a life in which the basics may be out of reach on any given day.

Many people argue that being rich is not as important as being happy. I just have two questions for people who say this:

    When you are in hunger, can you think of being happy?

    When you can’t keep yourself warm during winter, can you think of being happy?

Until you satisfy your basic needs, you can’t think of happiness. Forget about being happy. Once your basic necessities are met and you start living (not surviving), only then does happiness surface.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.getrichslowly.org/is-it-more-important-to-be-rich-or-to-be-happy/