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Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
It would make it easier for me to be happy if I had more money; it would ease a lot of my anxieties to have a nice, healthy safety net. I would say money is often a worry for most people, and so taking that worry off the table allows people to be happier, and to more fully pursue their personal fulfillment.
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Originally Posted by Lasereth
my concrete statement is rich enough to not have debt but not rich enough to have everything you wanted. That is happiness -- a worry free, but goal-based approach in life. How satisfying can life be if there is nothing to work towards?
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Originally Posted by ratbastid
I propose that it's our relationship with money that impacts our happiness, much more than our actual ownership of certain amounts of money. If I relate to money as something that's necessary but scarce, then my whole life is about being driven to make money and keep it--and I might end up with a fair amount of it, but that kind of life isn't generally conducive to a lot of happiness.
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I think money can help facilitate happiness, as already stated above, by having enough to take care of day to day obligatory spending and limit the anxiety associated with it, as long as it does not feed an insatiable desire for more, whether "more" means more things to be bought with money, or more money to buy more things. Coupled with this is the expectation—often externally driven—that you always need more things, whether you have the money to afford them or not. I think that for some people having more money makes this expectation more difficult to ignore.
I'm currently reading "Affluenza" by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor. Published in 2001, its context still rides the wave of the dot com bubble and it mentions nothing of September 11th, let alone the Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the current housing market and mortgage lending crisis. But I found its theme of near-blind consumer attachment to, well, consuming, even more relevant given the current situation and wrote a journal entry—well, rant—about that this morning.
Fundamentally, I don't believe we need even a third of what we're told that we can't live without. For those that do believe this, more money can become fuel for that engine of consumption that, as stated in this book, will never let up to allow them to actually enjoy living their lives and feel happiness. If I remembered it correctly, I'd quote that adage about striving to be happy with what you already have and not what you want. Or however it goes.
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If one million people replaced a two mile car trip once a week with a bike ride, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 50,000 tons per year. If one out of ten car commuters switched to a bike, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 25.4 million tons per year. [2milechallenge.com]
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Originally Posted by roachboy
it's better if you can ride without having to wonder if the guy in the car behind you is a sociopath, i find.
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