Money doesn't buy happiness?

You hear people say that all the time, but my take is that it sure can't hurt if you have it. At least I wouldn't think so. There are a lot of kids in my family, so we kind of grew up poor. We never went without the basic stuff, but Santa wasn't exactly dumping his sleigh at our house every Christmas either. It doesn't upset me, I'm happy having the brothers and sisters that I have and wouldn't trade my relationships with them for all the video game systems in the world.

It's funny though, because you hear rich people say all the time that money doesn't buy happiness, yet as one of my friends used to say "That can't be the case because you don't see rich people running around trying to give theirs away." I've always thought that was funny.

The thing that got me thinking about this is that I saw my rich uncle today. He is a pretty important person at a pretty important financial firm. He is in charge of how millions of dollars get allocated in the form of loans to states and cities to fund such projects as the renovation of freeway systems, airport expansions, etc. And he isn't afraid to let people know that. I only saw him for a few minutes today, but in that time he got in the fact that he was playing golf with some senators the other day discussing how to go about rebuilding New Orleans. It seems like every time I see him he's making some statement about how much money he pays in taxes. You know, just in case we had all forgotten that he is in fact rich. I've heard it enough times now that I get annoyed by it. I'm not alone, my parents and some of my siblings have expressed similar feelings. Not that it has the same effect on other members of my family though, it's almost funny to see how much people suck up to him just because he's rich. I even wonder if I do it sometimes (I'll have to ask someone if I ever come across that way).

My aunt once told me that she wished that she could go back to the time when they didn't have much money because that was the happiest they had ever been. I wonder if that's because once you have money, you try really hard to make sure that you keep it. Within the past year I received a settlement check from my former employer resulting from a work related injury which cost me some of the use of my back. I am extremely paranoid about wasting it. I was able to use some of it to finish paying off my car and my credit cards, and have put the rest in the bank. Some where I can get at it when I need to, and some where I can't touch it for the next few years. I'm hoping eventually to be able to use it as a down payment on a house once I'm actually ready to buy one.

Luckily for me I have chosen a career where I will never be considered rich. I'll never have to endure the misery of having a lot of money. In fact, I've remained in college all this time in order to prolong the "happiest time of my life" as much as possible. Ok, so maybe that's not the reason. It turns out that it actually takes a lot of time to finish a Ph D. I'm banking on the fact that loving what you do is more important than what you make. Come back in a few years and I'll let you know if that's the case.