Science says more money won't make you happier, at least after a certain point. According to an often-cited 2010 study by two Princeton University researchers, "beyond $75,000 ...  higher income is neither the road to experience happiness nor the road to relief of unhappiness or stress." (Toss in a little inflation, and the figure is now somewhere around $100,000.)

In fact, to sum up a 2009 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, affluence is a "weak predictor" of happiness.

According to the Princeton study:

Perhaps $75,000 is the threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure.

So, yeah: After a certain point, research showed making more money won't make you significantly happier.

Until now. As the author of a study just published in Happiness Science writes:

I found that happiness rose steadily at least up through incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The results show a sizable upward trend, with wealthy individuals being substantially and statistically significantly happier than people earning over $500,000 per year.

Moreover, the difference between wealthy and middle-income participants was nearly three times larger than the difference between the middle- and low-income participants, contrary to the idea that middle-income people are close to the peak of the money-happiness curve.

The results suggest that the positive association between money and happiness continues far up the economic ladder, and that the magnitude of the differences can be substantial. 

Let's unpack that: 

  • "Wealthy" people are "substantially and significantly" happier than people who earn $500,000 a year. (Making $500,000 per year already sounds pretty wealthy to me, but let's go with it.)
  • The happiness difference between wealthy and middle-income people was three times greater than the difference between middle- and low-income people. (That surprised me; I remember being pretty happy -- or at least a lot less stressed -- when I finally didn't have to live paycheck to paycheck.)
  • Making more money is correlated with happiness. (Or as the study author writes, there's an "ever-increasing association between more money and higher happiness.")

Why? The answer arguably lies with control. Achieving a level of financial security allows you to take care of yourself and provide for your family. Financial security also reduces your level of stress and anxiety.  

But it also gives you a greater ability to make proactive rather than reactive choices, and affords (literally) a greater sense of control over your life.

Money gives you options. More money gives you more options. You can take that vacation. Maybe you'll decide not to, but the fact you have a choice -- that you have control -- makes you happier.

Other research backs that up. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that autonomy, defined as "the feeling that your life -- its activities and habits -- are self-chosen and self-endorsed," is the biggest contributor to happiness.

As the researchers write: 

Having a strong sense of controlling one's life is a more dependable predictor of positive feelings of well-being than any of the objective conditions of life we have considered.

... Autonomy has overall a larger and more consistent effect on well-being than money does. Money leads to autonomy, but it does not add to well-being or happiness.

Granted, the last sentence seems to contradict the more money/more happiness study. But not really: More money -- as long as you're living within your means -- leads to higher levels of autonomy; if you're paycheck-to-paycheck, it's hard to feel in control of your life.

If you're Bezos, you probably feel like the king of the county, the queen of the castle.

So, yeah: Money itself doesn't make you happier, but the control, autonomy, and choices it affords surely can.

Of course, there's a flip side. Money is just one ingredient in the happiness mix. Relationships, health, fulfillment, feeling a sense of purpose -- neglecting other sources of happiness in the pursuit of more money could make you less happy, not more. 

As with everything, balance matters.

And so does how you spend not just your money, but your time. In a 2017 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers surveyed thousands of people who sometimes paid other people to perform tasks they didn't enjoy or didn't want to do. Like mowing the lawn. Or cleaning the house. Or running errands.

Stuff they needed to do, but didn't particularly want to do.

Unsurprisingly, people who were willing to spend a little money to buy a little time were happier and felt greater overall life satisfaction than those who did not.

You may be thinking maybe those people were happier simply because they have the money to buy time? Evidently not. 

While relatively wealthy people who spent money to buy a little time were happier than relatively wealthy people who did not, people at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who spent money to buy a little time were happier than those at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who did not.

No matter how much you make, no matter how wealthy you are, buying a little time makes you happier. There is a catch, though. The researchers found that "spending too much money on time-saving services could undermine perceptions of personal control by leading people to infer that they are unable to handle any daily tasks, potentially reducing well-being."

And once again, we're back to control.

Money itself can't buy happiness.

But money can afford greater control, over your decisions, your actions, and your life.