Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s article, how to buy happiness, demonstrates another side of being rich. She speaks of a wealthy plastic surgeon and his achievements mainly economical. For a person who owns vacation homes and yachts he actually appears to be miserable. With his wealth came a price to pay of the love of this profession. He even says how difficult it is to get out of the bed in the morning and emphasizes on his lack of motivation. She also explains that as long as our basic needs are met all the other things we decide to buy have no significance to our over all happiness. Lyubomirsky identifies that our happiness comes from the way we chose to spend our money on others and the satisfaction it bring rather than on material thing we store away to collect dust and replace as soon as we can.

Lyubomirsky asks a few wealthy individuals to list their feeling from the pervious day some couldn’t even recall being happy that day. With the wealth they have acquired through the years a lot of work had gone into it aswell. With the wealth they acquired they have probably sacrificed a few birthdays or little league games that in the long run create memories for a life time. At the price of missed memories the wealth isn’t as important to me.

Having memories is something that can’t be taken from you. It can’t be put in a nice gift bag but it’s something you can always cherish. With your memories and experiences not comparing them or being jealous of others , unlike material things, causes them to even be greater.

But when it comes to spending money, spending it on others is the way to go. Because our happiness is influenced by others. In the study conducted by the University of British Colombia they found that althought some workers bonuses we cut and given to charity it was more fufilling to them to know that it went towards a positive thing rather that worrying about the size they were given.