How important is money?

I read a very interesting blog post by Paul Buchheit titled Is there more to life than money? which got me thinking about whether money directly relates to happiness.

Paul is an ex-Googler who was the creative genius behind Gmail, AdSense and suggested the company’s now-famous motto Don’t be evil. He left Google in June last year and is now an angel investor and founder of the startup FriendFeed.

The context of Paul’s post stirs up a couple of interesting issues, namely;

• Will you make more money working for a startup?
• Does money make you happy?
• Love what you do – even if you are in a 9-5 job.

There is a lot more to his post but these are the core points of interest I took from it.

Many will argue that money is an object that, while making life a little easier, doesn’t or can’t buy happiness – my view is slightly different and I think I’ve had enough education in this regard.

Here’s my take, in the simplest form:- when I had money life was never better and when I didn’t have it I couldn’t cope with life.

I think it’s very easy to say money isn’t important when you’ve got a lot of it but when you haven’t got it, it’s the most stressful part of living life. Financial burden is the #1 stress in the United States and I would imagine that South Africa is not far off that.

I do subscribe to the notion that money isn’t everything but I also believe that it is a major, critical facet of life today. If we can take the need for money out of our life’s equation then we will be free to live life as it’s meant to be lived but as long as it remains a means for survival nobody can tell me money isn’t important or doesn’t create an immense amount of unhappiness and stress.

Financial freedom = Happiness