Million Dollars Saves You, Billion Dollars Kills You

The more money you have, the better you understand that money cannot make you happy. Yet, you can only understand it after you make your first million dollars. For the majority of people happiness is in the quantity. How much money is required to make a person happy? How to make and save money?

Photo: Million Dollars Saves You, Billion Dollars Kills You

Million Dollars Saves You, Billion Dollars Kills You

According to the data provided by the Public Opinion Fund, the average monthly salary in Russia is approximately $300. The overwhelming majority of Russians consider their financial standing to be unsatisfactory. They think that this average salary should be at least doubled to make them feel OK. It would require an income of $2,000 a month to make them happy.

The biggest dream of many Russians is to win a lottery. However, big wins bring disappointment.

“People get used to things quickly. They think money will make them happy. But according to research, people who win lotteries are only happy for the first few months, a year in the best case. And then they get used to it. Many winners lose their riches very quickly. It makes them even more miserable. All our ideas about the world are shaped by our environment. People from provincial cities envy Muscovites who make much more money. Muscovites are used to their high salaries and think they are less happy than residents of New York, London and Paris. If Londoners were sent to provincial Russia to live on a minimum wage, they would either shoot themselves or start finding ways to make more money.

“Easy money does not make people happy,” says Dilyra Ibragimova, research director of the National financial research fund. “People are satisfied when they work hard to make money.”

“It is not important how much you make, it is important how you spend it,” says Dmitry Klevtsov, a psychiatrist. “You can make little money but be very efficient with it, which will make you wealthier than rich people who make more but spend inefficiently.”

It appears that people are happier when they become wealthy gradually. They are happy to buy a motorcycle at the age of 20, a car at 25, an apartment at 30, and so on up to a cottage and a yacht at Cote d'-Azur.

Vladimir Potanin, one of the wealthiest Russians, seems to understand it. That is why he decided not to leave money to his children so they could learn to be independent. "A million will help a person, but a billion will kill because it takes away the purpose in life," Potanin explains.

Research indicates that residents of wealthy countries are happier than their poorer counterparts. Yet, wealth is not a panacea. That is why poor residents of Nigeria and Guatemala are happier than wealthier Japanese and Italians.

Komsomolskaya Pravda