It's a well-accepted notion that money can't buy happiness. Sure, sometimes we imagine how great our lives would be if we had a little more disposable income, but deep down no one wants to believe that life satisfaction can be measured by our bank balances, that possessions count more than people, or that the meaning of life can be found inside a designer handbag. For the most part, research agrees with the old saw, showing that additional income rarely has lasting effects on happiness. (It can even make people less happy in the long run.) But even so, recent studies suggest that money actually does have a lot to do with happiness, just not in the way we usually think about it. When it comes to being happy, it's not about having more money; it's about how you spend the money you have.
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