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Can money buy happiness? Many would say “yes, unequivocally!” A more thoughtful, common, quick, and casual response is something like, “I’m not sure, but it’s certainly better to have money than not to have it.” Perhaps there’s some truth in that.

In 2004, The Wall Street Journal published the results of a survey that found that the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, on a scale of 1.0 to 7.0, rated their life satisfaction level at a 5.8. Homeless people living on the streets of Calcutta, India, on the other hand, gave their life satisfaction a score of 2.9. And the Inuit people of northern Greenland and the cattle-herding Masai people of Kenya rated their lives 5.8 – the same as America’s richest.

So what do we take from this ?

• Happiness comes from the inside out not the outside in. It is not found in things ! Even the 400 richest people in the U.S. have only an 82 percent level of life—satisfaction; i.e., only 5.8 out of 7.0. The Masai live in dung-huts with no running water and the Inuit live in the freezing Artic temperatures, with little company, food that is difficult to find and houses which at times consist of igloos and not the marble bathrooms of the American rich.

• Certainly money helps contribute to happiness but it is still a very imperfect predictor of levels of happiness. The homeless street-dwellers in Calcutta, among the poorest of the world’s poor, have a life-satisfaction that is 50 percent that of the richest 400; i.e., 2.9 versus 5.8. When they’re able to move from life on the streets to a life into the city’s rundown slum dwellings, they improve their satisfaction level from 2.9 to 4.6; i.e., to almost 80 percent the satisfaction level of the richest 400 in the U.S.

The modern world offers us materialism and many formula’s for happiness. There is greed and envy and striving to ‘make the list’ or achieve celebrity or gather things. But take a step back. See the nonsense that often drives us. See the mindsets we often look at life with.

Consider what really makes you happy. What could you do without and still be as happy or happier ? What could you focus more on and focus less on that would make you happier, whether you live in a dung hut, an igloo or a mansion with marble bathrooms !