 |
| {A real friend is like winning the lottery. There is no risk when it comes to a good friend, you always win.} |
I know the saying, “money can’t buy happiness,” what I know is that friendship can. Yep, our happiness is dependent on your social standing more than your economic one. While poverty is a state, but feeling poor is a state of mind. You are only as poor as you feel (when the hunger pains stop) and just because you have money doesn’t mean you will always feel rich. Because it’s not the lack of money that makes us feel poor, but the lack of social interactions. I just picked Morgen up from his Digital Media class that he is taking, and he was telling me how our friendships are worth something. “Putting a Price Tag on Friends, Relatives, and Neighbors,” he told me, discusses the monetary values we put on social interactions.
I guess, through statistical analysis, economists developed a way to assess the worth of social interactions by taking random samples of people’s satisfaction levels over different points in their lives. This gave them shadow prices they then placed on the worth of relationships. According to the results, the value of friendship makes us happier than a $133,000 pay raise.
Because money gets old. Or maybe I forget what it was like before having that money. But I never forget what it’s like to have friends. I feel the cold emptiness of lost friendships much more than lost paychecks. Not having someone to call hurts more than not having a few extra thousand in the bank.
So when I'm worried that I'm not making enough money to make me happy, I look at friendships not my salary, because choosing to spend more time with friends brings me more joy than working all those extra hours for a pay raise.
That, and it’s my friends that make me feel rich, not all the money I'm making without them.
 |
| {Wasting time with friends is always going to trump wasting money} |
 |
| {Saving a friend is a lot more fun than saving money} |
 |
| {While money can bring a lot of things, it can't bring a sense of humor} |
 |
| {Having a small house full of friends is more fun than a large house full of money} |
How much is a friendship worth? How much would you pay for a good one?
