Money Can’t Buy You Happiness. But Financial Planning Helps.
Article published in Northampton Living
(July 2024)
The so-called “Harvard Happiness Study” is the world’s longest-running research on how humans develop throughout adulthood. Its recent findings are getting a lot of attention.
Neither money, nor career success, nor fame is the key to happiness, the research concludes. Happiness comes from meaningful connections with other people. And happiness is tied to health and longevity. According to “The Harvard Study of Adult Development” director Robert Waldinger:
“The people who were the happiest, who stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people. In fact, good relationships were the strongest predictor of who was going to be happy and healthy as they grew old.”
By now you may be asking, “So what does this have to do with financial planning?”
Plenty, as we’ve seen though our work with clients over the past 20 years.
But financial planning that gives you options for where and how you live, and the social connections you have now and in the future, can increase your happiness, keep you healthier, and prolong your life.
If that sounds far-fetched, read on.
Financial Planning Can Give You More and Better Options
It happens all the time. An individual, couple or family begins working with a financial planner, and in the process of exploring their lifetime priorities, discovers they have options they never realized were possible.
A client in her late 80s, for example, was facing major surgery. The most sensible thing to do, she decided, was to move to a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) to ensure she’d have whatever level of care she needed post-op and in the future. But in time, both she her out-of-state family regretted the decision. Working with a financial planner, she discovered an alternative. She could cancel her pre-paid contract with the CCRC by paying a modest penalty. With the remainder of her initial investment, she and her daughter and son-in-law could jointly purchase a multi-family house in their community. Today, they live in adjoining households but enjoy living as an extended family. They’re also there for each other when needed.
Super-charging your net worth may not be a satisfying end in itself.
Where you call home – the four walls that surround you plus your geographic location – is hyper-connected to all the key factors identified in the Harvard study. It influences your ability to form and maintain meaningful social connections, which, in turn, have a direct impact on your happiness, health and longevity.
Working with a financial planner can help you evaluate your options, factoring in not only the costs but the other variables that matter in the long run, including your relationships and the things that make you happy. Would it be better to age-in-place or move? Are there creative ways to use your assets to finance the home you hope for and maintain the relationships that sustain you?
Money can’t buy you happiness. But a financial planner can help you direct your resources towards creating a life that makes you happy.