Does money make people happy?

[00:00:00]Do you think money actually makes people happy?

[00:00:02]>> I think money, the lack of money makes people extremely miserable. That's the most important thing you need to understand. With a slightly different hat on, I have a charity called the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. If you have mental health problems, you are three and a half times more likely to be in crisis debt than everyone else. If you have clinical depression, the treatment time is exacerbated by up to a year if you've also got financial problems because you've got something that you need to be upset about. The positive having money is not going to make you happiness. It's not a cure all. But what it does do is it take takes away worries and stress and many of the problems in life, financial problems, is I believe the second biggest reason for divorce in this country. It affects everything that you do. So when people look at, oh, it's just about money. This is not about money. Looking after your finances, getting it right is a core issue of well-being.

[00:00:58]Your happiness will depend on this. Not because having money makes you happy, but because stresses and problems with money can give you a really difficult life. And many people, many of you will have seen that. You will have seen the arguments in households. You would have seen the difficulties. You would have seen the worry. Trying to put kid food on the table for your kids if you can't do that is an incredibly difficult thing. Which is why we're here today.

[00:01:22]Why I did good debt bad good debt bad debt at the start. Because it's so easy when you're 18 and you can borrow for the first time to go and think, "Oh, look, free money, credit card. I'm going to start spending that. It's not your money." And then suddenly you're still paying for it 10 years down the path.

[00:01:36]And your first 10 years of independent adulthood have been ruined because of a simple bad decision of borrowing when you didn't need to and when you shouldn't have done in the first place.

[00:01:44]That's why we're doing this. So my answer, and I hope you don't think it's tright, is money doesn't make you happy, but a lack of money can sure make you sad.