Guest Post: Can money buy happiness?

Probably not, but it does suck to be broke. Martin Henson reflects on income, class, and happiness.

I was in line at Biscuitville a few weeks ago, and the lady next to me had been waiting a while. The cashier asked for the name, and the lady replied: “Banks.”

“Banks?” repeated the cashier, making sure she got it right.

“Yeah. Banks. As in ‘I ain’t got no money in the’ or ‘I don’t trust no.’”

The whole restaurant burst out laughing. It was one of those moments where you feel some kinship and solidarity with the people around you, the young Latino in paint-splattered workpants, the old church lady in the faded Sunday hat, the Biscuitville employees in their polyester blue uniforms.

Class is a lot of things– it usually determines where you live and where you go to school, who you hang out with and feel comfortable with; sometimes it's what you eat and what music you listen to. Class in America isn’t straightforward, but a complicated thing, with nuances and divergences in region, race, immigration status, gender, etc. But one thing usually holds: You can’t talk about class without talking about what kinda money you've got, or don’t got, in the bank.

There’s old money and new money, rent money and pocket money, and then, of course, there’s broke. In this guest post, Martin Henson writes about the complexity of incomes– what's considered good, what's considered enough, and what can make a person happy.

We say “money can’t buy you happiness,” but, as Martin points out, it’s no fun to struggle. As the cost of basic needs goes up– housing, transportation, food, utilities– working class people are stretched as thin as ever— and while we can be happy on the checks we cash each Friday, nobody’s making it easy for us.

If you like Martin’s writing, you can find more on his Substack. Scroll down for his piece on money below.

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Martin Henson, who writes as Martin X on Substack. Find his work here.

If you're not pulling in six figures, society quietly suggests you're falling behind. The popular refrain is “$100,000 is not a lot”. This message, a bit contradictory and condescending, floats in and out of cultural discussions.

I find it fascinating.

Upon hearing it my mind flashes back to my teenage years in the barbershop, where a boisterous, graying brother proclaimed, after a rising fuel crisis flashed across the news, “I remember when gas was $1.50 per gallon. Couldn’t afford it then and can’t afford it now.” Just beginning to drive, it put my frustrations into perspective about how little money I had, but it did make something clear: struggle is relative to what you can afford. Happiness requires a different recipe, one that includes money as a key ingredient.

I’ll never forget the group dinner where a beautiful woman announced, as if it were common sense, that $60,000 was the minimum income required to date her. Up until that point, I thought I was creating pressure for myself to make more money. After, ashamed, I privately contemplated if I had chosen the right career field. That was 12 years ago. Since then, inflation, rising costs, and evolving expectations have pushed the “enough money” threshold even higher. Now that I’m a bit older, I can investigate this elusive happiness quotient.

I am never quite sure if the conversation around optimal income is a serious one, since $100,000 is nearly double the median income, and people who make over six figures have a penchant for notifying others in creative ways. Even if the income discussion veers into humblebrag territory, conversations about optimal income should happen. While data tries to put a price on happiness, most working-class people are just trying to afford groceries.

Can happiness really be measured in dollars?

Researchers have tried. Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton identified $75,000 as the point where happiness plateaued in a 2010 study, which a later study updated to show that happiness continued to increase beyond the $75,000 mark. But this doesn’t seem to matter much when the middle class is dissatisfied with their income, while being a benchmark many working-class people will never achieve.

Working-class people are those who trade their labor for income and fall below the median household income line of $56,000. The middle class—who often drive the “X amount is not enough” conversation—earn between $56,000 and $170,000, often existing well above the so-called happiness threshold. Not quite poor and not quite rich, they cash in on the status that comes from the accrual of some capital (like a house), while framing their anxieties in sympathetic ways that mirror the structural poverty of the working class. This often looks like discussions of vacation homes, seasonal international excursions, and business portfolios that mark hardship by the difficulty they are to maintain.

As someone from the working class, I often feel invisible in these conversations. When people ascend across income lines, they bring with them lifestyle content, self-help advice, and a tone that often implies: if I can do it, so can you. Their anxieties tend to focus on losing what they’ve gained, resenting the ultra-wealthy above, and fearing poverty below. Since they control so much of the cultural conversation, they get to define what financial happiness looks like.

Happiness has become a commodity—not unattainable for working-class people, but often invisible. The research and middle-class discourse don’t account for how people can find happiness while living well below the $70,000 or $100,000 thresholds, nor how simply having enough money to meet basic needs can directly improve the happiness of those struggling to make ends meet. More money, through programs like universal basic income, has been shown to reduce psychological stress in UBI trials in Kenya, California, Canada, and Finland.

In that narrative, happiness has become a commodity that can be unlocked once you hit a magic number. The truth is that happiness exists below the $75,000 or $100,000 thresholds, too. It just doesn’t get the spotlight. Simply being able to pay rent, buy groceries, and afford childcare can dramatically change someone’s mental health. Universal Basic Income trials in Kenya, California, Canada, and Finland have shown that even modest, guaranteed income reduces psychological stress.

Future, the popular Atlanta rapper, posed a question I find myself reflecting on when thinking about money’s effect on happiness: “Would you rather cry in this Phantom or Nissan?” The easy answer is the Phantom, a ridiculously expensive luxury vehicle. Income should not determine where happiness begins and ends. Although my tears would dry quickly in a Phantom.

The question of “how much money is enough” isn’t going away. It should be grounded in practical conversations that include all perspectives, especially those of the working class, who are often missing from these frameworks. The $75,000 happiness figure offers important insights, but it’s hard for it to matter when that number is simply out of reach for most people. Middle-class narratives of hardship can shed light on the barriers to upward mobility, but when they make false comparisons to working-class realities in search of sympathy, they risk minimizing real hardship.

I enjoy the money and happiness conversations. They are fun, provocative, and bit controversial. The real question is not how much money is enough, but who gets to decide what happiness is worth.