{"id":44688,"date":"2026-02-05T13:51:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/elon-musk-says-money-cant-buy-happiness-research-shows-hes-both-right-and-wrong\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:51:36","slug":"elon-musk-says-money-cant-buy-happiness-research-shows-hes-both-right-and-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/elon-musk-says-money-cant-buy-happiness-research-shows-hes-both-right-and-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says money can&#8217;t buy happiness. Research shows he&#8217;s both right and wrong."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698476d9e1ba468a96ab71e4?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Elon Musk speaks on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, against a blue backdrop.\"\/><figcaption>Elon Musk is the world&#039;s richest person.<\/p>\n<p>Fabrice COFFRINI \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Elon Musk said the adage that money can&#039;t buy happiness has some truth to it.<\/li>\n<li>The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is the richest person in the world.<\/li>\n<li>Research suggests money can increase happiness, but only up to a point.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Elon Musk wants you to know that the money hasn&#039;t made him happy.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Whoever said &#039;money can&#039;t buy happiness&#039; really knew what they were talking about,&quot;Elon Musk wrote in a post on X on Thursday with a sad-face emoji.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Whoever said \u201cmoney can\u2019t buy happiness\u201d really knew what they were talking about \ud83d\ude14<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is by far the richest person in the world. Per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $668 billion. The second-richest person in the world, Larry Page, is worth $285 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Musk&#039;s wealth has soared by $49 billion since the start of the year, buoyed by SpaceX&#039;s high valuation and news of its merger with his AI startup, XAI.<\/p>\n<h2>So, is Musk right or wrong that money can&#039;t buy you happiness?<\/h2>\n<p>Studies show that money does bring happiness, but there could be a limit for the ultrawealthy.<\/p>\n<p>David Bartram, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester, told Business Insider that while wealth and happiness are linked, &quot;It&#039;s very much a matter of &#039;diminishing returns.&#039;&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Once you&#039;ve got a few million, anything extra is meaningless for happiness,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Bartram said for the very wealthy, &quot;happiness is probably best achieved by having a sense that you&#039;ve done some good in the world, and that you&#039;ve treated people around you with care and kindness. It&#039;s not exactly rocket science.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>A 2021 study by Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, found that happiness and feelings of well-being increased in tandem with a person&#039;s rising income.<\/p>\n<p>However, the amount of money needed for happiness becomes an exponentially moving goalpost, Killingsworth concluded in a 2024 paper.<\/p>\n<p>While the data he analyzed did not examine what millionaires or billionaires are experiencing, Killingsworth said it was &quot;plausible&quot; that the pattern would continue among the world&#039;s wealthiest.<\/p>\n<p>Musk discussed the relationship between happiness and wealth in a recent conversation with Nikhil Kamath on the &quot;People by WTF&quot; podcast.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Aim to make more than you take. Be a net contributor to society,&quot; Musk said in November.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s kind of like the pursuit of happiness. You know, if you want to create something valuable financially, you don&#039;t pursue that. It&#039;s best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence, as opposed to pursuing money directly,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk is the world&#039;s richest person. Fabrice COFFRINI \/ AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk said the adage that money can&#039;t buy happiness has some truth to it. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is the richest person in the world. Research suggests money can increase happiness, but only up to a point. Elon Musk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}