Ted Talks

Brina Gartlan
Blog #4
Ted Video-Happiness

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html
This video is very credible because first of all it was found by Mr. Chokshi. Secondly, Michael Norton and others at TED produce many videos often of different topics of discussion and research was done for this specific video. This one was filmed at Cambridge in Massechusettes.

At first, Norton begins right away saying the statement 'money can't buy you happiness' is indeed wrong. He is even very blunt when he states, "this article is about how their lives get ruined" when people win the lottery and the reasons behind it. You might think that winning 5 million dollars in the lottery will give you everything you ever wanted or needed, but in fact most people spend the money right away and go into debt, as well as worsening relationships because of family and friends begging for money.

Michael Norton then proceeds to show us how money can make us happy. He emphasized the point that is not whether you spend the money or not, its what you spend the money on that creates happiness. Throughout almost every country in the world, TED and Norton discovered mosy countries were happiest when they recently donated money to charity. The result from the research in Canada also proves this point. He found that spending money on others instead of keeping or spending it on yourself makes people generally happier.

I agree with Norton and his findings.  Even from personal experience, you tend to feel better after you do something nice for someone else rather than only doing things for yourself. I'm not saying that you should spend all your money on other people in order to have maximum happiness, just that sometimes spending on others rather than yourself will create happiness.

Basically, it doesn't matter what you spend it on, just that spending on others will make you happier than always spending on yourself.

How much is the right amount of money to spend on others? What is too much or too little?

http://www.moneyhowmuch.com/2012_04_01_archive.html