I assume everyone answering here is wealthy. Does having money make you happy?

I sometimes wonder what wealthy people do in their everyday lives. What I’ve realized is that it’s really about inner happiness. I don’t think I’ve ever met a wealthy person who’s constantly negative. So even when I’m feeling mentally low, I try to find a way to lift my mood. I’m sure you asked because you were wondering, “What is happiness, anyway?” There’s nothing wrong with having money, right? But if I suddenly really don’t want to meet someone the next day, I try to prioritize myself over the money in front of me.

Happiness exists only in your heart, and only you can feel it. You can’t simply decide that you’ll be happy if you become rich, get a great boyfriend, or get married. The real question is whether you feel happy right now. That said, having money does give you more options, so it seems good to have a reasonable amount... But even if you work yourself to the bone to make money, you probably won’t be happy if you don’t have any time to enjoy yourself. Apple founder Steve Jobs reportedly said shortly before his death: “I sacrificed my relationships for my work. I realized far too late that family, friendship, and love are more important than success and wealth.” Even though he had amassed enormous wealth through the iPhone, his later years apparently felt lonely. And even if you make money through fraud or crime, it’s probably difficult to live happily and freely. Having a reasonable amount of money, being able to enjoy yourself, and doing papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan)—Fuu feels happy with life right now. Women can earn money through papa-katsu without pushing themselves too hard, ending things with papas they dislike, and taking things at a reasonable pace. It seems like a way to make everyday life a little more comfortable. All of Fuu’s monthly arrangement partners seem fairly happy... They apparently work regular office jobs and have several papas (male supporters) on a monthly arrangement. In that case, papa-katsu really is a great system.

More than half of life’s worries can be solved with money—that’s my modest personal realization. Five years ago, I started investing in the broadest sense of the word. I was fairly well-off at the time, but I figured that becoming considerably wealthier would cut my worries in half. My goal was to multiply my personal assets by 100. I put in a great deal of effort—or whatever you want to call it—and achieved it this July. The strange thing was that I wasn’t as happy as I’d expected. The sense of accomplishment wasn’t nearly what I’d imagined either. I suppose there was something wrong with the way I increased my wealth (through entirely legal means, of course). Even after becoming considerably wealthier, your sense of money doesn’t change overnight. It’s a trivial example, but when a meal costs more than ¥30,000 per person, I end up thinking about the price before anything else, no matter how delicious it is, and can’t fully enjoy it. In short, figuring out how to spend money is far more difficult than saving it, and I’m still wandering around trying to figure it out. For now, I donated ¥10 million to my alma mater last month.

Good question. I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately. If you’re wealthy and financially stable, you can probably be happy. But entrepreneurs are in an unstable position. If your annual income drops from ¥100 million to ¥10 million the following year, you’d feel like your whole world was collapsing and completely fall apart. And if your income rises from ¥100 million to ¥200 million, you become even more ambitious, start aiming for ¥300 million, and live under tremendous stress every day until you get there. If you compare someone earning ¥3 million a year with someone earning ¥300 million, the latter is working 100 times as hard and experiencing 100 times the stress. Don’t you ever wonder whether that’s really happiness? Leaving aside whether I’m rich or not, I’m not happy at all. I’m battling intense stress every single day. Maybe it makes more sense if I say that it’s just a different kind of stress. Wealthy people are constantly fighting the fear of losing what they have. I personally think the happiest people are the islanders in places like Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. That said, now that smartphones have entered their lives and they’ve started looking at social media, I feel like even their happiness is gradually being chipped away.

As Mac-san’s answer points out, having money doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Sometimes, money can even bring misfortune. That said, there are also problems that money can solve. Money is simply a tool. I don’t think the relationship between having a tool and feeling happy is so straightforward that possessing one automatically makes you happy.

I feel like I’ve written this several times before, but one thing I can say for sure is: “Not having money makes you unhappy.” I don’t think having money necessarily makes you happy. Happiness is different for everyone, and there are kinds of happiness money can’t buy. For me, “happiness” means that爽快で満たされた感覚 right after ejaculating inside a young woman. In that sense, I can reliably buy happiness twice a day, at ¥50,000 per pay-per-meeting encounter. The relationship between happiness and money isn’t really that complicated. For example, no matter how much someone with an inferiority complex about their education saves, it won’t make that complex go away. They need to study, go back to school, or earn a qualification—the direction of their efforts has to be different. When it comes to appearance complexes, there are cases where money can solve the problem through cosmetic surgery. But there are also faces that no amount of money can fix. In those cases, you have to accept it and develop the ability to distance yourself from the complex. A lot of people are weak in that area. Not everyone can compete in the Olympics, and not everyone can become Shohei Ohtani. You need the ability to come to terms with your own abilities and potential. Some people can feel happy simply by saving money and having it. For those who don’t really understand that feeling, it’s hard to see what’s enjoyable about saving money you never even spend. In short, you need to clearly understand your own values. If money is necessary for what matters to you, then work hard and earn it. “Knowing when you have enough” also means becoming aware of what truly fulfills you. It doesn’t simply mean putting up with everything. A common thing among women involved in papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) is a vague anxiety about the future—something close to fear—and they keep saving money obsessively to fill that void. Of course, that doesn’t make them happy. Saving money doesn’t relieve the anxiety, so they start wondering if they’re doing something wrong and try spending it on designer brands or cosmetic surgery instead. But they still don’t feel fulfilled. They just learn to crave luxury. At the root of it is usually something like not having been loved enough by their parents, or not having been cherished or needed. That’s the part they need to fill. But whether it’s papa-katsu or romance, they can still be cut off without warning, which can deepen the wounds. Their luck with men is a difficult issue. Those women haven’t developed good judgment when it comes to men. They never saw an ideal father who could serve as a role model. You’d think they could use the opposite as a lesson, but instead they deliberately keep choosing one coldhearted man after another who resembles what they know. For now, the first thing they can do is become aware of that pattern. They get better and better at manipulating their papas and other men, but when it comes to recognizing a decent man, they’re hopeless. Completely inexperienced, like a virgin. Even if a good man is right beside them, they don’t notice him at all. They keep getting drawn toward strange men instead. The clue is probably what a trustworthy third party says. If someone tells you, “You’d better stay away from that guy,” they’re often surprisingly accurate. Something just occurred to me: for men—especially papas involved in papa-katsu—money may be a “pseudo-penis.” Whenever a question like this comes up, especially with those loser types, they start boasting about their income instead of their popularity, going on about how hard they work to make money—that is, how much earning ability and potential they have. But I think that’s basically no different from saying, “Look at this magnificent erect penis of mine.” So if you meet a man whose bragging about his wealth really gets on your nerves, it might help to think, “This guy must not be very confident about his dick.” Going to a swingers’ club can help you break free from those kinds of obsessions. Seeing all kinds of penises—larger and smaller than your own, belonging to men who are quick or slow to finish—all playing together happily can make you relax. Everyone is different, and that’s what makes everyone good. That said, quite a few places in Nagoya have been raided, and now there’s nothing but weird “legal swingers’ clubs” that are basically disguised girls’ bars. Traditional swingers’ clubs have become an endangered species, and since you never know when they’ll be raided, I stopped going. Anyway, this was supposed to be about money, wasn’t it? In any case, money equals penis. Even the fact that showing too much of it is embarrassing is similar. The reason I wrote all this is that I thought it would be nice if Taro read it late at night, laughed, and enjoyed it with a drink—like the excitement a grade-schooler feels when setting up a prank. That’s another small form of happiness. Happiness is everywhere.