Summary 2-53

1. Money that students are paid by the university or college.

2. A loan that you take to buy a home.

3. Ruble, Dollar, Euro, Yuan…

4. An economic situation when a person doesn’t have a job.

5. Money that you are paid at work

6. Vertical: Money that you pay for a certain service

Horizontal: Money that you pay to travel on a bus, train, boat, airplane or in a taxi

7. When you buy something for a really good price you call it a........

8. The synonym of “buy”.

Does Money Make Us Happier?

New words:

For many years psychologists, philosophers and ordinary folks have debated the question “Can money buy happiness? ”, or put another way “Does money, or lack of it, impact how happy we are? ”

What we are finding out now is that happiness is the ultimate currency. Happy people not only enjoy life more and have more fun, but they also practice positive lifestyle habits and have stronger immune systems. So, if we want to be healthier and happier, it’s worth figuring out where money comes into play.

When we talk about happiness, we need to look at it from two different aspects - life satisfaction vs. moment-to-moment moods. For example, we can be satisfied with our overall lives, but still have moments when we are not happy and vice versa.

Income is often considered to be a good measure of happiness and well-being. However it is less significant than we think. Although people with higher incomes are generally satisfied with their lives, they often enjoy themselves less on a daily basis and experience greater moments of stress than people with lower incomes.

In fact, what really affects our happiness is our attitude to money and the way we handle it. A big barrier on the way of raising our level of happiness is the fact that we adapt to good thing too fast and start to take them for granted. As we accumulate more material possessions, our expectations rise and all the things we worked so hard for no longer make us happy. In other words, the more we have the more we want. As a result high expectations make us consume too much, overspend and undersave, go into debt, gamble, live beyond our means, and purchase mortgages that we can’t afford.

To avoid all these problems we need to reshape our thinking and focus on things in our life that really matter.

Start with building stronger relationships with your loved ones. Research has shown that the happiest individuals have the strongest commitment and connection to family and friends. Money doesn't guarantee happiness, but good relationships certainly do!

Next step: don’t make comparisons! Don’t compare yourself (or your possessions) to others. Comparison almost always leads to the feeling of discontent, despair and insecurity. Learn to be happy with your own achievements and figure out what your real life goals are!

Whether you like it or not but handling money traditionally implies saving for the future. This is the tip that many people don’t like. It is, however, important to determine the amount of savings that will allow you to feel secure about your future.

And the last advice (but definitely not the least!): share! Gifts for others, donations to charities and other acts of philanthropy make us much happier than spending money on ourselves.

Money can bring some comfort to our lives but its main goal is to meet our basic needs such as good housing, food and education. Don’t make your happiness dependent on money: work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labour and hopefully never, ever take all that you have for granted!

Homework for the