Billionaire Warren Buffett Says '$1 Million Isn't Going To Make You Happy' Because Once You See Someone With $2 Million, 'Your Happiness Will Disappear'

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Warren Buffett‘s late wife, Susan, once said he turned to her early in their marriage and told her flat-out: he was going to be the richest man in the world. And he meant it. “It wasn’t the money itself. It was all mental with him,” she said.

He didn’t chase money for yachts or bragging rights—it was the strategy, the game, the discipline. But the thing Buffett figured out, and has been repeating for years, is that money itself isn’t what makes people happy.

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Everyone thinks more money will do the trick. A bigger paycheck, a fancier house, an extra zero. Most people are chasing the same thing: wealth, under the assumption it comes pre-packaged with happiness. But according to Buffett—who’s sitting on a fortune north of $145 billion—that assumption is dead wrong.

“Even $1 million isn’t going to make you happy. It is not going to happen,” he said on CNBC in 2018. Why not? Because once you’ve got it, “you look around, and you see people with $2 million, and your happiness will disappear.”

That’s the catch. It’s not the money that disappoints you—it’s the moment you realize someone else has more. The problem isn’t wealth. It’s comparison.

Buffett’s point isn’t that money doesn’t matter. Of course it does. It can give you freedom, comfort, and options. But if your contentment is linked to how much you have—or worse, how much someone else has—you’re signing up for a race that never ends.

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He learned that early. Back when he had just $10,000 to his name, Buffett said he wasn’t miserable. “I was having a lot of fun.” The trick, he says, is not delaying joy until you hit some arbitrary number. “You can have a lot of fun while you’re getting rich.”

In a 2017 PBS NewsHour interview, he explained why he never traded up from the modest home he bought in 1958. “If I could spend $100 million on a house that would make me a lot happier, I would do it. But, for me, that’s the happiest house in the world,” he said. “It’s got memories, and people come back, and all that sort of thing.”