Money & happiness: do you turn to spending when you're stressed, lonely or bored? Here's why those habits fail to soothe and how you can stop - or eating - Shape Your Life Special

Shape, Feb, 2003 by Lynda Liu

money quiz

Answer yes or no to the following:

* Do you believe that money can buy you happiness?

* Do you go shopping when you're anxious, sad or bored?

* Do you believe money can get you the things you want?

* Do you spend money to feel better about being on a diet?

* If you had more money, would people think better of you?

Your answers According to Alan Manevitz, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, who works with families on issues relating to wealth, here's what your score means:

0-1 "yes" answers Money is not very important to you, nor is it related at all to your happiness.

2-3 "yes" answers You have a sense that money is important and believe that it could be the route to happiness.

4-5 "yes" answers You have an unrealistic belief that money will solve your problems.

Experts say there's a link between spending, overeating and stress. Turn the page for advice on how to find other means (besides buying or bingeing) for getting what you want and need.

Whether or not you believe that the love of money--or the lack of it--is the root of all evil, chances are you have an opinion about what money means. To some, it represents success, fame. To others: power, acceptance, material goods and status.

Many women, though, use money to fill an emotional hole. When Tomii Crump, 28, moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles for graduate school, she found herself far from family and friends for the first time in her life. She was homesick and lonely and went on shopping binges to fill the void.

"If I was sitting at home, I would get up and go to the mall," she says. "If I was on my way home, I would, go to the mall. If I did great on a paper for school, I would go to the mall." Crump could walk into a store and spend indiscriminately, rationalizing to herself that the purchases were on sale. She spent money on shoes, clothes, makeup and accessories that made her feel pretty and better about herself. "I was known as the girl who always looked good," she says. But these buying binges left her unable to pay her bills as her credit-card debt rocketed to more than $15,000.

There are many of us who feel we can improve our emotional well-being with money, either by acquiring more of it or spending it lavishly. Certainly, when you don't have enough money to provide for your basic needs--food, shelter, clothing, medical care--money is crucial to your sense of well-being. But once you're above the poverty level, money loses its ability to boost your happiness quotient. "You get happier at a diminishing rate," says Andrew Oswald, Ph.D., a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. "The first $20,000 is a lot more valuable than the 12th."

Richard M. Ryan, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York, believes that money is not the way to pursue happiness because the link between the tangible (money) and intangible (happiness) is too weak. "Focus on maintaining and improving the relationships in your life instead," he says. "Research shows that if they are unfulfilled, you see big drops in happiness."

Ryan's research has shown that those who put a lot of value on external goals such as money, fame or status are less happy and well-adjusted. "You don't find anyone who doesn't want financial security or success on some level, but how strong a goal is that relative to other goals?" he asks. Even materialists will say that relationships are the most important things in their lives, but unlike nonmaterialists, they will put money as a close second. The time you put into pursuing financial wealth might take away from the things that really could bring you joy.

Here are three healthy ways to take a new look at money. Once you've rethought a few of these financial facts, you may realize that there are other things--besides money--that bring happiness. You may even discover that you already have them.

1. ASk, "What is success?"

For some, the size of their bank account determines what they are worth as people. If they could just "make a certain amount of money," "buy a big house" or "live in a ritzy neighborhood," then they will have "made it."

"Materialistic people are insecure," Ryan says. "They get hooked because they have to convince others they're worthy by having cool jewelry or hot cars." The problem is, it's never enough. If you ask most people how much money they would need to be happy, they will name a figure that's about 20 percent higher than their current income, Ryan says. And if they get it? "They still think the next 20 percent will do it"

Let's say with your higher income you move into a nicer neighborhood. Will you feel successful then? Probably not, because you're now comparing your house not to the ones in your old neighborhood, but to those in your new, wealthier environment. "Human beings seem to have to look over their shoulders before they can decide how successful they really are," Oswald says. In other words, if you get richer and everyone else stays the same, you feel the benefit. But if everybody around you has more money too, the extra income has no effect. This may explain why a nation that grows wealthier does not necessarily have happier citizens. "Since the early '70s, real income in Western countries has doubled, but you see no improvement in happiness surveys," Oswald says.