Money and Happiness / Does being rich help bring more happiness?

Felix Dennis:
- So how rich do you want to be? The usual answer is "rich enough to be happy".
  
  But riches do not confer happiness! I have lost count of the number of friends, lovers and acquaintances I have told this to, especially when I first passed seven noughts of cash in hand. I don't bother anymore. The incredulous look on their face is always the same. What they are really thinking is, "Well, maybe you are not happy with all that dough, Felix, but I know that I would be. Just try me!"
  
  Still, let me repeat it one more time. Becoming rich does not guarantee happiness. In fact, it is almost certain to impose the opposite condition–if not from the stresses and strains of protecting wealth, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival. [NW: I definitely saw the "stresses and strains of protecting wealth" while working for Edwina.]
  
  Even leaving any moral dimension–heaven, camels and the eyes of needles–out of the equation, consider at least the wise sentiments of the author James Baldwin in his book Nobody Knows My Name, in which he concluded:
  
  "Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it, and thought of other things if you did."
- "If you had no money yourself, but a fairy godmother gave you exactly what you needed whenever you requested it, you would never make the Sunday Times Rich List, but you would be the richest person in the world, even if you gave everything away each night."
- From the poem "What's It Like Then, Being Rich?" in "How to Get Rich":
  - What's it like then, being rich,
    Knitting gold to warm an itch?
    Very much like being poor;
    Wealth is just a key, no more.
    (...)
    Wherein lies the difference
    from us–this odd ambivalence?
    Envy, malice, obligations;
    Toadying from poor relations.
    Grown far richer than his neighbor,
    Why would any rich man labor?
    Wealth is salt in wine immersed,
    Quaffing but excites the thirst.
Notch
- On Twitter:
  - The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.
    Hanging out in ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated.
    In sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor.
    When we sold the company, the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of, and they all hate me now.
    Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead.
    I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of assholes that made me sell minecraft again.
    People who made sudden success are telling me this is normal and will pass. That's good to know! I guess I'll take a shower then!