Money are the source of lots of unhappiness, but as they point out: We adapt.
The research does not support that "being broke sucks".
The research supports that starving and being homeless sucks. The moment you are not starving, and have shelter, peoples happiness level is on average almost as high as the happiness level of a rich person.
> Feeling successful is pleasant in itself.
It may be, but as we adapt to having little money and success, so do we adapt to having lots of money and lots of success. It does not bring substantial added happiness other than shortly after we achieve it. Being given a raise, or promotion, or public praise gives us happiness, but that happiness fades very quickly. Similarly, not making much money, or failing, is unpleasant but the unhappiness it causes is very much temporary unless you keep doing worse.
Avoiding adaption to an improved situation, and ensuring adaption to a worse situation is key to maximising happiness. You are best served by a slow, steady "drip" of improvement than suddenly achieving wealth, fame or success for example. Conversely, if you need to make cuts, you are far better off cutting your expenditure further than necessary, get used to it, and slowly see things improving, than you are making small cuts with the risk of having to cut back further.
Apart from relative effects on adapation, money overall has very little direct impact on happiness other than at the extremes:
If you starve; if you're homeless; if you lack access to mental health services; if you lack access to health services that can prevent or slow a degenerative condition (pretty much any catastrophic health change is subject to adaptation as long as the change is over quickly - e.g. amputees are as happy as most people relatively soon afterwards - but conditions that slowly become worse avoids adaptation).
(See Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" for more on this, and a decent chunk of references)
I'm far from up on the research, and I've heard conflicting versions of what research supports. But, this article seems to be treating the relationship as clearly causal but modest.
From the first paragraph:
"Scientists have studied the relationship between money and happiness for decades and their conclusion is clear: Money buys happiness, but it buys less than most people think (Aknin, Norton, & Dunn, 2009; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2000). The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest.."
My understanding of the research is that there is a point at which more money doesn't increase your emotional happiness (i.e. the amount of joy minus the amount of sorrow in your life), but that point is considerably higher than not-starving-and-not-homeless. I think you have misread The Happiness Hypothesis
The research does not support that "being broke sucks".
The research supports that starving and being homeless sucks. The moment you are not starving, and have shelter, peoples happiness level is on average almost as high as the happiness level of a rich person.
> Feeling successful is pleasant in itself.
It may be, but as we adapt to having little money and success, so do we adapt to having lots of money and lots of success. It does not bring substantial added happiness other than shortly after we achieve it. Being given a raise, or promotion, or public praise gives us happiness, but that happiness fades very quickly. Similarly, not making much money, or failing, is unpleasant but the unhappiness it causes is very much temporary unless you keep doing worse.
Avoiding adaption to an improved situation, and ensuring adaption to a worse situation is key to maximising happiness. You are best served by a slow, steady "drip" of improvement than suddenly achieving wealth, fame or success for example. Conversely, if you need to make cuts, you are far better off cutting your expenditure further than necessary, get used to it, and slowly see things improving, than you are making small cuts with the risk of having to cut back further.
Apart from relative effects on adapation, money overall has very little direct impact on happiness other than at the extremes:
If you starve; if you're homeless; if you lack access to mental health services; if you lack access to health services that can prevent or slow a degenerative condition (pretty much any catastrophic health change is subject to adaptation as long as the change is over quickly - e.g. amputees are as happy as most people relatively soon afterwards - but conditions that slowly become worse avoids adaptation).
(See Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" for more on this, and a decent chunk of references)