To blacksuger11: Nice to see that you differentiate between the two, to want and to need. It seems though that many people intermix them occasionally.

Money is not the source of happiness, however it would take a naive fool not to admit it is a source of happiness. People assign some greater meaning to happiness, as if it can be a statement on your life as a whole, in truth happiness is just a series of moments in which your wishes were fulfilled, you can be happy for as long as the moment lasts and then you will hit whatever your natural level of joy is. A select few are naturally happy but most are not.

Not particularly important.

Its there to help me along but I can live without money---I have for most of my life.

I hoard money, thats all I really do with it. Hoard it and hate spending it. Indeed I moan and groan everytime I have to spend money.

I'd rather get a kick out of finding something that I need at half price than paying for full price.

I don't need to own everything. I don't need the fanciest thing. I don't develop expensive collecting habits just because of my class lense--I grew up without much so now I think its pretty silly to start collecting massive amounts of unecessary things.

I'll get one fan item from an anime that I really like but I don't obsessively collect, you know? Its expensive so yeah.

Money and material wealth don't matter as much as spiritual wealth to me.

Money is important as you cannot survive without it. It does bring happiness as you can buy things with it, but it only lasts temporarily. I experienced it. I sometimes feel sad, I feel that my existence is empty. So I usually buy things that capture my fancy like cellphones, a new PC (as I like to play games and watch anime), go out of town every once in a while. The "happiness" just doesn't last. Maybe something that will truly bring happiness is not money, but certainly not the lack of it. Maybe helping others, being a volunteer will be the answer.

Money is important because we need it, but I'm not tight or greedy or anything. I'm not afraid to spend it on other people. It's good to have extra money to buy things you want, too. To me money can't buy happiness because no matter how many things someone may own, some people are just never satisfied.

Money is nice but its not happiness. Granted I'm going to need a bit of it so I can go to university and get a nice degree so I can have my dream job and be happy. Looking past the fact I may end up with a nice tab to pay off before I die I can say that I really don't need alot of it to do the things I enjoy: Drawing, hanging out with friends, taking part in the local drafts for Friday Night Magic. (Oh hell yeah, I still play).

I have got plenty of money because I don't spend much. Money is a necessary evil but I don't have much value for it.

Lest see!.......

Money is so important to me, that my life depends on it... why.
well without money you can't buy food, or clothes, or rent a room to live on.
money is the most important ting we humans have.... but I know some people would say, you can't buy happiness with money.... let me tell you one thing...
yes you can buy happiness with money.

you know why you say you can't buy happiness... because you don't have the money
you don't see rich people being sad, or killing each other?
you can buy happiness with money,.... if I had the money I would be the most happy man in the world.... but i don't have it....lol

Money not the root of happiness, but we need it to maintain happiness. :p

Money is one of the most important things in the world in my opinion, besides Christ because it holds a great significance in social status and it basically provides for what ever you could need. Boy money is good. It also shows how hard you work for it, if you work for it legally of course, or how corrupt you are. Boy money is great. you need money to buy computers. In fact without money you wouldnt be able to be typing this in a computer and show to the people on the web right now what were talking about.

Nowaday money has its own meaning for each of us, different life, different perspective, different purpose of life, but life will be hard without it. For some people, who earns not much money to take care of himself or his family, money is the only thing he thinks about day after day.

And for some people, who was born in a normal family, they think about earning money only after he find his meaning in life, his interest, his hobby, his fob, or his everything lover to take care of her!For some who was born in a rich family, most of them think about how to spend it in many way to impress the other, or for some crazy reasons, ... from my opinion that's the meaning of money for some people around me.

And now for me, i was born in very normal family, not rich and not poor, but i has my life without worrying anything because of my mother, she has lived almost 30 of 50 years working hard to take care of me and my family, even from mother site or father site, she took care of everything!

From beginning, at that time when i was a child, my family was poor, we have enough rice and some vegetable in every meals, but meat only about once in month, even through it's the best for a child to drink milk everthing to grow up, my mother couldn't stand it, at that time milk was very expensive.

So that's why i grew up from my poor childhood and always think about how to spare money as much as possible, that's the best for my mother, so she did not have to work too hard to grow me up! Until today, i still think that way, and now when i'm far away from home, i try to work as part-time helper to finance myself, try to live independ on my mother!

I don't want to bother my mother, don't want to make her sad of me, but one thing that make my mother very disappointed is my bad studying, i swear that i have never been a good student, my notes were never once excellent that can makes my mother proud of me, not even once.

But you know what, the only dream i have, only think that i really like is manga and japanese, i want to study it in japan, but my mother is total oppose that. That hurts me so much but deep in my heart i do not want to upset her so i let go my dream!Now i only hope if there is next life for me to be human once more time, i wish i could be born in japan !!^_^

And even when i has my job done good, save up some money i will try to make my dream come true!

I live in a developed rich country by early 21st century standards.
Developed countries in the early 21st century have a fair level of surplus.
For people to obtain the larger portion of this surplus, a system which used money existed, characterised by fiat currency.
People would be able to inherit assets and wealth, at the whim of someone who had these said assets.
In this day and age people's lives were governed by the need for money, as this was the focal point whereby people would purchase their needs throughout their lives.
People would receive money in exchange for their position, ownership of assets and trading. This money could then be used to purchase products produced by the many corporations and individuals throughout the globe.

Therefore, money was important to me and the many people like me. Because, all of us who live in these developed countries did not know the reason for their existence. But, the surplus of production was enticing so many people would accumulate surplus. Some people did not care about the surplus at all, but the potential to accumulate surplus; this was done through utilising existing assets to entitle themselves to more assets.

And so, to fulfil their personal desires us people would place money as the most important priority in their lives. A lack of money would give people ideas of family breakdowns, depression, anxiety, poor social outlook and everything people valued be in a state of disaster. However, there were the rare minority who simply carried on through their lives being ignorant about the nature of money, or purposefully unaware of how this world was governed by money. Yet, despite their existence, this age was characterised by expansive populations hungry for money.

Money soon lost it's initial purpose before the grand scheme of the world. Huge schools and systems which focused solely on money were on the rise. A social evolution sparked and value would be placed on everything, the economy grew in importance to the world, in this post-agricultural era where goods were abundant.

In the end, money was more important than happiness - it defined humanity. Without money humanity would operate dramatically different. Money was everything to myself and humanity. All activities people did were based on money... thus, it formed the basis of life. By the way, I speak for everyone in the early 21st century.

Money brings happiness. It's not just the stuff you want to buy, but the security that you can give your family a better life. Many times life can be so tough and most of these times money can fix it all, besides family losts, love and non-material stuff :P

I don't know. I mean even if I said that I don't care about money that much, I still save it up and use it to satify my needs. I just do that because I know that that money would be useful in the future but I also love having my favorite mangas....... So I do care about money but if you put value over people then its just worthless.

Happiness equals money, that's life. Without money you can't support your family or pay the rent whatsoever.
If you don't even have enough money to do/buy things like: clothes, rent, books, games, restaurants, school, food, doing things with friends etc, you won't be happy, at all. I don't think a family that has no money is very happy just because they have "each other".
Although, I am not saying that you are unhappy 24/7 just because you are poor. I am simply saying that parents who can't support their family even though they want to feels sad for their children. And that sadness later on effects the children too since they don't want their parents to feel unhappy or sad. This certainly won't create a good atmosphere in the family. Everyone will worry about each other and feel very stressful (parents mainly).
And note that this is a family that really loves each other so much that they care about each persons feelings. All families aren't like this.
Love has a limit, money doesn't.