I'm here with Jonathan Clements. He has been a Wall Street General reporter for almost two decades, and today we're going to talk about the purpose of money.

Jonathan, thanks for coming.

Great to be here, Barry. So not only were you a reporter at the Wall Street Journal for a long time, you've written a number of books. What's your most recent book that just came out? The latest book I did is called From Here to Financial Happiness.

So let's talk a little bit about our broad subject, the purpose of money. I was always

under the impression that money is a meeting of exchange. Am I misunderstanding that?

Well, it certainly is a medium of exchange. I think the problem is that we're too quick to exchange it.

People get money in their pocket and they rush it. People get money in their pocket and they rush out and they buy something

they want that immediate thrill, but as we know from the research the

thrill doesn't last very long.

One of the most compelling statistics out there is what's happened to happiness in America

since the early 1970s.

Over that period, real inflation adjusted income in the US has more than doubled and yet

reported level of happiness has not budged.

We are no happier than we were in the early 1970s, despite this vast improvement of our standard of living.

So what that tells you is money has not bought happiness, but I honestly believe that it can

if we spend it properly?

So the millennials would say, okay, boomer, of course money is going to buy you happiness

if you're wasting it on goods and material objects, but money can be used to buy

experiences and social events and time with family and and that's a better use of

money what what do you say to that generation?

I would say that millennials are surprisingly smart.

They learn this a lot earlier in life than we did.

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