Would being richer make you happy?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s an old saying that money doesn’t buy happiness, which is often swiftly countered with the suggestion that while this may be the case, having enough not to worry about it definitely helps.

There are no shortage of cautionary tales that tell us it is better to be happy than rich, but does it matter if some people have an awful lot more money than others?

And does it matter to both them and society how they got it - and whether it was earned by hard work?

An in-depth five-year study was launched this week that aims to look into inequality in Britain; and not just at earnings and wealth, but also inequality in education, opportunity, gender, race, geography, class and generation.

It arrived with a snapshot of Britain today and on this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Tanya Jefferies and Georgie Frost dive into the picture that paints and discuss whether we need to worry about inequality or not.

They also look at how to work out how wealthy you are – and why that matters even if you subscribe to the money doesn’t buy happiness mantra.

This week’s podcast also reveals the perks that you can get if you are over-60, after Jeff Prestridge wrote about those he discovered that he can now pick up now he’s had a big birthday. More seriously, the team flag the vital help that over-65s can get if they are struggling.

And finally, if you’ve ever thought you’d like to live in a certain part of town, on an exact street, or even ‘in that house there’, we look at the new service Knock for Sale that will send owners a card for you for £5 to tell them you are interested and maybe tempt them to sell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money in partnership with NS&I. I'm Georgie Frost and with me in the studio today is editor Simon Lambert and reporter Tanya Jeffries.
0:09.6	And coming up, are the rich getting richer and should we worry about inequality?
0:14.3	Also, how rich are you? Fear not if the answer is, not very. This is Money has a plan to help you. Also today, we focus on the over 60s, what perks you can get and what help is available to you if you are struggling. Plus, we look at what are the latest goings on at Metro Bank and what you can do if you fancy a house that's not actually for sale and don't worry it's all legal folks and you can stay up
0:39.3	to date with all the latest breaking money news just go to this ismoney.com.uk or download the app.
0:44.3	This is Money brought to you in partnership with NS&I premium bonds. Now you can start saving
0:50.5	from just 25 pounds millions of tax-free prizes every month.
0:55.0	Now, is social inequality rising in Britain? It's one of the big issues of our time.
1:00.0	Well, this week we got the launch of a new study from the Institute of Fiscal Studies,
1:03.0	which will be investigating exactly this, equality and wealth, opportunity, and a lot more besides.
1:09.0	Now, the aim is to not just understand what drives inequality,
1:12.2	but what can and should be done about it. But before we get to that, Simon, welcome.
1:18.5	What exactly do we mean by social inequality? What's uncovered by it? How is it measured?
1:24.8	I guess when we talk about it normally, what we really mean is that some people are richer
1:28.5	than others.
1:30.3	And what we perceive from the headlines that we see, the world that we see around us, I guess,
1:37.3	is that some people are doing not very well at all.
1:40.3	We've obviously had a big fuss about austerity.
1:43.3	We see stories about benefits being cut.
1:45.8	We look around us and see homeless people and things like that.
1:51.2	And then we also see people swanking around an extremely expensive cost.
1:55.3	If you happen to work in High Street, Kensington, as we do, things will be even more skewed.
2:00.3	You see a lot of swanking.
	...

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