With a net worth of $662 billion, Elon Musk is the richest person in the world. He is also firmly at the top — the divide between him and the second-richest person in the world, Google co-founder Larry Page, is nearly $400 billion. 

Despite all of that wealth, Musk recently questioned the power of money to make life happier. In a post on X earlier this week, Musk wrote, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.” The post has accumulated over 96 million views at the time of this writing. Musk did not elaborate further on what sparked his public musings. 

The Tesla CEO has spoken before about the role of money in his life. In a November conversation with investor Nikhil Kamath on the podcast People by WTF, he advised people to aim to be a “net contributor to society” rather than obsessing over how much money they make. 

“Aim to make more than you take,” Musk said on the podcast. 

He compared the pursuit of money to the pursuit of happiness, saying that if you make either your main goal, you will probably end up disappointed. Instead, he suggested focusing on creating useful products and services. “If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence, as opposed to pursuing money directly,” he said. 

In November, Tesla approved a historic $1 trillion pay package for Musk that hinges on him meeting several product and financial milestones. The unprecedented pay is the biggest executive compensation proposal ever approved in corporate history. For Musk to receive the full pay, Tesla must hit an $8.5 trillion market cap, a feat never achieved before by any other company.

What experts have said about money and happiness

Sociologist David Bartram, an associate professor at the University of Leicester, told Business Insider that there is a link between wealth and happiness. Money does increase happiness, especially when people move out of poverty and into financial security. Higher income can reduce daily stress, improve health outcomes and provide access to better housing, education and leisure, all of which tend to boost life satisfaction, he said. 

However, Bartram cautioned that the relationship weakens as people become richer. These benefits follow a pattern of diminishing returns: each extra dollar matters less once basic needs and some comforts are covered. After a certain point, more money adds very little to how happy people feel day-to-day.

“Once you’ve got a few million, anything extra is meaningless for happiness,” Bartram told the outlet. 

Another expert, psychologist Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, presented a contrasting take. He found in a 2021 study that happiness increased parallel to a person’s rising income, and there was no limit to the positive effect money had on happiness. So, the more money someone had, the happier they tended to be — no matter how much money they made. 

Killingsworth explained the findings to The Guardian, stating that he was shocked by the marked difference in happiness between those who are wealthy and those who are low-income. 

“If the differences in income/wealth are very large, the differences in happiness can be, too,” he told the publication. 

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