I am a believer that materialistic things aren't what make you genuinely happy. I can be happy with the little things. How much money someone had or I had was never something that interested me but as I grow older, I am starting to see how much it can affect someone.
Lately, I've been stressing about how I'm going to pay for things. I have personal expenses, bills, and school to pay for. I also would like to get health care check ups and make appointments but at the moment it's extremely difficult to do that without insurance and without having to pay a lot of money. It sucks that in what is said to be "the greatest country in the world", people have to avoid doctor/dentist appointments. Not having health insurance, screws you over big time. You have to be as healthy as possible so you don't pay an arm and a leg for a diagnosis or a band-aid.
According to an article in the L.A Times, the U.S.A is the only wealthy country without universal healthcare. This makes absolutely no sense to me. This article continues to explain how for every 100,000 people who died, 112 people died from complications or conditions that could have been prevented had they reached out for medical assistance. These extremes do happen, and they happen often. Even the minor things hurt the average person's wallet and can leave them in debt for a very long time, if not forever.
It sucks that people have to work 3+ jobs to make ends meet with paying for school alone. You can be going to a state school or a private four year university and while one is cheaper than the other, you will still have to pay a lot of money for your education. I can see how one would appreciate and value their hard work more since they're paying big bucks for their school but it still causes a whole new kind of stress. Today, over 44 million Americans hold a total of $1.4 TRILLION in student debt.
Whether you're going to a school because it's more semi affordable or because it's your dream school, you can expect to give up another arm and leg to get that credential. As if students don't already have a lot piling on top of them, they now need to worry about if they're going to be attending school next semester and if so, worrying about how they're going to pay their loans off later on in life.
While having lots of money shouldn't be the reason a person is happy, it definitely clears off hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of worries. I wish the greatest country in the world would help out its people and give us less things to worry and stress over. A lot more people who are worthy and intelligent would finally get a chance to go to school and many more would not die or get very ill over something very preventable. I think that's fair.