Money is nothing more than the means upon which we make our wishes come true. Thing is, our wishes are often illusions that do not end up going as planned. Thing of it much like an ICO. Everything looks good, developing team is solid but the project eventually does not deliver.
Part of the reason is that our brains cannot process the future as well as we wish to believe they do. A new car, sexy girls, exotic houses, can undoubtedly give a hormonal kick for a while. No doubt. Nonetheless, our physiology is unable to hold the 'high' for too long. Eventually, there is a correction back to base.
I have witnessed this at least twice in my lifetime. By age 25, I believed that I have done pretty much everything a human being could experience. I was living pretty wild and took many risks. This allowed me to evaluate some things more thoroughly and ponder about what really matters in life. Some risks were highly rewarding. Others, well, let's just say that I am lucky to be alive.
There is no need to list my endeavours since for every person the list varies. Some people find satisfaction when they put their names on book spines. Others when they help or be appreciated by others. Others when they spend money on luxuries. Heck some get a kick when they live on the edge. For most, having a family can do the trick. Even trolling can provide happiness as the internet has demonstrated. There is really no real answer no matter what self proclaimed gurus and philosophers are trying to say to you. Humans are extremely peculiar beings.
Whatever path one might chose, the formula is pretty much the same: You begin by having an experience that has been culturally shilled. Then your neurotransmitters kick in, providing adequate pleasure juice that eventually results in a feeling of satisfaction. How much does that last? More or less much like a really good ganja brownie. For some is estimated to be weeks, for others some months! Whatever might be though, it cannot last forever. I won't list the research about "how long happiness lasts" because it's all pretty much subjective depending who you are, where you are from and when you are from.
We are pretty awesome in self-delusion. For example, if 100 people get together and start pondering on the possibility that a flying elephant that grants eternal life can provide ongoing happiness, that group will devise the means to sustain this belief. If 1.000 gather around ridiculing them then the belief won't hold as strong. Our minds are as amazingly imaginative as they are gullible. We want to believe some things for our own sake and other people's reassurance is what we all have in our disposal. We devise words that provide meaning, even if the word meaning has no intrinsic meaning on and in itself.
Happiness is much the same. We believe that it exists because we have constructed it out of necessity. Money, the means by which we exchange goods and services, enable all sorts of paths in order to reach a given meaning that will provide happiness. In much the same way a knife can perform a surgery, cut meat, commit murder or cut a rope. The means of the knife depend on the situation. Many reject money as much as they reject knives, heck even happiness itself (like I do) — hence why life gets so confusing.
In a greater perspective money can't really buy anything. It can only rent. A house will eventually wither. A currency will lose its value. The act of "buying" is all that is, and it is completely disconnected from the aim which is happiness. Nothing can be bought with the intent to last. We all live ~80 years give or take. We can rent pieces of happiness when the markets are up (or down) but we can never really own that is doubtful that it exists at all. Remember the juices I aforementioned. Many confuse pleasure with happiness and things even get weirder with masochists.
I hope I have confused you enough to make you ponder about happiness in your own way. Let me finish by reaching out to our community that might <get it by using a different example: Renting happiness is much like buying futures for a coin that never really manifests as a final product. We believe that it exists, but only lasts for a while. Just about when the hype is about to die and lose all hope, we baghold the failed one and jump onto the next. At the end, we have no idea what we are holding, how much it is worth. All that remains is the hype for the next ico.