re: Wife quit her professional medical job when we decided to have a kid

Money only buys happiness to a point. It really just eliminates unhappiness. Once you have enough money to live on comfortably day to day and you eliminate real money stress, there is no added happiness benefit. All you can do then is buy stuff to distract from your unhappiness.

This country is full of miserable well-off people trying to fill a void everyday with material gains. And people who are miserable because they struggle to pay the bills. The only content ones are those who are happy with the life they have outside of money concerns (personal, social, family, etc) and can live that life they want within their means. They may be rich, poor, or middle but they know what they want, they have what they want, and they can support it