You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too Hot

If you’ve ever thought you have too much material clutter in your life, and how your lifestyle might change for the better if you reduced it, this is the book for you. Driven by emotional, financial, and environmental stress, author Tammy Strobel made the decision to ditch the “gotta have it—must get it now” mentality, and to take one step at a time to uncomplicate her life, and more importantly, to become a happier person.

Strobel is quick to point out a simple fact that we often forget; the United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet many of its inhabitants are far from happy. She also explains how this inverse wealth/happiness index correlates. It’s quite simple, really: the more we accumulate, the more choked we become by stuff we never really needed in the first place.

You Can Buy Happiness offers gradual stages toward living a simpler life, such as taking the “100 things challenge,” saving your kids from drowning in a deluge of gifts, creating space in your home for things you love, and reorienting your values to relationships rather than things. This up-beat book offers practical guidance to finding joy in the realization that “less is more,” and is a testimony to the assurance that we could all improve our life by downsizing.