Penelope Trunk The Brazen Careerist

My first career was playing professional beach volleyball. It was a time in my life when money wasn't a high priority, which is good, because I didn't have any. Even when I was ranked 17th, I had a bathing-suit sponsor and a serving coach, but no stove in my apartment.

So it won't surprise you that my next career move was into the Fortune 500, where people are not known for scavenging quarters. After a few years of ladder climbing I founded two companies that were backed by investors.

Name Your Price

That's when the money started coming in: I was earning about $200,000 a year, and I had no mortgage and no kids.

Growing up, I'd always heard, "Money doesn't buy happiness, the important things in life are free, blah blah blah." But I had enough disposable income that I said a little prayer anyway: Please, please let me figure out how to buy happiness.

Research shows that when you ask rich people if they're happy, they say "yes" more often than middle-class people.

But if, rather than asking, "Are you happy," you ask rich people and middle-class people to report on their happiness each hour of the day, money doesn't seem to make people happier.

Here are four ways to fix that:

1. Spend money to attract friends.

You can't buy friends, but you can buy friend facilitators: a great table at a fund-raiser to fill with fun friends; a guesthouse to encourage long-distance visitors; a private jet to fly them in on. This is money well spent because the higher the quality of the relationships you have, the happier you'll be.

Administrative assistants take heart -- you can purchase low-end friend-facilitators as well. For example, buy some candy and bring it to work. People are more likely to talk to you for long periods of time if you have candy on your desk. And if you have two friends at work, you're almost certain to be happy in your job.

2. Splurge for a home close to work.

One of the things that allows the not-rich to feel happy is that we can adapt to almost anything. Think about your friend staying in a stupid job, or a stupid marriage; we have a remarkable ability to convince ourselves that what we have is good, even if it isn't.

But not commuting. We can never get used to our commute, because it changes daily. Commuting mimics the most effective techniques for torture: It's something bad that happens every day, but you don't know how bad it'll be or what form it'll take.

On top of that, if you have a bad commute, you take it out on your family when you get home, and the most important factor in your happiness is the quality of the relationships you have with your loved ones.

So those of you with a long commute are not getting any deals by moving far from the city to buy a bigger house. You undervalue your time and your relationships and overvalue your square footage.

3. Hire a headhunter to find you a mate.

The single most important factor in how happy you are is how much sex you have. Twice a week is optimal. Less frequent forays mean you won't reach the highest levels of happiness.

Warning to overachievers -- more sex will not give you more happiness. Warning to bottom-feeders -- sorry to disappoint you, but it's got to be with the same person every time.

This explains why married people are happier than unmarried people and why you should do everything you can to find a mate. If you have a lot of money, hire a headhunter to find you a mate.

And stop being so picky. Arranged marriages do as well as marriages for love, so give the headhunter a lot of leeway.

If you don't have a lot of money, ask a friend who her favorite ex is and date him. Research shows that if someone else liked their date then you'll like that date, too.

4. Join a chic gym and hire a trainer.

It's a lot easier to go to a gym if you get pampered there and have a personal trainer waiting to walk you through every step.

Extravagant, yes, but people who work out have more self-confidence and are less prone to depression. Bonus: The expensive gym membership will pay for itself, because if you're in shape you'll earn more money. Proving the axiom that the rich get richer.

Money Isn't Everything

Believe it or not, I've done all this stuff at one point or another. It doesn't always work out how I thought it would -- the headhunter made me so crazy that I married an ex-boyfriend.

But I can't say that any of the research has struck me as wrong. So spend a few bucks to find out for yourself.

And if you don't have money to do any of this, take heart. David Blanchflower, the economics professor who determined how much sex you should be having, says rich people don't have an advantage in finding sex partners -- there are enough to go around.

Penelope Trunk thinks of career advice as a group effort -- the movement for her generation -- so please write to her.