One of the great ironies of the consumer age is that the things we want most are - by definition - not for sale. To put it another way, when Lennon and McCartney penned Can't Buy Me Love they were in fact pointing out a seldom-articulated financial truth. To their list of things not available at any price they could have added friendship, respect ... and happiness.

None of this is particularly novel, but what is new is the attention now being paid to the relationship between money and happiness - and the number of people recognising that contentment doesn't have a price tag.

Put simply, you would expect us to get happier as we become more affluent; otherwise, why bother? But that doesn't appear to be the case - at least not to any marked degree.

Sure, being dirt poor hardly makes life a bunch of roses and everybody deserves a decent standard of living. But there comes a point at which acquiring more and more money and possessions has less and less effect on the individual's level of contentment.

The respected World Values Survey, which has mapped reported "satisfaction with life as a whole" against gross national product per head around the world, shows that once the GNP figure reaches about $US15,000 ($25,000), the increases in levels of happiness tail off markedly.

Other evidence from the US General Social Survey points to the fact that, while Americans are now three times better off than in the 1950s, they don't feel any happier. The same holds true for the Japanese, whose income has gone up by a factor of six since 1950.

Closer to home, Australians are also about three times better off than in the 1950s yet we still believe we don't have sufficient material goods.

For instance, the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index conducted in February this year asked 2000 Australians how satisfied they were with their ability to pay for the things they would like.

Not surprisingly, about 42 per cent of the poorest homes - those on less than $15,000 - reported that they wanted more of life's luxuries. But 24 per cent of households bringing in a very healthy $90,000 a year still felt they couldn't afford enough of the things they would like to have.

A Newspoll survey carried out for the Australia Institute towards the end of last year brought this lingering discontent even more sharply into focus by asking people whether they could afford to buy everything they really needed.

In all, 62 per cent said they were going without. Forty-six per cent of people in even the wealthiest households (above $70,000) still believed they were doing it tough.

Questioned more closely, however, it turns out most of this hardship is in the mind.

In a report to accompany the survey, Australia Institute executive director Clive Hamilton concludes many average families "now aspire to luxury consumption goods previously reserved for the wealthiest in society".

It is this ratcheting up of standards that creates the artificial feeling of discontent among much of the population when, says Hamilton, they are enjoying "lives of abundance".

This unhappiness is all the more remarkable when considered against the background that credit-card debt has increased four-fold during the past eight years. It's not as if we're denying ourselves life's little luxuries because we're putting money away for a rainy day - savings levels have now plunged to an all-time low.

Another recent study, Stressed Out on Four Continents, compiled by two US researchers, echoes the work of the Australia Institute. After examining figures from around the world, the researchers concluded that it was the wealthy who were truly time-stressed.

"Complaints about insufficient time come disproportionately from higher-income families," says the report. "Whether one should be concerned about these complaints or simply view them as 'yuppie kvetching' [Yiddish for whingeing] is a matter of preference."

In other words, we're working harder and longer and are way better off than our parents were, yet at the same time we're whingeing more than ever about not having enough.

Based on this evidence, something would appear to be deeply wrong.

Hamilton is fascinated by the fact that people drive themselves ever harder to earn more money and acquire more possessions when experience tells them they will be no happier as a result.

"Over the past 15 to 20 years in Australia there has been one principal assumption on which all policy has been based and that is that more economic growth, which translates into higher income for individuals, is a good thing," he says.

"We go through this cycle of hoping that the next material acquisition or the next external reward will be the thing that really makes us happy. We will always be disappointed but clearly the response of most people is, 'Oh, clearly I didn't set my goals high enough.' It's an endless cycle until people have this realisation that this doesn't make any sense."

Clinical psychologist Amanda Gordon sees many clients - particularly relatively well-off people in middle age - who are becoming frustrated by a lack of meaning in their lives.

She believes there is a growing confusion in people's minds about what money can buy and points to the well-known research of psychologist Abraham Maslow, who established a five-level hierarchy of human needs.

Only the most basic of these needs - physical safety, food and water - can be bought. Maslow contends that once we are safe and physically satisfied, more abstract requirements, such as the need to be loved and to be held in high esteem by others, take over.

"The need for self-actualisation, or fulfilment, is at the top of the hierarchy of needs," says Gordon. "That's the one that makes us different from animals. We want to have an understanding of the meaning of life and create meaning in our lives. Money can't do that for us."

Gordon says our drive to accumulate material wealth also stems from a simple desire to keep up with the Joneses.

"For many people, they, unfortunately, want the same as everyone else has," she says. "If everyone around them has one car then they want at least one car. If everyone uses public transport then they feel blessed when they have one car. If everyone has two cars then one car does not feel like enough at all."

If you have ever observed a couple of toddlers squabbling over a toy, you'll get the (ugly) picture.

But there are ways out of this peculiarly modern malaise. In fact, a virtual industry has grown up around ways to remedy it.

Perhaps two of the best known proponents of a new approach to personal finance are Americans Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, who, in their 1992 bestseller Your Money or Your Life, propose a nine-step plan to financial independence.

Their approach characterises money as "something we choose to trade our life energy for". Devotees of the couple's disciplined approach follow a path of accounting for every cent of that "life energy" then reducing spending that does not enhance their lives. Ultimately, Dominguez and Robin say, there comes a "crossover point" when income from accumulated investments exceeds monthly expenses. That is the point at which you are freed from the constraints of money and you can spend your time in more fulfilling pursuits.

The key principle in Dominguez and Robin's work is the concept of defining your personal level of what is "enough". Once that point is reached you make a conscious decision not to acquire any more capital.

It's a concept that also appears in the work of British management theorist and economist Charles Handy. In his book The Hungry Spirit, Handy espouses the "doctrine of enough".

"In most of life we can recognise 'enough,'" he says. "We know when we have had enough to eat ... when we have had enough sleep or done enough preparation. More than enough is then unnecessary and can even be counterproductive.

"Those who do not know what enough is cannot move on ... They are ... always dissatisfied, never knowing the feeling of abundance."

This concept is well recognised by the group of people loosely characterised by the term "downshifters". The phrase was coined by American sociologist Juliet Schor to describe those people who make voluntary lifestyle changes (other than retiring) that mean earning less money. Downshifting can take many forms, from the radical leap into the unknown popularised in television series such as SeaChange and Always Greener to more subtle lifestyle changes, such as rejecting a promotion that would mean working longer hours or switching to a nine-day fortnight to spend more time with your family and friends.

Hamilton has examined the phenomenon of downshifting in Australia.

"Becoming a downshifter takes courage because it involves a conscious rejection of a vast array of messages that come at us every day saying our wellbeing and social worth is to be judged by the amount of money we have," he says.

"I see it as being very subversive. [Downshifters] are removing themselves to some extent from the clutches of the marketers."

Hamilton says the downshifting movement, which has been well documented in other developed economies around the world, has quietly taken hold in Australia.

In a Newspoll survey for the Australia Institute, 23 per cent of Australian adults aged between 30 and 59 said they had downshifted to some extent during the past 10 years. These figures exclude women taking time off to have a baby, people returning to study or those starting their own business.

"I was truly astonished at the number of people who did say, 'Yes, I've made this decision to have less money,'" says Hamilton.

Hamilton even contends that if you also take into account the number of Australians who feel the urge to downshift but have not had the courage to do so, "then a majority of the Australian population comprises actual or potential downshifters".

But surely, if we all decided to stop working so hard, and take things a little more slowly the result would be a disaster for the economy. Wouldn't the whole consumer-driven edifice begin to falter?

Hamilton is unfazed by any predictions of a downshift disaster.

"Two things would happen," he says simply. "Firstly, our GDP [gross domestic product] would go down and, secondly, we would all be a lot happier."

From rat race to rainforest

But now they can pick city folk a mile off, just from their nervous energy.

"We had friends from Sydney come up and spend a couple of days with us," says Banhegyi, 45. "It was so noticeable to us how quickly they talked and how their eyes were darting around all the time and that they had to make phone calls every 30 seconds.

"Brad and I kept looking at each other as if to say, 'Are you seeing this? This is what we must have looked like when we first came up here.'"

Before the pace of the city became too much for Banhegyi and Moulton, they were working as a designer and IT manager respectively for a large textile mill. The pair lived in Bondi and pursued the archetypal successful Sydney lifestyle.

But the nagging discontent that was worrying both of them eventually became too much.

"We started getting dissatisfied with the unconnectedness of people in the big city," says Banhegyi. "It creeps into your life in every respect. You have very few friends - they are all mainly business acquaintances and we were very disillusioned about that.

"We wanted to move up here because we found the people much more friendly and open - more human."

Initially, the pair moved to Bangalow, near Byron Bay, where they rented a property and after about 18 months took the plunge and bought a house in nearby Georgica on six hectares of partly regenerated rainforest.

Banhegyi admits it took a while to adapt to having much less money coming in.

"Things up here cost a lot less but the possibility of making money is a lot less as well," she says. "When you arrive with a little bit of money and it dwindles and dwindles, it's a little bit scary."

However, their finances are now much rosier, with a hectare of land under commercial cultivation and Banhegyi's range of homemade organic pestos and dips selling well.

Ironically, Banhegyi has just signed distribution deals for her food in Brisbane and Sydney - raising the spectre of the rat race once again.

"You feel the pace creeping in again," she admits. "You have to make a concerted effort to pull in the reins."

From medicine to the media

"I liked the idea of being a doctor," says Ahmed. "I did very well in my year 12 exams but I don't think I was particularly mature then. I really didn't know what I was into - it just sounded pretty cool and university sounded like fun."

Ahmed, 28, studied for six years at Sydney University, after which he spent two years as a fledgling hospital doctor.

However, despite having done all the hard yards and with a potentially lucrative career in medicine ahead of him, Ahmed always felt his real passion was journalism.

And about two months ago, he finally took the plunge and started a much-coveted cadetship at SBS Television on a salary his former medical colleagues would regard as derisory. But he says that he has no regrets. "I've definitely made the choice because it makes me feel happier," he says. "If I wasn't doing this I'd be desperately unhappy, I think.

All the time I'd be thinking, 'I wish I was a cadet.'"

For Ahmed, the loss of income has been less of a jolt than the loss of status.

"It's hard starting over again and sometimes it's hard when people treat you like a shitty cadet," he says. "It's hard going from the prestige and glory of a doctor. But I do feel much more comfortable here - it seems to suit my personality."

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