How much money buys happiness? Ray Dalio weighs in

The Bridgewater Associate founder has a net worth of nearly $22 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, and is among the 400 richest Americans. He and his wife, Barbara Dalio, have pledged to give away much of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

“Money’s an important consideration in terms of life, but really, if you even look at happiness, happiness past a certain level is not correlated with wealth,” the 77-year-old said on a panel at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore on Thursday. “The greatest determinant of happiness is a sense of community.”

Dalio added: “There’s a saying: ‘Success isn’t determined by how smart you are. It’s more determined by how adaptive you are.'”

Dalio founded Bridgewater in 1975, scaling it into one of the world’s largest hedge fund managers, which currently oversees about $102 billion for institutional clients.

He is also the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller “Principles,” which lays out his approach to decision-making and leadership.

Achieving success is about identifying your goals, mapping out a path, and then pursuing those goals with complete conviction, he said in a LinkedIn post in 2024.

“People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want,” Dalio wrote at the time.

“I don’t care whether you want to be a master of the universe, a couch potato, or anything else—I really don’t. Some people want to change the world, and others want to operate in simple harmony with it and savor life. Neither is better. Each of us needs to decide what we value most and choose the paths we take to achieve it.”