How externals are not true happiness?

[tsuki]

@Tiny Nietzsche “When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.”

[SOUL]

From your question it's apparent that you do not have money and you don't have liberation. By liberation I am talking about the freedom from and cessation of self suffering. This is different than 'happiness' because happy is just an emotional state that is transitory like sadness, anger, fearful and all the rest, they are all something we experience in passing. Liberation is something that either we have or don't have even as emotions, thoughts or physical conditions will pass through our experience of them.

I know this about you because if you had either money or liberation you wouldn't be asking the question. I have experienced having a lack of money in self suffering and in liberation, I also have experienced having money while self suffering and with liberation. I can tell you from experience that any happiness I had while still self suffering was empty of any real fulfillment because I still was self suffering. In liberation any of the passing emotions, thoughts and conditions I had didn't change the self of fulfillment in me, there is always a sense of peace.

So I hope you can understand the distinction between just being 'happy' and being liberated from self suffering. Maybe you will see the value in finding that freedom from self suffering regardless of whether you have any of those comforts in life, as someone else put it, or you don't. When we are self suffering it doesn't matter whether we have those comforts or not, we still suffer. When we have liberation it doesn't matter if we have the comforts or not, we are free from self suffering.