Back in the 1970s, my father invested in rubber and shares. He lost heavily.

I remember those days with a bit of a shudder.

There was no such thing as Teletext or the Internet, of course, and he and other investors relied on the radio to get their updates on how the markets fared.

Every weekday at about 6.30pm, the radio at home would be switched on and we would all have to keep quiet so as not to disturb him.

My father would sit in his room in the gathering twilight. Pen in hand and with the day's newspapers turned to the stock market page in front of him, he'd listen intently as the announcer read out the day's share and commodity prices.

He wasn't a savvy investor and the mood at home after the market report was invariably glum. I remember the worry on his face.

He ran a landscaping business and it must have been agonising for him to see his hard-earned money disappear like that.

He got his fingers burnt badly enough to stop playing the market for good after a couple of years. Thank heavens for that.

I thought of my father last week when The Sunday Times ran a story about a couple in their 60s who are facing the spectre of losing their entire life savings in the stock market.

The 65-year-old retired airline technician and his 68-year-old wife, a retired nurse, had ploughed $500,000 into 18 stocks. Given the dire state of the market, they are currently looking at a $450,000 loss. He has less than $20,000 in his savings account.

The couple live in a three-room flat in Toa Payoh and aren't exactly in the pink of health - he has diabetes and she has diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Their two grown children have their own families to look after.

'If the share prices don't pick up soon, we both will have a difficult life,' said the frazzled man.

What a situation to be in.

Money, money, money. That's all we've been talking about since American investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust in September, triggering a global financial crisis that is still being played out.

Investors have found themselves holding on to now-worthless structured products, people have lost millions of dollars in the stock market, and fear of retrenchments is in the air.

No one has been spared. Even if you don't have a Lehman-linked product that is now worth zero, your livelihood would have been hard hit by the general downturn.

We need money to survive - there's no question about that, just ask the couple from Toa Payoh - but the thing about money is that it brings out the worst in people.

Take the ongoing saga over the Lehman-linked DBS High Notes 5 and Minibonds.

How many of the investors now crying foul about 'mis-selling' were genuinely mis-sold, I wonder, and how many are riding on the we-were-wronged bandwagon because they don't have the courage - and honesty - to admit that they had bought the products knowingly and that they had simply made a bad investment?

Money - especially the sudden presence or the sudden lack of it in one's life - has the power to change the way a person behaves.

The effect can be positive, like when you become a kinder person because of your good fortune, but it is usually negative.

The most striking aspect of money is that it breeds envy.

People have this belief that there is a limited supply of money floating around, so when we learn that someone has come into money, we can't help but feel that it will result in there being less left for us.

Because so many of the things money can buy are tangible and tied to the desirous improvement of one's material well-being (big house, flashy car, nice watch), we feel we are losing out and that the other person is one up on us, hence the emergence of the green-eyed monster.

Money causes people to act in strange ways. Some become sycophantic towards the wealthy, others hate the rich.

Money is often the cause of relationships being broken. Who doesn't know of siblings who have become enemies because of inheritance disputes or friends who have fallen out over dollars and cents.

I hate to admit it, but two of my relationships ended because of money disagreements - one was too much of a tightwad and the other an incorrigible spendthrift.

But just as money is the root of much evil, so too is the lack of it.

Poverty can drive you to desperate deeds. As one wag put it, the only way not to think about money too much is when one has a great deal of it.

Still, for what it's worth, studies have also found that money has a limited ability to make you happy.

Forbes magazine reported that the correlation between wealth and happiness is small, accounting for about 1 per cent of the happiness reported by people answering surveys.

Researchers claim that virtually the same level of happiness has been measured between those mega-rich folks on the Forbes 400 list and Africa's Masai herdsman, who live in dung huts.

And while people who win lotteries do indeed feel euphoric, they return to their previous level of happiness after a few years. The brain becomes conditioned to the positive feelings and they soon wear off.

Like everyone else, I wish I had more money. I sympathise with people who gamble with their money in their quest for a better life for themselves and their families. I'm often tempted to do so myself.

It's sad and frightening to be in a position like the Toa Payoh couple. For them, money is literally a matter of life and death.

But what I've also realised is that, should you be lucky not to be in financial straits but are doing just okay money-wise, then sit tight. Don't let the pursuit of money rule your life.

This sounds trite, I know, but there are things that money cannot buy.

When I look back at the happiest moments of my life, they have nothing to do with the possession of material goods.

Diamonds, designer clothes and other fancy trappings of daily living can bring you satisfaction and feelings of self-congratulation, but these sentiments will pass, they really will.

What brings deeper and more lasting happiness are the intangibles.

In my book, top on the list is the knowledge that you are loved and cared for by people whom you love and care for too.

No amount of money can buy you love, loyalty, understanding, tenderness and respect. You can't pay someone to feel all these things for you.

But if the person whom you want all this from gives you that, consider your life rich, very rich.

As Oscar Wilde said, ordinary riches can be stolen from a man, real riches cannot. In the treasury house of your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

In these financially woeful times when we rue the loss of material possessions, perhaps we can take some comfort in those words.

sumiko@sph.com.sg

Sumiko Tan's column will resume in January next year.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 2, 2008.