I believe that there are plenty of statistics that shows how suddenly acquiring a large sum of money on the long term doesn't make you a) richer; b) happier. Of course, to everyone I say this, I hear the reply "I would know how to make myself happy", but obviously this can't be true for everyone. In this case, I prefer to believe to be the average guy...
I think the current consensus is that in fact having more money does make you happier.[1] As for richer, I can look at how I've lived in the past and observe that I've been pretty effective at being frugal and not spending money just because I have it. Of course it's possible that a sudden cash infusion 10 years ago would have broken all those good habits, but I don't see any obvious reason to believe it.
[1] See e.g. this (though I'd be a bit cautious given where it's being reported) and the underlying research.
[EDITED to fix a formatting glitch.]
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.