Happiness and Soccer Cleats

I used the "can money buy you happiness" prompt (obviously)

I'm 50 words short of 650, so I'd like to know what paerts I could elaborate on.

The last part might also be quite confusing to read, if you have any suggestions for that.

Can money buy you happiness? Well, sort of. In my experience, purchasing or receiving materialistic things only makes me happy given certain conditions. The best example of this is with my long interest in soccer cleats.

For a long while now, I’ve been pretty obsessed with soccer cleats. This interest of mine started back around fifth grade. Previously, most kids had very cheap soccer shoes, as they were very young and they probably didn’t care either. However, that seemed to change quite abrupt once fifth grade hit, and I recall seeing that many of my teammates had colorful, cool-looking shoes. I became quite jealous, and asked my parents if they could get me a pair of my own. However, they refused, saying it was too expensive. And they were right; most of these cooler-looking soccer cleats were at least double the price of the generic black-and-white, off-brand cleats that I would receive any time a new season came around. It also didn’t help my case that cooler-looking shoes don’t really provide any performance benefits whatsoever. Nevertheless, my little self kept believing. Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to buy the cleats full price, I would scour various online soccer shoe sites multiple times a day, waiting for a deal so good that even my parents couldn’t turn down. This daily habit lasted for several months at least, and as I spent even more time looking at all these fancy shoes I wanted all so badly, my desire became even stronger.

Eventually, the day finally came. I found the perfect deal- a pair of $130 soccer shoes on sale for only $25. Even my dad, who hates relatively expensive “fashionable” things, grudgingly agreed to buy the shoes. I was ecstatic, and when they arrived in the mail a few days later, I couldn’t wait to try them out. They didn’t disappoint. Seeing the shoes that were once just a dream for me filled my desire perfectly, and when I went to play with them for real, I felt as if my abilities were far stronger and more precise (which was all placebo, but it still felt cool). I used those shoes nearly every single day in the summer, playing soccer in the blistering heat.
    Today, I own many of these more expensive kinds of shoes, which I’ve obtained more frequently in the last couple years, as I’ve been given more freedom to buy what I want. There have been seasons where I’ve bought three pairs of soccer cleats, even though there’s absolutely no point in having more than one. Furthermore, these shoes I’ve purchased recently were far more expensive than even that $130 pair I was so excited about all those years ago. However, the feeling I get when getting a new pair just isn’t the same at all anymore, no matter how cool-looking or expensive they are. Previously with the first cool pair of cleats, I would constantly think “wow, my shoes are so cool” or something along those lines while playing soccer. That almost never happens nowadays.

To return to the original question, was money what made me happy here? I would say no. Instead, it was my desire, which made me quite happy when I fulfilled it. The more you desire something, the more happy you will be when you receive it. And because of this; I’d actually say that being able to buy more things makes you less happy in reality. When you have money, you won’t desire things as much as they are more easily attainable. Buying too many things can actually desensitize you from your desires.