You provide a few meritorious points but the answer is a lot simpler than that.

M, I suppose you could live in a cardboard box...?

Ever been a bum?

Many exceedingly famous people, who have contributed immeasurably to the human condition died with very average wealth and trappings, it not paupers.

Part of what amazes me about modern life is the notion that wealth can make you happy. If anything, the whole issue of money seems to make the majority of people unhappy, and I think that a lot of "homeless" people have taken that realization to a very deep (and I acknowledge probably pathological) level, and are acting out (in what I agree is a rather childish, self-destructive, if not incompetent) way "against" the permeation of society with those shallow consumerist values.

What do you mean by cryptic? I always spill the beans as best as I can.

Scipio, most people are homeless as a result of either a.) the end results of drug use or b.) mental illness.  I've never met a homeless person (and I've met quite a few) who's sole reason for being homeless was to go against the grain by not wanting money.  The modern homeless are terribly unhappy wreched people. 

Did Jesus favor investing?  Well the parable of the talents could be interpreted as such.  It could also be argued that investing the money you have could help you devote more time to serving God.  Budha, I don't know.  They were both definitely in favor of putting more important things over monetary gain. 

I think that money has the ability to make you miserable.  I think if you're a generally happy person, it could very well make you more happy, depending on what you do with it.  If you're generally an unhappy person it will probably only make you moreso.  Having less money though can be very stressful and can make a happy person less happy.  Going to bed hungry and worried about the next meal, definitely will not help one's happiness. 

I would not argue with the point that "not enough money" is a definite source of disturbance, and psychsomatic trauma. The problem is that, what is defined/considered to be "enough" is not a fixed point. You make $30K you want $50K. Once you get to $50K you want $75K. Once you get to $75K you want $100K and so on.

As an evolutionary psychologist, I'm convinced this is a good example of a misfit between our evolved nature and our modern context.

There was nothing the least bit like "currency" throughout most of human, let alone primate natural history. A granary, let alone a bank account, may well present a human mind with a kind of goodie-bin that it was not really "designed" by natural selection to cope with effectively.

Ever since the Renaissance, burghers, kings, peasants, and everyone else have operated from the assumption that being "better off" would naturally tend to be better for people.

It is axiomatic that being so destitute that you are malnourished, do not have adequate shelter or health care or protection commensurate with the standards of your society is harmful to a person. But what about simply being impoverished? What about being simply "not well off," or "just below middling," or "only middle of the road," and so on up the gradient? Is there a linear effect? Does x units more affluence generally tend to manifest as XY units of greater well-being? The jury is still out in large part.