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Happiness is earning $60,000/year

mymoneyblog.com

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Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#101

Post by neilc »

barrkel wrote: post #89
neilc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living off the dole is filled with stress. If you had a reliable, steady income and the health to enjoy it, I think most people would be much happier than they are working a typical job. Living off the dole is also not something considered socially respectable, whereas early retirement is widely accepted.

What I'm objecting to is this concept which seems to exist in this thread that work is a drudge, and being relieved from it is a net positive. I think it's simply not true. Quite apart from enjoying your work, there's the social aspect, it gets you out of the house, gives you a reason to get up in the morning, you incrementally work towards longer-term goals, etc. Retirement in leisure has none of these things, and I…

I think the obligation to work in exchange for pay that is the problem. If you're in the position where you can freely choose what to work on, I just think you'd be a lot happier than if your choice is dictated by your employer. That is a lot of the freedom that you get as an academic (or nominally as a founder). As it happens, I'd expect that if I was retired I'd spend a lot of time doing similar stuff to what I do now -- but being able to choose how to spend your time would be a major benefit.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#102

Post by JustinSeriously »

I think the key take-away is this:

    But the real trick, Kahneman said, is to spend time with people you like.
I've looked at my history of happiness, and I've found very little correlation between my salary and happiness, mostly just a short term happiness bump when I first get a raise. On the other hand, the correlation between nearness of good friends and my happiness stands clearly.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj »

barrkel wrote: post #89
neilc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living off the dole is filled with stress. If you had a reliable, steady income and the health to enjoy it, I think most people would be much happier than they are working a typical job. Living off the dole is also not something considered socially respectable, whereas early retirement is widely accepted.

What I'm objecting to is this concept which seems to exist in this thread that work is a drudge, and being relieved from it is a net positive. I think it's simply not true. Quite apart from enjoying your work, there's the social aspect, it gets you out of the house, gives you a reason to get up in the morning, you incrementally work towards longer-term goals, etc. Retirement in leisure has none of these things, and I…

>I believe a man who retires at 70 will be happier than one who retires at 50, and he'll live longer too (leaving aside those who die between 50 and 70).

You don't work in Calcutta cleaning sewer pipes wearing nothing but a loin-cloth do you.

Not everyone enjoys there work but we all have to eat.

I'm in my 30s, if I could retire now I would - then I could do things I enjoy, not sit at home doing nothing but be active in ways in which it's not easy to acquire financial support. First up would be a course in forestry, being a school governor, spending more time doing voluntary youth work, getting fit again...

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#104

Post by synnik »

tsally wrote: post #69
synnik wrote: post #63

That sounds about right. From about 1999-2004, I didn't negotiate salaries. I told potential employers that I wanted exactly 60K. The question was how many hours a week I would have to work to earn it. The winner was 22 hours. I only changed this tactic when I had kids. Because that changes everything.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm really interested in the type of work that you did and your negotiating process. Was it software development? What type of companies did you work with?

Yes, it is software development. It actually started when I was working at IBM. I asked if I could go part-time, and they said yes, offering 57K for 30 hours a week.

I was also talking to some startups, and told them about the offer I had, asking them to beat it by offering 60K for less hours. One of them agreed, and I worked for them for 2 years.

I followed that model for a few more years, working mostly with service-based companies who were willing to bill me out for part-time work.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#105

Post by synnik »

yason wrote: post #93
synnik wrote: post #63

That sounds about right. From about 1999-2004, I didn't negotiate salaries. I told potential employers that I wanted exactly 60K. The question was how many hours a week I would have to work to earn it. The winner was 22 hours. I only changed this tactic when I had kids. Because that changes everything.

Why did you change it because you had kids?

Because it is one thing to limit the finances when I am single... But after getting married and having kids, I am no longer just limiting myself -- I am restricting the resources that I can offer the children.

I could not afford private schools or college, I would need to watch my money on clothes and food, and we would have to live in a smaller home.

All of this could still be OK. They aren't even old enough for those things to be issues yet. But it is difficult to ramp up a stable income overnight, so I decided to go back to trying to maximize my income, to give us more choices in the future, as the kids grow up.

And we may still do public school or homeschooling, and may still live to the 60K budget. Time will tell, but I think having the choices available to us is wise.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#107

Post by justinchen »

xbryanx wrote: post #100

Hey tech brainiacs. Read this, and then come work at one of the many non-profit organizations starving for your intelligence, but unable to attract you because of ridiculous salary imbalances. We'd love to have you...and 60k is about all we'll ever be able to afford...and you'll be happy.

I think a recruiting campaign centered on that point might actually be effective. I'd like to see some non-profits use it.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#108

Post by nostrademons »

roel_v wrote: post #91
mistermann wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, maybe I didn't express that properly, I AM bitter! I'm bitter that my government is using my tax dollars to play with interest rates allowing a real estate bubble to exist in the first place. In a normal market, one should be able to reasonable purchase a home based on local wages. Since central bankers have decided to counteract the actions of the normal business cycle, I am now stuck in a 10-20 year battle whil…

Upvoted by accident :( "In a normal market, one should be able to reasonable purchase a home based on local wages." Says who? You're not even making the point of the actual existence of a bubble believable, and my cursory search shows that most people don't agree with your claims. And that's not even mentioning that there is no reason ever that it "should be easy". You can borrow at a fixed rate for 5% FFS! In the 80…

That's why home prices are so inflated.

Most people buy homes with a mortgage, where the number they look at is "can I afford the monthly payment?" When interest rates are high, the same monthly payment gets you a much smaller mortgage, which means there's less money to buy a house, which means that house prices come down accordingly.

It ends up being pretty close to a zero-sum game: house prices go up when mortgage rates go down, and house prices go down when mortgage rates go up.

The problem with the recent financial innovation has been that it prices fiscally responsible people out of the market. So when you can get a zero-money down option ARM without proof of income, suddenly people who never could've gotten a mortgage have a lot of money to spend on houses. The price of a house rises accordingly, and soon only people who are willing to take out zero-money-down option ARMs can afford them. Fiscally prudent people who're looking for a 30-year-fixed, 20% down mortgage see that homes are overpriced, and so they sit on the sidelines and rent.

It's Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good". It's why we got such a housing bubble in the U.S: it wasn't that consumers were individually stupid, it's that they were responding rationally to economic incentives, and those incentives led to a market where only people who had no possible way of paying back their loans were buying houses. One of my coworkers bought a house in 2006: he said that the loan officer told them that basically all loans that they wrote were now interest-only. Small wonder, considering that everyone who was looking to put down 20% found that homes were too expensive for them to afford.

Luckily, this process works in reverse, too. Now that the bubble's bursting, the only people who can get loans are the ones able to put significant money down. Good things come to those who wait.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#109

Post by frankus »

ellyagg wrote: post #71
frankus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Frank has a book (Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class) that makes a convincing case that that effect does in fact exist. He goes on to argue for a progressive consumption tax, which is fairly convincing depending on your politics.

"[D]epending on your politics", indeed. It's not self-evident that everyone should be equally happy. It's not even self-evident that happiness should be the overriding concern of our existence. I've sacrificed my happiness many times in the name of other principles, especially truth. And, it wasn't "sacrifice temporarily for greater happiness later" or any other such rationalization.

I agree, but that everyone should be equally happy is not what the book argues at all.

Frank's argument boils down to the fact that a lot of categories of consumption are zero-sum games, and that if played with lower stakes people could afford more important things with the money they save.

For instance, if every SUV owner has to have 20-inch wheels to appear wealthy, SUV owners aren't as a whole are worse off than if 18-inch wheels were considered a sign of wealth and they all had health insurance.

So the argument is that there are a lot of consumption arms races in the economy where some sort of coordinated de-escalation would benefit all of the players.

The coordination he proposes is a progressive consumption tax imposed by the government, which I would agree is probably superior to the current progressive income tax.

Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

#110

Post by GFischer »

Aetius wrote: post #64
hugh3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget who it was who said that money is like sex: you only think about it when you're not getting enough of it, and if you are you find something more interesting to think about. I also forget whether this was supposed to be a commentary on money or a commentary on sex. In any case, if you're getting enough of both you're probably pretty happy.

Felix Dennis http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece

Heh... some pearls of wisdom from that article "If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it - it’s cheaper in the long run."

And, far more relevant to this discussion: "Becoming rich does not guarantee happiness. In fact, it is almost certain to impose the opposite condition - if not from the stresses and strains of protecting it, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival. "

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