Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bread is a synonym for dough in that meaning
dough is colloquialism for money, which makes the quote funnier due to the double entendre.
so is bread.
How much money do people need to be happy?
171–180 of 273 posts
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say this, but you offer no evidence to contradict the study, which is based on ... evidence that you're wrong. But think about it: A single person making $105k is just touching the top 10% of income earners in the US: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ Having spent some time in about that bracket in an average cost-of-living area (earned slightly more, but I'd spent the previous few years being a bro…
You felt rich at 105k? We're talking about human happiness, the capacity for love, freedom, and self actualization. Happiness. We're not talking about buying overpriced liabilities such as fancy cars, furniture and clothes. I make over 150k and it's awful working 160 hours a month. Think about why this study is messed up: Wage earners spend the Best part of day typically indoors, taking orders from another person. Wa…
I'm totally with you here. But we need to realize very feel people perceive/realize the world under these terms. Most people feel like they are destined for a job their entire lives and that extreme wealth are for the few lucky/extraordinary other ones. Even in an YC forum.
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#173Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say this, but you offer no evidence to contradict the study, which is based on ... evidence that you're wrong. But think about it: A single person making $105k is just touching the top 10% of income earners in the US: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ Having spent some time in about that bracket in an average cost-of-living area (earned slightly more, but I'd spent the previous few years being a bro…
You felt rich at 105k? We're talking about human happiness, the capacity for love, freedom, and self actualization. Happiness. We're not talking about buying overpriced liabilities such as fancy cars, furniture and clothes. I make over 150k and it's awful working 160 hours a month. Think about why this study is messed up: Wage earners spend the Best part of day typically indoors, taking orders from another person. Wa…
I agree this study is BS. They have no one in their data who has $5 million+ in the bank and has F* you money... because those people are supposedly outliers.
I would be an order of magnitude happier if I could work on my own projects instead of working for someone else. There's a reason people do side-hustles and punish themselves trying to get something going outside of their normal $100k salary... it's for the hope of having true financial freedom. The study is correct that $100k vs $150k doesn't make much difference at all... but if I had $1 million in a bank it would be a huge difference.
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#175Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#176[deleted]
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#177Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you're set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to "move the needle" so to speak. You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn't change any of these obligations, or change…
> Of course, stepping from 40K to 100K in salary is practically life altering. Unless you absolutely suck at budgets you can easily get out of debt and start having real vacations. You can afford hobbies, etc. I live in the Netherlands where 40K is quite a reasonable income. I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal? People here in general don…
> I live in the Netherlands where 40K is quite a reasonable income. I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal?
What I have found is that the majority of "happiness from money" comes from the financial security, not actually spending the money. The reduction in stress going from a chronically broke PhD student to having 5 years of living expenses in savings is huge.
It's the knowledge that you can immediately solve almost every problem that pops up with a bit of money, and figure out the details later. Missed your flight? Book another one. Car trouble? Call assistance and take an uber. Lost your job? Take a short vacation and then hit up your network on LinkedIn.
And in most countries in Europe, you can feel secure with a lot less in income/savings than in the US. You don't need to worry about what your health insurance does not cover, probably don't have any student loan debt - and probably don't need to worry about a college fund for kids, can commute by public transport in cities, have better unemployment protections, and so on.
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#178Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you're set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to "move the needle" so to speak. You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn't change any of these obligations, or change…
> Of course, stepping from 40K to 100K in salary is practically life altering. Unless you absolutely suck at budgets you can easily get out of debt and start having real vacations. You can afford hobbies, etc. I live in the Netherlands where 40K is quite a reasonable income. I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal? People here in general don…
I don't know how health care works anywhere else, but health expenses can range from $250 for a standard checkup, which I just got (note: it's supposed to be covered for free, but apparently insurance companies are now rejecting claims willy nilly in order to save money) to $10,000 for delivering a baby, to astronomical numbers for anything else.
It really leads to a persistent feeling of danger, so yes, making 100k instead of 40k could literally save your life, or at least keep you from being an indebted loan shark victim for the rest of your life.
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#179Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you're set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to "move the needle" so to speak. You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn't change any of these obligations, or change…
> Of course, stepping from 40K to 100K in salary is practically life altering. Unless you absolutely suck at budgets you can easily get out of debt and start having real vacations. You can afford hobbies, etc. I live in the Netherlands where 40K is quite a reasonable income. I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal? People here in general don…
It's probably important to note the Netherlands has a high degree of decommodification (i.e. a lot of state provisions), with the US having some of the lowest in the developed world.
The result of that is that distributive justice is a lot stronger, and the impact of a regressive tax system is magnified. A median salary in the US might generate unsatisfactory, whereas in the Netherlands even a below-median salary has quite good outcomes because of this.
For example, the median healthcare insurance expenditure in the Netherlands is about $1.5k a year, and healthcare outcomes are quite good. Tuition fees in university for undergrad and graduate degrees are about $2.5k a year across the board, with a tiny fraction of students being the exception like dental or piloting schools. Student loans are currently at 0% and set to go to 1% next year. Tuition-waving subsidies exist for children of poor parents. Childcare is heavily subsidised. Traffic policy and public infrastructure is such that a car is not necessary, and employers tend to reimburse all public transportation costs for most employees. Lastly, it just feels like culturally the Netherlands is slightly more sensible with its consumerism and interest in toys. Most seems to be spent on things with higher lifetime values, meaning the effective value of money seems to do a bit better, but that's just intuition from anecdotes.
In short, when you get your after-tax income, you tend to be able to spend a very large portion of it on things you don't really need, but just enjoy. Nice food, vacations, hobbies. There just isn't an need for a $100k salary for your kids to go to a nice school, have childcare or a good insurance, or a car to get your family places. Nor do you need $100k to cover interest payments + principal on 6% student debt of $100k.
That having been said, your numbers on Asian/Australian vacations definitely cater to a certain tourist. I've done a month in Asia on 1k, but I was 19. Similarly I could do 3k in Australia, but I'd be a certain kind of vacation. You AirBnb and eat some simple Asian takeaway like food and travel by bus. That's not everyones idea of a holiday. It's a different vacation from getting taxis to hotels and eating in restaurants.
Re: How much money do people need to be happy?
#180Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you're set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to "move the needle" so to speak. You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn't change any of these obligations, or change…
> Of course, stepping from 40K to 100K in salary is practically life altering. Unless you absolutely suck at budgets you can easily get out of debt and start having real vacations. You can afford hobbies, etc. I live in the Netherlands where 40K is quite a reasonable income. I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal? People here in general don…
Those numbers are not true at all if you have family, or even 2 people where one earns little.
Vacation in Australia? For 4 people it's impossible to spend less than 5000 euro on just flight tickets alone. Expect to spend another 1500/week if you do it very, very frugally. And that's exactly what you should do - travel half around the world to have a mediocre vacation just to save a bit of cash on site.
To explain - I am backpacker, will never travel any other way (family or not), avoid any luxury on purpose (reduces the intensity of whole experience) and surviving with 500 USD/month in India for months was a breeze for me. But your numbers are just plainly wrong. You need tons of cash if you want to travel to exotic places, even really cheap ones (ie remote Indonesia).
Travelling properly is great but needs quite a lot of cash, unless you can afford to spend months doing it every year, which is unrealistic for most of us. Plus many of us prefer to have 3-4 shorter vacations per year, but still travel quite far and have intense experiences.
Then you have sports - I am not into snobbish activities, but I also don't chose sport based on price of equipment. Paragliding? More than 3000 euro for a started pack of used equipment (new would be more like 4k). Ski alpinism? Maybe 2500 euro for skis, boots, avalanche airbag. Not even going into clothing. And those numbers are for a single person.
Oh, and you want to support your parents because they live in a EU country where 500 eur is quite OK salary? You need cash.
You want to save for the pension, create a cushion for rainy days, retire early, invest, whatever? You got it, you need cash, the more the better. I have not met a single person who wouldn't like to do that if they could.
Simple, sad fact is, exciting life in many cases costs quite a bit. One should optimize since plenty of things can be experienced almost for free, but this strategy will get you only that far. If you are happy with little, great for you. I have certain plans and expectations from life, and they require cash, tons of it.