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How much money do people need to be happy?

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Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#211

Post by Gustomaximus »

I feel the missing piece is income security.

If your earning $200k and sweating bullets to keep a high pressure job your not going to be as happy as the $120k job for life middle management. Also as the higher your income goes the few jobs at they bracket exist.

Whereas if the $200k job is for a person largely guaranteed a job at that pay somewhere I feel that would provide more opportunity to do things you like and increase happiness.

I've come across of a few of these studies. Has anyone separated out 'income security'?

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#212

Post by IkmoIkmo »

ivanhoe wrote: post #207
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Right, that problem just doesn't exist in the Netherlands. Basically everyone pays, I would guess, around $150 a month median for insurance, with a standard deviation of probably around $25. That covers anything…

But on the other hand taxes are significantly higher than in US, in order to finance that system. It's a trade off...

Absolutely.

The point I'm trying to make here though, which I lightly implied, is that regressive tax systems and distributive justice lead to overal higher happiness.

i.e., if there are diminishing marginal returns of happiness from money, it makes sense that Total Happiness in a country is optimised through a substantially regressive system. That's one of the interesting things about it.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#214

Post by icebraining »

monkeyfoop wrote: post #147
dgacmu wrote: post #50

Earlier 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…

socialist lies

Socialists were the first and the main critics of Wage Slavery. More recently, you have the Situationist movement, which coined the slogan "Ne Travaillez Jamais!" (Never Work!) and has a body of work criticizing this model (both in capitalist and in marxist-leninist countries).

Anyone saying you "only need 105k" is not a socialist.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#215

Post by dgacmu »

monkeyfoop wrote: post #147
dgacmu wrote: post #50

Earlier 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 did - seriously. Think about it: Single, living in Pittsburgh (reasonable CoL area). I had a cute apartment that I enjoyed coming home to, went running in gorgeous parks or cycling in lovely outlying hills almost every day, worked my butt off at a job that was challenging as hell that I enjoyed, and was putting away enough in savings that it was clear I was on a good trajectory for long-term FI. It was great.

Oh, and the better kicker: I was even happier in grad school when I was earning $24k/year. One of the happiest times of my life. That doesn't apply to everyone's grad school experience, but for me, it was awesome. Lived in a shitty apartment above central square in one of the more expensive regions of the country (hi, Cambridge, still love you but glad I don't have to deal with your housing market). My roommates and officemates at work have become life-long friends.

I will indeed tell you that having 2M in the bank has been a much smaller factor in my happiness than almost anything else, particularly the effect of the people in my life. My day-to-day happiness is much more affected by whether I got a good night's sleep, whether my children are healthy, whether my wife and I are communicating well, whether I'm healthy and able to do the things I like or whether I've once again managed to injure myself pretending I'm 24 instead of 42. :-)

(I'm not unsympathetic to the desire for FI, btw -- quite the opposite. But I've noticed that I want it primarily in a theoretical way, for the comfort in knowing I could quit, not because I actually want to quit. Yes, I'm lucky that I have .. multiple .. jobs that I absolutely love, but I've also chosen to accept a 66% paycut to work in a job I love instead of blasting to FI in industry, and I'm good with that. Sometimes it annoys me and I go do some consulting or bitcoin mining to help make up the difference. :-)

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#216

Post by benaduggan »

joncrocks wrote: post #208
cdoxsey wrote: post #185

I'm always struck by this proverb: > “Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. One thing I didn't see in the comments here, though I may've just missed…

I'm curious on how you view tithing in the context of taxation. Governments have taken upon themselves to help those in need, and taken from the population to do so. Could one not argue that a certain proportion of your income has already gone to charity? (presuming you're paying income taxes)

Part of giving to charity in addition to taxes is that I don't think the government (USA) is really handling my money properly when it comes to social programs. Private giving in the USA allows us to choose how our money is spent more specifically and usually lets you make a bigger impact in an area you care about. You should look up private giving in the USA, it's an astounding figure that is given every year voluntarily, there are tax deductions if you itemize, but at the end of the day I would save more money taking the standard deduction and not giving, so it's still a sacrifice monetarily for a lot of people here.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#217

Post by cdoxsey »

mettamage wrote: post #206
cdoxsey wrote: post #185

I'm always struck by this proverb: > “Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. One thing I didn't see in the comments here, though I may've just missed…

Maybe this comment is controversial, maybe it is not. Feel free to discuss it, since I am putting this out there as an idea with the intention to get more ego-centric people also to consider a more giving mentality. Despite my nickname I consider myself to be in this camp and do my best to get myself to an instinctive state of altruism, but it is tough. Training my rationality is easier than training my instinct. Any…

In general I would agree. I'm not catholic, but in that tradition they have the principle of subsidiarity:

> Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.

Taking care of your family is definitely a priority. I would also encourage supporting local charities and getting involved with the work too (ie volunteer days).

You're right that its not just about the money, it just happens to be a resource that a lot of us have available, and merely giving can be a good place to start.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#218

Post by JepZ »

I think money is just a something like food: you need it to some amount to have a good life and having a bit more than you need increases your happiness slightly. Having much more, doesn't change much.

There are two very important things to make you happy:

1. Reason and Prospect

2. Freedom (to execute)

Money can increase your level of Freedom (e.g. so you don't have to spend your time working for someone else). A Reason doesn't have to be the reason of your life. It just has to be something you want to accomplish (be rich; be a good parent; be admired; etc.) in combination with an idea to get there (prospect).

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#220

Post by ryandrake »

maccard wrote: post #166
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely depends heavily on region and your family situation. Using just actual dollar values makes this discussion difficult. A $150k lifestyle in the Bay Area with a spouse and 2 kids is vastly vastly different standard of living than $150k as a single dude in an apartment in a suburb of Atlanta. In the Bay Area for example, you’re not doing ANY of those things you listed making just $150k.

I've brought this up multiple times before, but even on 150k in the bay area, you're still living well. After tax, and rent at 4k/month, your remaining pay is greater than the gross income of most mid level software engineers in Europe. If you can't manage to survive on that, you're doing soemthign wrong.

Yea, it’s not bad, but you don’t have a nanny, gardener, and private school for the kids on $150k.
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