How much money do people need to be happy? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by withdavidli » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #186

withdavidli wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

student loan debt. there are many that graduate with $20k-$100k+ of debt. I'm frugal/cheap, got by with 30k salary in big city a year out of school was tough. Many coworkers that were more normal in spending habits were breaking even or using savings to make ends meet. At 30k salary, I was able to save $400-$500/month in Boston. It would have been near zero if I had student debt (6%+ interest). Frightening thinking b…

The obvious fix is that graduating shouldn't require someone to go into 100k+ debts. The entire cost for my graduation is probably come in under 1000€ total, 800€ will be tuition and the rest directly university related spending. (There is an additional 2k€ spending on stuff like a new laptop, software, etc. that wasn't necessarily required but made things easier).

Fixes are obvious, implementing it is the hard part. The propaganda for everyone to get a college degree is ingrained into the system. This sprouted countless for profit colleges charging obscene rates of $20k-$30k per year.

Another obvious fix would be to spread good jobs around the country so we don’t have such concentrated HCOL cities. That’s as easily done as the suggestion of lowering cost of graduation to your sugessted price point. We have an entire political party against free or near free education, which means more taxes to pay for it. I don’t fully disagree with some of their stances. Many degrees don’t provide financial value, and can be learned online or have meet ups to discuss topics. A college degree for a college degree sake is what’s happening to much of the populous.

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

#242

Post by bitexploder » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #239

bitexploder wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably not true based on what I have read. Of course some people get stuck on a hedonistic treadmill, but most people don't. I think when you can take time off from work and afford safe living and food is no longer a concern, indulge in hobbies, that is enough for most people to be happy. Studies I read say that experiences will provide longer term happiness over "stuff". You can always jump off the treadmi…

I agree except with the "most". I see far too many people driving new BMWs and Mercedes that I know on average make sub $100k salaries. I'd say most are in the treadmill, but definitely "many" are happy living within their means.

Fair enough. It is a common "problem".

Just an edit: I think it goes back to our shortening attention spans and modern conveniences quite a lot. Being bored and comfortable with it at some level is an important life skill.

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

#243

Post by drukenemo » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #199

drukenemo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The perception does not matter in as much as it is actually aligned with reality. Which I suspect it actually is if you're not one of the initially rich. Few can produce ground-breaking ideas or are lucky enough to actually earn a million dollars quickly (as opposed to stealing it).

Also, very few even try. Which I highly suspect has an awful impact on these facts.

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

#244

Post by didibus » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

LaurensBER wrote: post #161

howeyc wrote: post #17

Kind 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…

> but I really don't think 100k is the magical number that you need to become happy.

-> Most thorough study yet about the subject comes out, says 100k is the magical number.

You: Well I'll keep believing my thoughtless, data less opinion anyway.

Me: Rolls Eyes

Sure, you can be skeptic, but at this point, if you needed to take a decision based on this, you'd do better go with the 100k magic number, the odds are definitly more in its favor then your belief.

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

#245

Post by sjapkee » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

Enough.

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

#246

Post by shoo » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #212

ivanhoe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> regressive tax systems and distributive justice lead to overal higher happiness.

I suspect by "regressive tax" you mean "a tax rate that increases as the amount subject to taxation increases" . Wikipedia defines "regressive tax" to be the opposite one- where the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases.

Or you're making a fairly non-obvious and interesting claim!

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

#247

Post by tropo » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #126

Xcelerate wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen it suggested elsewhere that there is no saturation point, it's just that the relationship is logarithmic, and truncated logarithmic datasets look asymptotic. If it's truly a logarithmic relationship (rather than asymptotic), this would imply that billionaires are an order of magnitude happier than everyone else.

The base of the logarithm does matter, but assuming base 10, a billionaire with an income of say $100M dollars would be 4 times happier than someone with $10k per year income which is pretty close to the floor in the US.

log(100,000,000) is 8

log(10,000) is 4

That doesn't seem to be 4 times as happy.

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

#248

Post by asdasd23234 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

fujiters wrote: post #164

LaurensBER wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

A month in Australia for 3-4k? I want a cost breakdown for this. Say you get a deal and airfare is $500, that leaves about $100/day for the month. You could probably find a hotel at that rate, but then you're left with nothing to spend on food and activities. What am I missing? Friends and relatives who'll let you stay with them?

Exactly, AUS is an overpriced polished turd. It's called "land of plenty" for a reason... plenty of sheep happy to get ripped off. So why not milk them for their cash...

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

#249

Post by asdasd23234 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

sol_remmy wrote: post #235

ivanhoe wrote: post #210

I think the correct definition is: "When you have enough to survive and you make as much money as people you compare yourself with". That's why back in the days of socialism in Eastern Europe most of the people were quite content with being relatively poor, as long as they had the sense of social security and everyone else around them was as poor as them. On the other hand, nowadays many freelancers from poorer count…

If you get univeral health care then your light-years ahead of Americans. Even if Americans are getting paid twice as much as you, they have the risk of going bankrupt during old age because of extremely high medical expenses You have to realize how fortunate you are. Everyone in your country is taken care of. Screw the high salaries of Amercians, they're not worth it

This is only partially right, because the hungry hardly believes the one who have just eaten their lunch.

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

#250

Post by icc97 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

> Respondents across the world were asked to rate their lives on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is the “worst possible life” and 10 is the “best possible life.”

I don't think the study properly correlates to 'happiness'. As the article describes, it's more like 'satisfaction'. These are not the same [0]

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-distinction-between-happin...