H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
Happiness is earning $60,000/year
61–70 of 116 posts
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words, ignorance is bliss...
Isn't it? What makes you happier; smoking a cigarette that makes you feel good, or avoiding it like all hell because it could cause cancer in you? Similarly, what makes you happier; eating a double big mac, large fries and substitute a large drink for a large milkshake and almost die from a foodgasm, or be told you just ate like 1000 calories and you're basically going to have to eat rice cakes for the rest of the da…
I met a chain smoking guy with lung cancer. He was not happy.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#63That 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.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#64If you make too little money, all you think about is money. If you make too much money, all you think about it money. I'd have to agree with this article. Personally, I think much of happiness comes from finding the middle ground where you don't don't have to think about money.
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.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#65Happiness as a function of wealth represents a sigmoid function. This function is different for people (you could go around and define the coefficients in some stupid analogy).
The second derivative is the most important. Where that hits its peak is where you can define "financial freedom," and where it hits its trough is where you can define "fuck you money."
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#66Americans are materially wealthy relative to most of the rest of the world. I would suspect (without having any sort of citation to support it) that, when compared to Americans, most of the people who have ever lived in any time and in any country have known nowhere near the standard of living represented by a $60K annual income in the U.S. today. If that assumption is true, and if the premise of this piece is also c…
I think the key to the $60K happiness threshold is that it represents being in the top 20% income bracket. Standard of living may be lower elsewhere, however, an individual's relative wealth (especially with respect to peers) is probably what's really relevant: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3315638/Rela...
"I think the key to the $60K happiness threshold is that it represents being in the top 20% income bracket."
And another caveat (financially), to those who live in regions where the housing bubble has not yet popped, is: did you buy a house before the bubble started?
In most of Canada (and Australia and a few other places) where the bubble is still thriving, the #1 most important financial issue for 95+% of people is, did you own a house before ~2001. If not, you can be in the top 10% of earners, and you can only "afford" to buy a house equivalent to those in the top 30-40% who got in pre-2001.
In major cities in Canada, $500k will get you an "ok" cookie cutter in the suburbs, if you're lucky. In the US, where the bubble has burst, $500k will, in most places, get you what seems like a mansion.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#67That 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.
What kind of work were you in? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#68This article missed half the point and doesn't quite capture what was said in the TED talk. Earning above $60,000 a year doesn't affect the happiness of the experiencing self. But as Kahneman goes on to say, it certainly affects the happiness of the remembering self. So a lot of money wont affect how happy you are at a particular moment, but it does affect how happy you are with your life as a whole.
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#69That 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?
Re: Happiness is earning $60,000/year
#70H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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.