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Researchers Say Happiness Costs $75K
SpuriousLogic writes "Does happiness rise with income? In one of the more scientific attempts to answer that question, researchers from Princeton have put a price on happiness. It's about $75,000 in income a year. They found that not having enough money definitely causes emotional pain and unhappiness. But, after reaching an income of about $75,000 per year, money can't buy happiness. More money can, however, help people view their lives as successful or better. The study found that people's evaluations of their lives improved steadily with annual income. But the quality of their everyday experiences — their feelings — did not improve above an income of $75,000 a year. As income decreased from $75,000, people reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness, as well as stress. The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one."
The amount of money that you require to be "happy" depends on where you live and what the lifestyles of the people around you are.
Where you live sets the baseline cost of living, and visible lifestyles determine your expectations.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
What I have observed is that a happy income is double your present income. I have seen this with people earning less than 20k and more than a million.
75K would be about double the national average.
Also this 75k number would completely depend on where you are. 75K is poverty in NYC while in most Podunks 75K would make you near royalty.
Have you ever even earned that amount or are you just pulling things out of your ass?
I don't know how you put a $ figure on it. For me, it was lack of plastic debt. I have one CC and it it paid off weekly, yeah, weekly. My main debt is my house, followed by a car; whose sale price was less than 30% my gross. I do my best to keep monthlies to a minimum, meaning paid for cell plan, my internet, and my TV.
I set aside multiple savings accounts with automatic $50 deductions or more, after a while you lose track of them until tax time but the its nice to know you have money out there. So besides paying down debt create an automatic deposit into a savings account, preferably not at the same back your checking is at. Then just file it away in the back of your mind. Never touch it unless you lost all other means of having money for shelter and food.
You can be debt free on 20K if you live right. That is where most people get tripped up. They refuse to live within their means and the blame others (if not society). I can't count the number of people I work with who have notes or leases on cars that cost half it not more than half their gross pay. Throw in $100 a month for Smart phone plans; as in many who have one are not; and its easy to see why people aren't happy, they are too busy going broke to impress people, people who generally don't care. I certainly don't care what car you park in the lot, let alone I doubt anyone seeing your shiny 5 series/E-class/A6 really gives a flip when they likely will pass another dozen of the same that day.
Don't live to impress others with material wealth.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one. Our wealthy ruling elite can insulate from all the social pathologies they promote. They think the middle and lower classes can weather the storms as easily as they can, so those social pathologies must not be bad. But if you live in the wreckage, you shake your fist at our ruling elite, and call down a curse on them.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Which is mostly their fault. I dislike taxes as much as anyone else, and I'm not usre our current system is exactly fair ... but the HOA fees "of living on the upper east side or UWS," the nanny, and the elite day care (and the elite private elementary schools that are $15k/yr or whatever, etc) are their choice.
Also, the five $60k+ cars eat into their income, too.
I'm glad we have a free country where people can make their own decisions, but being rich does not mean you necessarily make good money decisions. Seems like a lot of rich people have ended up poor because they didn't know how to manage their own riches and they spent it all, gambled it, invested it stupidly, or whatever.
This got rated up to 4? People, please apply for jobs at the CIA, you pass the paranoia qualification.
Here's a helpful tip when talking to friends who maybe don't have the same number of digits in their bank account balances: shut the fuck up and do not discuss your income. Holy shit, how hard is it. I've talked with friends about their favorite sexual positions with their wives, but talking about income? Absolutely fucking off limits.
By the way, life gets better once you finally graduate high school. Just thought I'd throw out some advice which is relevant to you.
Man, you must know mostly well-off people! Most families I know are not making $75k, and no single people I know are making that much, and nobody feels anything close to poor. A household income of $75k is, according to some census stats, 73rd percentile: i.e. 27% of people make more, and 73% make less. If being in the richest 27% of Americans makes you feel poor, you must have a pretty inflated notion of "middle class"...
I personally make around $35k as a young single person with no debt, and feel rich, fwiw. I can't even spend it all--- after $1k/month on rent for a nice apt near the beach, and another $1k on food/car/entertainment, my expenses are pretty much covered.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I hate to break the news to ya AC, but guess what the tax rate on the 1%ers was during the boom years, aka 40s-60s? Hint, try 90%. You see you don't really need things like Glass Stegall when you take the pure unadulterated greed out of the situation. Now put Reagan lowering that to 25%, add in removing Glass Stegall and voila? One bubble after another. Look at how many bubbles we had from the end of the depression to Reagan, then look at how many after. Greed kills AC, it kills markets dead.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Are you disabled? Is there anything legitimately keeping you from getting a job? If not, what makes you think you have the right to live off of everyone's taxes?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Remember, taking back what was stolen from you is not stealing.
With that attitude, you can justify any action. Why steal it back? Why not just arrest these fat cats and lock them in prison? We could call our local sheriff's department and have them lock up any CEO or entrepreneur that makes... what? over 250K/yr? That should be fair, right. After all, anyone who is wealthy stole the money anyway, right? No one making that much money could have actually earned through sacrifice, hard work, risk taking and brilliant thinking.
Of course, we could take seize all their assets and redistribute them to whoever they stole it from. Just curious though, who would get Michael Dell's assets? Seems to me that the money Dell has made came from people who willingly purchased products and services that Dell provides. Stealing is taking stuff away from people against their will. Who did Dell steal from? Other than the obvious thieves, Enron execs, Bernie Madhoff, etc, who have the founders of the companies that make stuff we all use, like iPods, software, dishwashers stolen from? How do we get the money back to the victims if we don't know who they are?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The problem is that while the President has a majority in Congress on paper, reality is much different. It would be a lot more obvious that he hasn't got a majority were we under a Parliamentary system. ...
The only thing that could realistically screw it up for them is if the Tea party steals too many votes or the American people collectively grow a spine.
Wow. I'm actually a bit dismayed this post got modded insightful. All you're doing is calling a large portion of the population spineless and brainless for having a different opinion than yourself.
I think it's a perfectly valid point of view to believe a government should protect an environment where it's most productive members are enabled to enrich themselves and society as a whole. I also think it's perfectly valid to believe a government's largest expenditures should not be income transfer programs. I also think it's quite realistic to expect to strike a balance where society's poorest members can be helped in times of need without bankrupting the entire nation.
It amazes me how so-called "open minded" people can be so intolerant of differing opinions.
I like teamwork. It's easier to assign blame that way.
shut the fuck up and do not discuss your income
Soooo... what you're saying is that you agree with him? Can't trust your friends eh?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I would add the number of people you accept to care for can go up with increased income. When I passed an amount I felt secure with I accepted increased responsibility for helping parents and siblings. That extra load seems to be a wash emotionally: there is some extra worry balanced by increased happiness at being able to help.
FWIW, if you are helping parents, siblings, children, relatives, friends, or just anyone in general I have a three tips for you.
1) Every loan you make has a good possibility of becoming a "gift" if they can't or won't pay you back. Don't loan more than you would be able to give someone -- especially without collateral or a legally binding agreement. If someone's inability to payback a loan would cause you financial hardship or would terminate your relationship with them, you are better off not giving them the money.
2) Don't help out to easily or too often. People need to develop self-reliance and if you help out anytime there is a minor issue you will actually be hurting the person in the long run by taking away their responsibility for themselves.
3) Don't let someone just stay on your "couch" for a week unless you are willing to basically take care of someone for an unspecified amount of time while they stay in your house without contributing and consume your food and other resources. Almost all "surprise guest" situations end up as "unhappily mooching roommate" until they are kicked out.
I also think it's perfectly valid to believe a government's largest expenditures should not be income transfer programs.
In a very real sense, all government expenditures are income transfer payments.
Are you disabled? Is there anything legitimately keeping you from getting a job? If not, what makes you think you have the right to live off of everyone's taxes?
It's simple. Say he does get a job selling drugs or as a prostitute, your tax dollars would then pay the vice cop who would arrest him, the judge who would handle the trial, his lawyer, the prosecutor, and then you the juror would have to waste your time hearing the case and making a decision.
It seems cheaper to just pay for SSI, the alternatives if we want there to be an alternative is to have full employment and how would you want to guarantee that everyone who wants a job can have one? It's not as simple of a problem of "But my tax dollars pay for these people to live for free!", in reality your tax dollars go to waste on a lot more unimportant stuff than this, and the tax dollars you spend on this lowers the crime rate and actually saves you money long term, unless you want the alternative where we legalize all the stuff that is currently illegal for cosmetic concerns, like drugs, prostitution, gambling and stuff of this sort.
Me and my family (Wife and three kids) live quite comfortably on an AGI of about 48k. We have no debt but our mortgage; and both our vehicles are paid for. We paid cash for both of them, my truck was brand new off the lot.
Do we have a million toys? The latest gadgets and gizmo's? No, but we are comfortable, my wife teases me about having as many computers as we do, our kids watch far more TV than we do, and PBSkids looks just fine on a non HD screen. On the other hand we are able to help others in need and have a good sized emergency fund, and a stable of investments.
How did we do it? Well first off, when we bought our house we didn't look to get the biggest McMansion in town stretching out our income to the absolute maximum we could afford, we found something that fit our needs and had room to grow our family within our plans. Oh, and my wife (an Attorney by education and pre-marriage employment) is by her choice a stay at home mom. We do all this on one income.
About 10 years ago someone told me I'd need a minimum of 50k a year to comfortably raise a family. I'm still not quite to that point but doing fine. Would I like more? Sure, but we are comfortable, satisfied and happy.
Your comprehension of what is needed is way off.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
*Disclaimer* I know I'll get modded to oblivion for this, but I feel it needs to be said.
Considering the fact that it appears to be only say 1% of lawsuits are actually justified and lawyers charge an insane amount (despite the acknowledged over supply of lawyers), I think I speak for most of society when I say I don't feel sorry for you in the slightest.
The overwhelming majority of lawyers go into it because they want to make a lot of money by financially raping people who've done nothing wrong. There's a reason most people despise lawyers and refer to them as things like leeches and bloodsuckers.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
And this is why American workers get shafted so hard. Income is even more off-limits for discussion than religion (and that's saying a lot!), so you never realize that the guy working in the office next to your cubical makes ten times your salary, despite only providing maybe one or two times your value to the company (if that).
Social mores like "never discuss your income" strictly benefit the rich.
Took me 11 years. At times I went 40 hours without sleep and worked 55 hours and then did over 60 hours of homework in the same week.
The changes it made to me as a person (not the education) were worth every minute.
But it cost me very little financially (probably under $14,000) and I graduated debt free. It was kind of fun until year 8. Then I realized I still had 54ish hours to go out of a 130 hour degree (and 38 hours sunk on a change of majors).
College for who it makes you as a person- worth it. For the income- not worth it any more.
So choose a small inexpensive college- go 4 years. Graduate with little debt.
Unless you have awesome connections.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How about we stop talking about things as "rights" which require "taking" from someone else something of value to give to someone else?
Health Care is NOT a right. Rights don't depend on other people, they are self evident (exist on their own).
IF you want to call it something, lets call it what it is, a privilege that is afforded us because we are wealthy, educated and technically advanced enough.
BTW, all three of those things are subject to change, and are changing even as we speak, because we have continued to make privileges into rights, and killing our ability to compete against countries that have no such illusions.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So if this is to be believed, then with a current world population of 6,697,254,041 (*75,000)
It would cost 502,294,053,075,000 per year
so 500 Trillion dollars a year for EVERYone to be happy.
Current world gdp is 61 Trillion.
My Utopian dream bubble has been popped.