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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."
1. Money cannot buy happiness, it can buy security.
2. When your loved ones are secure you are less stressed.
3. When you are less stressed you can focus more on being happy.
How much money you need is actually determined by how many people you have to care for. If you don't have any children, or a spouse, $75,000 is about right. If you have children, a wife, and a big family, $75,000 is a drop in the bucket and you'd probably need twice that much to provide for children and take care of parents or grand parents into old age.
I don't know about you but thats my formula. The amount is determined by the amount of people I have to provide security for and the overall security expense, along with whatever the expense is for my personal wellbeing. It's ultimately about people, unless you're a greedy anti-social.
I recently left a job where I was making under $75,000 and took a job where I am now making over $75,000. In the first case I was slightly below, and in the latter I am slightly above. In my previous job I had a lot of slack. I took the train to work. I worked pretty much whatever hours I felt like. I did not have very many responsibilities. In my current job I have less slack, I am working longer hours and I have significantly more responsibility.
In the previous job, my debt was not shrinking as quickly as I wanted it to. None the less I wasn't scratching out a subsistance living while trying to pare it down. I was going out to eat with my girlfriend a lot and making random purchases when I wanted things (PS3, HDTV, etc.) I was driving a beater car, but since I was taking the train, it didn't matter so much. In my new job, my debt is falling quickly and I'm driving a much newer car. I am still going out to eat a lot, but having obtained most of the crap that I wanted, I have extra money to pay down debt.
All in all, I'm not sure that I am any happer >$75,000 than I was at $75,000. I do know that I have less time to practice tai chi and kung fu and that irks me. I have a lot more responsibility, but I saw that coming. I'm now the guy we all read about with his Blackberry going off at all hours of the night. In life we have the opportunity to trade our time for someone else's money. They have things that need to be done, and they get to the point where their own time is so valuable that they can pay other people to do it for them. The more money that you make, the more of yourself and your time that you have to give up for it.
Based on my experience, $75,000 seems to be a good number (in Southern California) at least. A part of me thinks it is a little high. Someone who can content themselves with a simplistic life (as I wish I could, and I do half heartedly strive for), it is more than enough. Too far below it and you start having to make some sacrifices like living in not so great neighborhoods, driving older / less unreliable cars, not being able to go out whenever the mood strikes you. Yet once you get above it, you start giving up yourself. You enter that realm of responsibility where you are the go to person when things need to get done. You lose the ability to tell others, "I will deal with it tomorrow" in all but the most extreme cases. In Southern California the $75,000 mark seems to be the bottom of the "You can really do what you say you can do" pay scale. It only goes up from there as you continue to prove yourself, but you get more money at the expense of your free time.
Personally, I think I reached a little too far. I would have rather stayed below $75,000 and enjoyed the slack.
Money can't buy you happiness, but poverty can't buy you shit.
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Man, if $75k is poverty in NYC then 2/3 of NYC lives in poverty! Is it really the case that only the top third of New Yorkers can be said to be non-poor?
If you were given a tour of some of the $1000-$1500 a month apartments in the Lower East Side and didn't know their cost, you'd certainly describe them as "impoverished" living conditions. The next level of rent in NYC ($1500-$2200) doesn't generally get you space past 800 square feet in the city (New Yorkers call Manhattan "The City," not the boroughs, FYI). There is also a fee system in NYC for renting any apartment via a realtor - which is one of the only ways of getting a good place. The fee is usually a full-months rent that you pay to the realtor and never get back. So...if you're going to rent an $1000-a-month apartment here that you found via a realtor you pay the first months rent ($1000) last months rent ($1000) the fee ($1000) and a security deposit ($1000) making you're bill before moving expenses $4000. With all combined moving expenses you can easily pay $8000 to move a half-mile to a place that's the same price as the one you're living in now. All of this doesn't even factor in all the shenanigans you'll encounter while trying to beat 20 other people on signing the lease.
My wife and I live in NYC and we've estimated that for a husband and wife to live comfortably here (including going out to dinner once a week, belonging to a gym, being able to leave the city every other weekend, etc) you have to make around a combined income of $300k.
People in NYC tend to be so used to sacrificing basics to live here that they've forgotten what poverty means to the rest of the country (this includes people who make 75K here.) NYC's super-wealthy on the other-hand are these maladjusted weirdos who have nothing to do besides be paranoid about who's trying to take their money and contribute little or nothing to society. Most students here could also easily be deemed as impoverished. I've known some who go on sugar packet raids at bodegas and Starbucks as a way to save money.
I just heard a quote the other day (can't remember where) about NYC. "It's heaven and hell." That about sums it up.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Not to be hurtful, but I'm baffled by the notion that anyone could look at our society and not see that there was an obvious oversupply of lawyers. That's why there are all the jokes (and non-jokes) about them being leeches, etc.
The ABA and the law schools pretty much lie to prospective students. I don't mean mislead, or present incomplete information, I mean they will knowingly lie about employment prospects. I didn't want to rely on sort of "everyone knows" information like the supposed oversupply of lawyers, so I researched and tracked down statistics for my law school, without knowing that those statistics are intentionally twisted. Hadn't expected that; my undergrad school published their own statistics even when they made them look bad, so I thought law schools would do the same. Several schools have been caught lying, and blame "inadvertent" clerical errors, but for some reason the error is always in the same direction. I was also personally caught in another lie, that the JD degree is useful outside the law; it was sold as a more rigorous version of a degree in public policy/administration/government, though it in actuality pretty much forecloses you from being hired in any other field. This last thing is the most annoying, I actually make a good living as a lawyer, but if I had realized that the JD would make that the sole thing I would be able to get a job in, I wouldn't have gone.