Slashdot Mirror
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."
Money does not buy happiness, but lack of money makes a huge down payment on unhappiness.
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.
Tomorrow's headline: "Democrats call for a new $75,000 living wage. Supported by research."
I would say that $75,000 is a good estimate because the more money you have the less trust you usually have along with it. At $75,000 you have just enough money to maintain your friends, and family relations, and to be able to trust your spouse. When you start to get over this amount your friendships may begin to change as some friends will start to envy you or get jealous, you may not be able to trust your family members anymore or your spouse, as it gets into the $100,000+ and $200,000+ and $500,000+ eventually you do reach a point where you simply can't trust anybody anymore. Your spouse might have a life insurance policy on you and be waiting patiently for you to die. Your brothers and sisters might be fighting each other to win favor with you. Your friendships might be completely non-existent as none of these new friends might be real.
And if you aren't married and you don't have a strong family structure you may not even have that. What you'd have then is people dating you and you never knowing what their intentions are, who they are, or if they are trying to set you up, extort you, or marry you and try to take your money. You also wont be able to trust your friends either unless those friends make the same kind of money you are making because your poor friends could easily be bribed or payed off by your rich friends to spy on you.
Ultimately there is no increase to happiness with money beyond a certain amount because as money increases trust decreases. As trust decreases for most people stress increases. As stress increases for most people happiness decreases, unless they've had the kind of life experiences to allow them to have the emotional and psychological toolkit to manage stress of this sort.
This is why more money = more problems after a certain level. This is why getting to the top is usually more fun than being at the top.Trust is not a commodity, you cannot buy it or sell it. Love is not a commodity, you cannot buy and sell it.
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!
75 000 USD/year != 75 000 USD
Also, what is that uninformative picture of coins in a hand doing there? It does not add anything! This is just as bad as a newspaper article!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
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.
few months ago the NY Times did a breakdown of a $250,000 salary in NYC. after the insane "progressive" taxes, the mortgage and HOA fees of living on the upper east side or UWS, the nanny or the crazy elite day care there is very little left.
These stupid stories based on lame research and over simplification of the human condition are really pissing me off.
$75,000 per year may buy a lot of happiness, if that is possible, in a place where the cost of living is really low, but in LA , NYC or Frisco? Forget about it - $75,000 is chicken feed - you can barely pay your rent on that salary. Guess most people living in LA, NYC and San Fran are really unhappy if this is the case.
Oh wait, I make more than that, but my wife does not work, so for the two of us we make less and we live in one of the aforementioned expensive cities. Guess we should be unhappy - dang it I hate it when I am not deemed normal!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
I suppose the researchers were happy, then. I suppose they were government funded? Who else would pay for that kind of research?
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: MONEY CAN'T BUY YOU HAPPINESS. You just need someone to love.
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.
I think that most are unhappy because the other one are happy. That's why the first Matrix failed.
Princeton has now been able to PROVE that getting a serious illness, or divorced is harder on poor people. WOW! Amazing! GO IVY LEAGUE
sig loading.......
More likely that all sorts of white upper-middle class trustifarian college students start demanding $75,000 for everyone, to the chant of "Happiness is a human right!"
Then come the 'experts' at House and Senate hearings:
"Over 240 million Americans go to bed every night without Happiness. Americans are unhappy right here on our own shores! We must end Sadness! When I was in college, I was unhappy. After my accident, I got a $75,000 settlement from the university, and from then on I was happy. I come here to tell you that if every American had the same $75K opportunity I did, we could end Sadness forever."
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Probably has something to do with the fact that the poor man watches as divorce attorneys and his ex-wife divide up most of what he earned with his labor. The fact that a woman can divorce a man for literally no reason in particular (this is what "no fault divorce" really means) has made divorce extremely likely to happen to most men, especially lower status men. Women initiate about 70% of all divorces in the United States, which puts the average man at a 33% risk that for whatever reason, he'll end up getting raped by the divorce courts.
Of course, the moment you tell Americans that their personal happiness is secondary to their duties to their spouses, children, family, friends, etc. is the moment you're call an uber-Fascist anti-American Who Hates Freedom. The fact that you voluntarily entered the marriage and are now metaphorically laying down in the bed you made is not something most Americans will accept.
Have you ever tried to get an advanced stylesheet to work in IE? Some sort of advanced training, and a kindly god, is needed.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Posted AC so people won't hit him up for $$$ on /.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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.
Did they go by how much a person makes or how much a person spends?
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
I can't work out whether you are a confused socialist or a confused conservative.
Deleted
Are you now unable to get a database driven web development job? I mean, it both paid more and you liked it more ... why not just go back?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well lets break down the AC's self righteous gloating. He said its been 10 years since graduating so he graduated around 2000, he says he was in school for 5 years so he started college around 1995. Now let's take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition#Disproportional_inflation_of_college_costs and you will see how divergent cost of attendance has become to the standard inflation rate. Furthermore if you take into consideration the oversupply of college graduates, erosion of earnings potential for a 4 year degree and extremely limited job market then its pretty clear its almost impossible for most students to be able to work off their tuition/room board/etc while working college jobs. Sure it may be possible to go to night school and work a full time job but that significantly limits your choice of schools and coursework.Taking less credits each year is another option but that may mean you are taking the 6 or 7 year plan to graduation which is ultimately not worth it when you consider the lost earnings potential (unless you are working towards a degree within your current field of work).
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
*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
Is to want what you have rather than trying to have what you want.
If you earn $40k / year, don't spend money like you make $80k. Debt is stress. Debt is unhappiness. Avoid it.
People of all various income levels can be happy or not. It depends on how they choose to live their lives. People who over-spend because they think having those nicer things will make them more happy end up being owned by their things. And in debt. Both of which lead to unhappiness and stress.
I am quite happy. Why is that? My home mortgage is less than half of what I could afford. I drive an 8 year old car which I paid off 5 years ago. Therefore, I have some enough money each month for entertainment and also enough to save for the future.
No stress and I get to have fun. Stop trying to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. It will inevitably lead you toward stress and unhappiness.
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.
Nice smartass comment, but you're aware that there is a "post anonymously" checkbox and many good reasons why one might not always want to post under their account name?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
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.
Nonsense the so called "bust" would not necessarily mean that he wouldn't still be making 90k, even after the "bust", most people making that before are still making that or more, AND he would have had all the additional work experience at that time, to justify at least maintaining that rate.
Presumably he's out $90k, for some portion of the years he took off to pursue graduate work, however, and probably more when you account for things like raises.
Meaning it's generous to say he's $10k in the hole. In actuality, he probably sacrificed an opportunity cost of $180k + interest to pursue the masters, by not having that 90k income during that time, in addition to the actual tuition and other costs imposed by the school and his circumstances, not to mention the gap in his work experience ---- even though it was to pursue an education, this 'gap' can be expected to make him less attractive to an employer, or less meritorous of a higher wage.
He is also pursuing different type of work. And the graduate degree could make him appear overqualified for jobs he had had before.
So his "graduate" degree cost approximately $240,000 in real terms. Maybe it would have been cheaper if he had waited until the so called "bust". Maybe not.
Some things not being considered: (A) DON'T expect to see an immediate benefit from having a graduate degree. Expect to see long-term improvement in earnings instead. If your graduate degree is from a university with a strong reputation, it will increase your long term earnings potential, or open up possible doors that would be closed otherwise, many jobs, especially research/teaching jobs at universities, are open only to holders of a MS or P.h.D. ---- just because it may have a possibility of doing this in the future, does not necessarily mean it helps you immediately.
Expecting an immediate return here, is kind of like buying a stock based on a company's fundamentals, and saying the company's a crappy investment if you don't get a great return in a week.
(B) Getting the graduate degree might not pay off economically. If you wanted it to do that, you should have a realistic idea of how it will do that. "They will pay me more to do exactly the same thing", is probably not a realistic assessment. Particularly when graduate work isn't particularly related to "the thing".
(C) It would be better if you had something in mind you need a graduate degree to do, that you want to do in the first place. Economic advantage matters, but cannot realistically be the be-all end-all. You can have lots of dollars, but be bored with your work, as the GP finds.
Since you've raised the issue, what do you do and how does society benefit from your work?
I work on pension cases, suing on behalf of individuals who got screwed out of portions of their pensions when their plans violated the law.
Ahhh, thanks, but I've been on Slashdot since '99, used to being yelled at. And honestly I am frequently a jerk to other people so I can't legitimately get too upset. It's funny though, there are soooo many things wrong with the US legal system, and the legal profession, but so many people on slashdot just hit the same simpleminded, overexaggerated ones again and again that it just becomes noise. As for the hatred of lawyers, I suspect the majority of people making these claims never actually dealt with one themselves, they're just going on water-cooler gossip and slashdot stories about hot-button cases.
Now a lot of lawyers really are greedy, but it's not an inherent character trait of lawyers; it's an inherent character trait of people who are greedy, who in the past few decades went to law school solely because they thought they could make money. My criticism of law schools for lying to people is not because I think I personally deserve some fantastic salary and I'm not getting it; actually I'm making more than I planned on making when I was in law school. But I'd take a 50% pay cut if I could do what I went to law school to do, and I had been basically lied to that it would be possible, which is what I resent.