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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.
Tomorrow's headline: "Democrats call for a new $75,000 living wage. Supported by research."
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?
You should really make more money.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
Princeton has now been able to PROVE that getting a serious illness, or divorced is harder on poor people. WOW! Amazing! GO IVY LEAGUE
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Money can't buy you happiness, but poverty can't buy you shit.
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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
*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
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.
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.
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.