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Did money buy you happiness?
Conventional wisdom tells us money does not buy happiness, perhaps the opposite. "Studies" (don't quote me on this, just going off headlines/articles I've read) say happiness grows asymptotically and levels off around an income of 70k USD (perhaps more like 90k inflation adjusted?). I would be interested to know how any of this matches your personal experience. Has your happiness consistently grown with income? If so, where did that growth level off, if at all? And to what would you attribute it? better consumer goods, more security, more freedom...? Have any of you experienced a decrease in happiness associated with growing income? I eagerly await your thoughts!
I agree with "money can't buy you happiness", in the sense that, if there is some root cause of your unhappiness, then no amount of money or material things can fix it. Money won't give you fulfilment, it won't cure your addictions and it won't create real, meaningful relationships.
That said, I also believe that lack of money can cause anxiety, stress and depression. Not having money means you worry about making rent and bills, about the next "big cost" coming your way (how's you car doing?), having to say no to the next social outing and so on. Without a certain amount of money, you lack freedom. You can't quit your job that you hate. You can't just uproot and move outside of the city that makes you miserable. You can't buy the quality items that would break your current cycle of replacing your crappy ones.
With enough money, these things disappear. Your leased car is not going to break down, and if it does the lease company will sort you out. Hate your job? Quit. Take a few months off while you search for something that's right for you. Hell, go abroad and apply remotely from the French Riviera. If you really hate your career, go and retrain or go back to university. No big deal. No debts to worry about or, even better, debts that are working for you and keeping you rich.
So no, money can't buy you happiness. But it can remove all of the blockers that are keeping you unhappy.
This is well said.
Additionally, money can also buy you happiness through others. The kick you can get from solving someone's overhanging economic woes by sometimes token amounts for yourself is hard to beat.
Being able to completely change someone's life for $100 is an extremely powerful thing, not in the least for those who feel they don't make a difference and have those sorts of existential causes for their unhappiness. Someone giving can gain a lot of meaning through that.
This is unrealistic for many people, and purely why money hasn't bought me happiness. I've been cornered into a niche skillset that doesn't really transfer to other positions. I've tried to deviate from that and lean on the skills that do have use elsewhere, but they're "soft skills" which seems to not be enough. (Looking for business process analyst or project management positions as I've done those before, but with different titles.) I've been applying on and off for other jobs, customizing my resume for each application to include keywords, and am still stuck in my current position after over 3 years of trying. I've made it to the "final interview" stage a handful of times, but never received an offer. (One employer even ghosted me after promising they were working on an offer, but that's another story.)
I have exceeded the financial earnings goal I set for myself long ago, back when I started my first full-time job. It's nice being able to buy odds and ends without worrying too much. But my job keeps me miserable. I work for a consulting company and am the only employee with this customer, so I have no peers to interact with. Everyone on the customer-side plays politics and is constantly trying to take advantage and backstab. I work 9-10 hours a day without a lunch break, and only get 10 days off a year, including sick time. (This is only legal because my employer is such a small company.) And the benefits are absolute garbage - to the point I have to seek them out through the healthcare marketplace and pay absurd premiums for subpar coverage that still prevents me from getting the care I actually need.
And the cherry on top - this contract likely won't be renewed at the end of the year. So I'm scrambling to apply for jobs again, but I've yet to get any bites.
I am in a situation I absolutely hate. If I didn't have family keeping me sane, I'd probably be in an extremely bad place by now.
Money makes things easier, but at what cost? The stress is causing balding and grey hair much earlier than I should be seeing it. I'm constantly exhausted and am lucky to get half a day of a true break during the weekend. But I have no choice but to keep going, even though this is likely taking years off my life.
That is kind of the point.
Don't mix up having money with earning money. If you discovered today that you had inherited a $10M trust fund, I'm sure most of that stress would simply melt away.
I mean, 10 million is enough to live off of (assuming you don't go too crazy), so yes, of course I could free up 40+ hours a week to better my physical and mental health and do more things I actually enjoy.
That answers the original question I suppose, but I just get frustrated at proposed "solutions" that 99%+ of the population could never realistically hope to happen. Apologies if this comes off as hostile.
I'm genuinely more happy now after getting a significant salary increase than I ever was when working for the bare minimum.
As you say, it's not because I have more money to spend, but because I have money to save (and obviously a little bit of "fuck you" money doesn't make things worse). It gives me peace of mind to know that I can provide for my family, save for the future, set aside cash on hand for rainy days, not always have to go for the immediately cheaper (but often more expensive in the long run) options.
Having money makes it easier to make sensible choices, and it's expensive to be poor.
I don't know who said it first, but "whoever says money can't make you happy has never been living hand to mouth".
Very well said.
Except money can afford you all these things. Money can afford you to do something you love and fulfills you rather than something that can pay the bills. And get you the help you need to quit your addictions. And afford you the time and space to meet people with whom you can build meaningful relationships with. If you're broke, you either can't afford i6t don't have time to do any of these things.
I don't think that disagrees with the overall message of my post :)
I would do anything for 90k/year. I could have a separate bedroom and living room (currently in a studio). I could have a couch! I wouldn't be panicked to the point of needing extra anxiety meds over student loans coming back. I could use a laundry service to get ahead of my ADHD. Can you imagine?! Ah, the good life.
Yea. I'd be happy AF.
90k might not get you those things, depending on where you live, unfortunately.
LA. I could get a 1 bedroom apartment in the valley. Make sure it's an old building so I have better rent control. Laundry service maybe 1xM. Use inheritance to pay down the student loans to payments aren't so high. I could... but barely.
For those in poverty money quite literally can buy happiness. Those struggling to find a meal? Living in agonizing stress from living paycheck to paycheck? Purchase a pair of shoes that don't have a hole in the toes?
It's once you leave poverty that more money exponentially becomes less directly correlated to happiness. The difference between 1 vacation a year versus 2? 5,000 in a 401k versus 50,000? A summertime beach house?
I think it's more accurate to say that while you can buy things to make you happier, there's a finite number of efficient ways to buy happiness. Like, if you're starving then buying food is a cheap source of happiness. If you're homeless then renting a home is a slightly-more-expensive buy ultimately fairly cheap source of happiness. But if you've already got enough to retire on, then jetskis are a lot of money for a little happiness.
The problem extremely-rich people face is that not every problem can be solved with money (e.g. relationship problems), but money is the one thing they have an overabundance of so there's this huge temptation to substitute in money for the non-money requirements. Like buying your kids expensive gifts to make up for not spending more time with them.
I think money can buy happiness but I think the most influencing factor is whether or not you are in debt.
I don't think the way American society is configured allows someone to pursue life interests easily without going into debt.
Buying a car to get more freedom to move around freely in cities and towns centered around cars, you will likely need to go into debt.
Going to college to pursue academic interests, more debt.
Making a big life change and needing to move after college so you.can start that better paying job? More debt
Buying a house? Debt
Around every corner of American society there is debt. You go to purchase an item from a store, and are asked, "Do you want to apply for the store card?" Do you have a medical emergency that requires you to spend a lot of money? More debt.
You can make a ton of money but if you don't have everything set up exactly right, one bad accident can cause you to lose everything.
So, my level of happiness related to my income has been the same. I have had periods of my life where I have made very little and been very happy, and other periods where I have made money but felt not so great. The amount of debt that I have at any given time has influenced more how happy I feel.
I think a part of why Europeans feel happier on average than Americans is they can afford to make less money, because they have better social safety nets, and not go into debt as much
Honestly, yes it has (money buys happiness), but I recognize that my lifestyle isn't for everyone. I'm a software architect and tech lead for a fortune 100 company, making about $300k a year. My wife also works as a hospital administrator making $75k a year. No kids (and we're keeping it that way), no debt (other than mortgages), so we do pretty well. We get to travel, we have a second home (cabin) in the mountains that we can get away to, etc. We put aside a lot of money for retirement, with a goal of $4M at age 60. We may very well reach that earlier since we're overall relatively conservative with money. Neither of us come from wealthy families, so we've built our lives from scratch.
That being said, we work our asses off for it. I work for a global company and have a team of 70 that look to me for technical design and guidance. I start my day at 9am, take a break between 6pm-9pm and then work until 12am-1am to interface with our teams in Asia. My wife starts her day at 6am and often doesn't get home until 5-6pm. We are both very career focused and spend well above 40 hours a week working. Many people would find that miserable and not worth it, but both of us are okay with the balance that we have.
Only if it was a job they didn't care for or have a passion for. You seem to enjoy both the lifestyle that gives you and the job that gets you. At the end of the day, in a perfect world, everyone would be able to work a job that is actually important, and not just flipping burgers to make people's health worse and one company's pockets more endless.
To be clear, I don't actually think my job is important. It might be important to my company, but it's not important to society or the world in the grand scheme of things. I actually do hands-on volunteer work, and serve on the board of directors of a local charity for that kind of fulfillment. But as far as jobs go, I feel fortunate to be able to do something that I don't hate.
I think we've done young people a disservice by telling them that they will be successful if they just put their heart into whatever they're passionate about. That's just not the reality. Sure, it works out for some people, but it's a pipe dream for most. There's only a tiny amount of room in the workforce for jobs that most people pursue as hobbies. I chose my career not because it was the thing I was most passionate about, but because it was one interest that I had that had good job prospects. There are other things that I would rather do, but I chose to pursue money.
I guess I mistook it to mean you enjoy it or it is necessary. I don't think younger people are misled either. I'm one of them and understand that job prospects matter. My field typically pays ludicrously well and just so happens to also be my greatest passion.
Wish you and others didn't have to pursue money tho. A pipe dream, ofc.
I think he might be mixing up "younger people" with Millennials. Up until the crash in 2008 we Millennials were taught that we should get a college degree in whatever we love and that just having a degree-- any bachelor's degree-- would be enough to get us a middle class job. That was the narrative my entire childhood. The attitude didn't change until 2008, so if you are someone young enough that you considered your career after 2008, the you would be someone who understands that job prospects matter.
Of course there were always families that emphasized job prospects, but a whole lot of families in suburban America in the '90s and '00s did not because "as long as you try hard enough you will be able to make it in your field of choice." It's one of the key reasons Millennials are a "bitter" generation-- we were lied to by people we trusted and respected and we followed their advice only to be left with financial challenges that our elders never had to face. Gen Z has the advantage of knowing that just "working hard" alone is not enough, so at least they've got that going for them.
I used to have a job making around 250k/yr. All I did was work, and they expected me to put work first. I had new kids and didn't not get to see them and I could tell that if I stayed at that job I was not going to be as big a part of their life as I wanted. I quit that job moved somewhere more affordable and took a job paying less with way better work life balance. I would never go back to that job.
Unrelated ( or maybe it was related idk) my wife said she was a lesbian not like 2 months after we moved, we got divorced and now I see my kids less then ever. So my point is idk life is dumb sometimes
Money didn't buy me happiness, but it made a lot of stressful things much less stressful. In the past 6 months:
My dog needed his stomach pumped to get out the cacao nibs he ate: $1k.
My cat had a concerning medical event that required multiple days off work to take her to vet appointments. $2k of lost revenue.
My father in law had a serious heart attack, and my wife took a week off of work to visit/care for him. $1.5k of lost revenue.
I had a concussion and couldn't do serious work for more than a month: $6k of lost revenue.
The year before that, I was a caregiver for my dying mother, and between the work and the emotional turmoil, I had to put my business into stasis: 100k of lost revenue.
Because we had significant reserves (because my mother gave me money both while I was caring for her and upon her passing) these stressful things were only stressful because of their disruption of daily life and concerns about everyone's health. We didn't have the additional concern of being hounded by debt collectors or what the credit card interest rates were or whether our power was going to be shut off.
So for me it's not really about an annual number, but about overall costs to live and whether there are reserves to cover that for an extended period in an emergency. It's just as easy to spend 150k a year as it is to spend 90k, so if you don't have reserves you can just as easily go broke bringing in a lot of money as you do bringing in less.
That said, if you're not bringing in enough to cover costs of living for your city, no reserves can ever form. As such, the total will vary heavily by region.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure money bought me happiness, and more money would net me more happiness. I do think the rate of increase in happiness levelled off slightly at the point where I had no debts and no requirement to work, but happiness is still increasing as I get more freedom to travel or work on whatever projects I feel like.
Personally, I've found that I'm happier being unemployed than underpaid at a dead-end job. Money is always a worry, but what eases my anxiety a bit is knowing that I'm investing my time into my own future rather than wasting it at a job that will get me nowhere in life (I'm a grad student in a field with good and reasonable paying job prospects).
Minimum wage in the end does not pay enough to be worth it. I'm lucky in that I have family I can leech off of until I can financially support myself. I'm hyper aware of the fact that people without that layer of outside help get stuck in a cycle of "can't live without it, but only slightly less impoverished with it" when it comes to minimum wage jobs. It's a harsh world out there, and I only hope that I don't get pulled into the vicious cycle.
Unfortunately my dad, who is both my emotional and financial support system, was just diagnosed with cancer and things aren't looking good. It's hard enough dealing with it without thinking about finances, but it's even worse knowing that we (my mom, myself, and my brother) may get cornered into a financially rough spot due to the situation.
I think people conflate "money" with spending.
"Spending won't bring you happiness." sounds about right to me. Many times it'll bring less happiness because it means more garbage in your house, more unused hobby equipment reminding you that you're not doing what you want, and more debt.
I think money used to buy investments can bring happiness. Because that means more safety (not worried about paying your bills), more choices (I don't like this job, so I'll quit), and an ability to handle stress (car broke down? I'll just pay to get it fixed.)
Capital buys happiness.
True that this detracts from happiness, but I want to add that carefully chosen well thought out hobby related purchases are often money well spent. I tend to be very frugal, but when I was 21 I splurged and spent $600 on a bike. I rode that bike everywhere for years, got into the best shape of my life, and used it as a coping mechanism and outlet for the severe (non-finance related) depression I was experiencing at the time. Whenever I look back I can't help but to think that it was one of the best purchases I ever made. $600 was a significant amount to me at the time and I was hesitant to part ways with the cash, but it was well worth it and definitely did bring me many hours of happiness-- pretty much the only happiness I felt during these particular years of my life.
After basic needs are met, what money buy is the power to choose.
My job was almost (and maybe) literally killing me. I quit. I'm not even looking for work right now. I'm healing. I was paid well and saved money. I knew some day like this would come. Now it's here. It's hard. But we can afford it—for a while. But not indefinitely.
Less money? Less choices.
You know what would be even harder? Staying in that job (even though the pay was amazing) and trying to contort myself to conform. But we had enough money that I could afford to choose. Granted, I didn't make this choice at all lightly; it's a nontrivial chunk of money, having me not earn. But we could afford to choose.
More money, more choices. More privilege. I'm not proud of that. On the contrary, I resent the whole system.
If you have fewer choices, you're going to find yourself doing more things that you don't want to do. That hurts. If you have more choices, some of those choices may let you avoid unpleasantness entirely.
Money reduces burden. I grew up poor or near poor and now am considered financially well off. Medical bills, travel/vacation, child related costs, and so forth are all manageable and not much of a concern (if at all). It doesn’t mean I don’t think about money but it’s just not as much of a concern as it was when I was scrounging for change in my couch cushions to see if I’d have enough for a pack of smokes and maybe a microwave burrito if I could swing it. Happiness is temporary and fleeting so don’t chase it. Purpose however has been the key thing that’s brought an abundance of happy moments. Being a good Dad, decent husband, and maybe, just maybe an okay human being is now something I can pursue without the worry about making ends. So to me money doesn’t buy happiness, it simply affords the pursuit of it.
Money can buy happiness. I don't know the market rate, but it can be bought, and is sold in all kinds of forms.
The bigger question is: can money buy contentment?
Being able to afford to fly premium economy certainly makes me content
Not happiness, but comfort and security, and I can't imagine being able to have anything more than fleeting happiness without those things. It's a Maslow thing.
I don’t think money brings happiness, but I think money grants way more opportunities to find happiness. Ultimately, you can have all the money in the world, but the money itself will never bring happiness on its own.
Not directly, but money bought me time which invested into things that make me happy.
I used to work 50 to 60 hours a week to make ends meet for my family. Five years ago I got a 40 hour a week job that came with a significant pay raise and I've received large pay raises annually. I now have a lot more time to spend with my wife, my kids, and on my hobbies which are fairly expensive. I wouldn't have the time to do all of the above if I was still working long hours for shit poor pay.
One of the biggest improvements to mine and my spouse's quality of life was buying a dishwasher. So in that particular case, money definitely bought happiness 😁
of course, we were making less than $70k USD at the time anyway though
I dream of having a dishwasher, where I'm renting right now doesn't have one, and it takes so much time...only two of us living here, and it still feels like the dishes never end. Someday I'll move again and have one, I thought about buying a portable one but they're all so small.
Just last year we had a significant increase to our household income, and honestly it feels offputting after years of debt and trying to dig our way out of it. We paid a big vet bill this week and it was just...fine? Like I feel like I should be worried but there's no reason to be. Hard to stop those old thought patterns.
I read somewhere: "it's always nicer to be depressed on a yacht". Imo a warm bath tub is nice too.
I'm in the end of your range. I make around 90k€ per year.
The first job I had gave me 30k, the next one 60k, my current one 90k.
I could live a happy life with 30k. My rent was rather small, but so was the flat. As a single I didn't need much. Food was usually in the lower grade, but I always cooked fresh and rarely bought prepared foods. Most of my hobbies could be carried out on a computer. The others were almost free. I didn't need to worry about insurance as I'm European. Although, I never had the means to really save money and rather lived in the moment. Going out with friends, visiting festivals. Going to festivals was always a year long decision as I had to save up.
For bigger things I had to save for a long time. Just buying a new GPU was definitely out of the budget.
60k was a huge raise. I was still living in the same flat, so I could save a lot - which I did. I can't say I was really happier but I could be more careless. I didn't need to look at prices anymore and could buy more quality ingredients. I didn't need to save anymore to get things I wanted. I could just buy them. This is nice, but I neither need expensive designer clothes, nor a fancy couch. It was definitely not a high-society life, but I had everything I needed*2.
I invested most of the money, either into stocks or into myself. Wood working skills and tools cost money. So do microcontrollers and electrical things.
Same goes with the new 90k job. The "happiness" ceiling was definitely met at 60k. The additional 30k make life easier, in the sense that I don't need to worry much about losing my job. I'm financially stable and can tackle a broken oven/washing machine and so on without a loan. I pay 80% of all household related things as my GF is still studying and is not making much. I started donating money and buying long lasting fair-fashion clothing. I saw the inflation but didn't need to worry about it.
I think I buy as much as I bought with 30k, but the things I buy are usually higher in quality. It improved my life, but not made it much happier.
I would argue, if a person always needs the newest things, needs to travel often, needs a fancy car, then yes - more money would buy you happiness. If you can be happy with few things, it doesn't require much as long as you can meet your base requirements without worrying about next week.
My baseline to this day is: A warm place to sleep, healthy food to eat, electricity, clean water, no worries about my health (insurance), happy times with friends/family. My happiness comes from within, not from outside things. So anything else is a plus.
Money hasn't bought me happiness, but it sure has alleviated most of the day to day anxieties I had in my 20s and 30s. Knowing that if something goes wrong my entire world isn't going to collapse is a huge weight off my shoulders.
If you're going from middle class to upper middle class to rich (whatever that means), then no, money isn't going to buy you happiness. But if you're going from abject poverty to being able to afford housing, utilities, medicine, and food, then yes, money is going to but you a whole helluva lot of happiness.
To a degree. My partner and I aren't filthy rich. I'm still in college and they're finished but not necessarily in a job in their field (though they're happy with it). Together we normally bring in $100K a year. Well, I've been out of a job unfortunately and there's a significant difference. There's a threshold at which bills are paid, you can eat, and afford other basic things that everyone should get. Beyond that, I'm sure any person making $200K, $300, etc. won't be any happier - just more luxurious.
Back when I used to go to Roskilde Festival most summers, they scheduled the festival so that payday was always during the festival, I remember a couple of years when the weather was especially hot and all I had had to drink for a couple of days was cheap beer that had been in the tent for days so they were horribly warm. When my broke ass received money at the end of the month I used to celebrate by buying a cold screwdriver at a specific bar, that made them with fresh juice. So technically money bought me a cold, refreshing drink, but in that situation it did feel like pure happiness 🙂
Money can't buy you happiness, but not having money sure buys a lot of misery.
You can be happy with very little. Some people never are happy without having the most extravagant.
For me personally, getting some extra money has helped a lot. A lot less to worry about. More security. And being able to buy the small things in life I like without thinking about how that'll impact my account
Although I make a lot less than the suggested income, I think I am at the point where additional money no longer gives me additional happiness. (If I had substantially more money, though — enough that I no longer needed to work — I think I would become dramatically happier.)
The key is that I joined a family that outright owns a farm with no mortgage. I pay utilities and a small rent to help out with property maintenance, but I'm basically not worried about going homeless. Additionally, I live in a country with universal healthcare, and I'm in a good position to grow a lot of my own food. Because I'm not worried about shelter, food, or healthcare, I think I am pretty close to my natural/base level of happiness.
For example, I got a very substantial raise something like a year ago, and I was thrilled for something like a week. Now I feel exactly the same as I did before the raise, and I don't actually spend any more money than I did before, either.
Instead of thinking of my income in terms of how much I can buy, I think of it in terms of how much time I can take off work. I am most happy when I have free time to pursue my interests and personal goals, which are not very expensive. What good about the raise is that it's substantial enough that I can justify moving to a four-day work week, which I think will be a huge improvement on my life quality.
I (and my in-laws who live on the same property) do live pretty frugally, so from an outside perspective, it probably looks like we are struggling. However, I don't think happiness comes from the car you drive or the clothes you wear; it comes from being at liberty to do something that's meaningful to you and not being weighed down by stresses and fears, like wondering where you're going to be living in a year's time.
money can't buy happiness, but money can buy something that brings happiness: stability.
having to worry about bills, about food, about anything related to money is a huge source of stress. i remember being young and seeing my parents cry because my dad was unemployed and they didn't know they were going to buy food next.
so for me, it's not about being rich, it's about having enough money that i don't have to worry about when my next paycheck is coming.
I make a little over $100k, but you have to that money doesn't run as far as you think for all people. Wealth has a much bigger impact than income. For example, despite that income I'm not able to buy a house, as I don't have a large pile of savings to use as a deposit, and no significant other assets to use as collatoral on the mortgage.
Someone with less income, but who already owns 3 houses, would likely have a much easier time getting a fourth than I my first.
Then there's how it breaks down in lifestyle expenses:
After my taxes, I end up with a take home pay of around $5k per month.
$2k of that immediately dissapeares into rent, and I rent a small bungalow with no major transport links. That number would go up a lot if my partner (disabled, no income) and I moved into the city.
Of that remaining $2k, with our disabilities, at the shops we are able to get to, a weekly shop runs us around $190, so that's $760 per month on food expenses. Due to our disabilities we aren't able to travel as far to go anywhere cheaper, and places don't deliver to us as we're out in the sticks.
$1240 left, we have bills to take off of that. Internet, gas, electricity, water, and council tax. All of that together takes another $550 off.
$690, now for travel. Again we have disabilities so we aren't able to drive ourselves places, and there's little public transport here, so we're bound to taxis. We end up spending around $400 in travel expenses every month.
And with that, the two of us have $145 each to pay for everything not mentioned in this post.
You can see how despite that massive income, owning a house is a pipe dream, and our problems are very much not solved, and that amount of money doesn't come close to "buying happiness".
Are we more secure than a lot of people, yes absolutely. Especially given our disabilities and other circumstances. We could be doing much worse off. But that $100k doesn't run out anywhere near as far as you'd think it would for all people.
(all numbers converted from GBP to USD at an exchange rate of 1 GBP = 1.26 USD, then rounded off)
I think it depends on the person, where they came from, and what they do with it.
For me, it made me lazy. It did relieve some stresses, but has added others. I can't remember a time in my life I needed for anything material, so money really didn't give me anything other than more of what I had, and in some cases nicer than I already had.
I'm sure in some scenarios with the right person, it is life changing in a good way. You read stories of people who came from less than nothing, and with money were able to do wonderful things for themselves and others.
I have no idea who said this (and i'd wager even if I tried to find out, there's a good chance it's being misattributed all over the place), but:
"I've been rich, and i've been poor, and let me tell you: It's true what they say that money isn't everything and can't buy happiness, but all things being equal, it's better to be rich."
Don’t remember where I saw this but essentially: “money can’t buy you happiness but it can suuuuuure rent it”
I think the concept of money or the obsession with it doesn’t get you happiness, but you could buy yourself a puppy. It’s about what you do with it I guess.
I think the basis of happiness in this context is one of two things: poverty and comparison.
I agree with others here that there is definitely a threshold below which money absolutely buys happiness in the sense that you can't be happy if you're dead (from starvation and exposure).
After that point, happiness, in my experience, becomes a matter of comparison. I'm not hungry anymore but wish I could eat what they were eating. I thought I was content before, but suddenly I'm feeling FOMO because they seem to be having more fun.
Wealth and satisfaction are also other aspects of this that I don't want to get into. I think there is such thing as too much, and nothing comes without a cost.
There's a newer study that updates on the one you read about. It's summarized here:
Can money buy happiness? Scientists say it can. (Washington Post)
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I feel like the happiness having a higher income has given us, is in being able to give it to others. Being able to pay for a birthday supper out for a dozen people at a nice restaurant for my wife's birthday without killing our budget for three months was awesome. Many years ago, as a young father I was really excited to be able to afford McDonald's for lunch. Times have changed.
And we have a couple of charities we strongly believe in, so we donate monthly. Years ago I used to work for one of them and I had to fundraise my own income. I hated that part of the job, and I dearly wished, even prayed, that I could be the person giving instead of getting. And I finally am here - With much gratitude I can be the supporter instead of the one asking for the support.
I remember actually digging into one of those studies, and what the paper had said was that "blue affect" which was basically stress in your life, levels off at like $75k, but life satisfaction kept going up as wealth increased, although that showed signs of slowing as well.
But the article writing about it didn't really make that distinction.