Americans are materially wealthy relative to most of the rest of the world. I would suspect (without having any sort of citation to support it) that, when compared to Americans, most of the people who have ever lived in any time and in any country have known nowhere near the standard of living represented by a $60K annual income in the U.S. today. If that assumption is true, and if the premise of this piece is also correct, this would mean that most of the people who have ever lived throughout all of humanity's existence have been unhappy with their lives. That would seem to me a dubious proposition.<p>I think that neither money nor happiness is the key but rather contentment. Life dishes up the good and bad to us all, and we often can't do anything about that, but learning to be content with what we have is an achievable and worthwhile goal for all - and also a better measure than money can ever be of whether we have lived our lives well.
That sounds about right. From about 1999-2004, I didn't negotiate salaries. I told potential employers that I wanted exactly 60K. The question was how many hours a week I would have to work to earn it.
The winner was 22 hours.<p>I only changed this tactic when I had kids. Because that changes everything.
I've never agreed with this theory. He seems to frame things in terms of irresponsible living and under that criteria I agree. If the difference between 60k and 90k is just "a little more “entertainment” and maybe some bigger stuff" to you than his theory works out.<p>But to the person who invests that extra 30k a year and gets to retire at 50 instead of 70 I think the happiness difference is pretty significant. I'd bet the 55 year old who gets to spend his days as he wishes is much happier than the 55 year old still working his 9 to 5 job.
Even if you believe Kahneman (I happen to), the $60k number is probably illusory for most Americans, since location is important. In NYC, perhaps the number is $95k; in rural Arkansas, perhaps it's $25k.<p>I'd love to see data on how the specific "ideal" income level varies by location.
If you make too little money, all you think about is money.
If you make too much money, all you think about it money.<p>I'd have to agree with this article. Personally, I think much of happiness comes from finding the middle ground where you don't don't have to think about money.
This article missed half the point and doesn't quite capture what was said in the TED talk. Earning above $60,000 a year doesn't affect the happiness of the <i>experiencing self</i>. But as Kahneman goes on to say, it certainly affects the happiness of the <i>remembering self</i>. So a lot of money wont affect how happy you are at a particular moment, but it does affect how happy you are with your life as a whole.
Total misrepresentation.<p>Kahneman says that at $60K a year your direct experience of happiness flatlines. But our <i>perception</i> of how happy we are increases with the amount of money we make, far beyond the $60K.<p>There's two types of happiness, how happy we are and how happy we <i>think</i> we are and the two correlate only at a .5.<p>The flatlining question is "How happy are you right now?" The question that increases with wealth is "How happy are you?"<p>Which is a fairer representation of how people understand happiness?
I recently spent a few hours figuring out how much I need to be happy. Happy to me is living comfortable with enough extra cash to go out or take periodic trips without going into debt.<p>I'm currently living at home and paying off some debt (I'm only 19 so it's still socially acceptable to be living with mom and dad :P).<p>I wrote out the cost of necessities (rent, phone/internet, food, transportation, healthcare/insurance) and then all of the extras. I want to live comfortable so for rent I said $1500 (about what a 1bdrm condo in Vancouver goes for), food $800 (includes going out to eat and regular trips to starbucks), Phone/Internet $150, Transit pass $100, healthcare $100.<p>The costs are mostly rounded up, if I can save cash without sacrificing happiness I'll cut costs down. On top of the basics I want to save $500 (minimum) each month and have $2k or so in the "misc" category. This includes clothes, household expenses and extras.<p>I calculated the amount and it was around $5500/mo. I then recalculated and factored taxes in, I believe it was around $6800/month pre-taxes.<p>In the past month I've been looking at ways to get this income. I could look into a 9-5 job, but that wouldn't make me very happy. I decided to get a couple clients on retainer with $7k/mo. as my goal. I've already locked down a large client who will cover most of my income for about 40hrs/month of work on my end. I'm quite confident I'll find another client to get me to the goal amount.<p>I'll be able to live well for approximately 3hrs per day, 5 days a week of work. I'm talking to a startup right now about joining on as a cofounder, and if I do I'm glad I'll be able to work on my own company without having to survive on ramen or live in a crack den.
Another interpretation is that it currently requires $60,000/year for a US citizen to not be lacking the means to fulfill one or another step on Maslow's hierarchy: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs</a><p>Given that the [2008] US GDP is $14.4 trillion/year, and there are ~300 million US citizens, it turns out we're each, on average, creating $48,000/year in value.<p>So, on average, each citizen is $12,000 of unhappy.
Happiness as a function of wealth represents a sigmoid function. This function is different for people (you could go around and define the coefficients in some stupid analogy).<p>The second derivative is the most important. Where that hits its peak is where you can define "financial freedom," and where it hits its trough is where you can define "fuck you money."
Whether it is in the making of $60K or $1M per year, happiness is in the pursuit of the making, of the living.<p>An analogy I like is if you ask a 'tourist' about his memories of a place, you're likely to get a very different answer than if you ask a 'traveler'. In fact, in the former case, you might even get a rather drab answer. The latter will inspire you.
To me, happiness comes from knowing your financial future is becoming more secure, not less secure. The ultimate happiness will come from knowing that you can get that 60k per year for the rest of your days, without necessarily having to work. Trading your precious time for 60k from someone else would definitely not keep me happy.
Hey tech brainiacs. Read this, and then come work at one of the many non-profit organizations starving for your intelligence, but unable to attract you because of ridiculous salary imbalances. We'd love to have you...and 60k is about all we'll ever be able to afford...and you'll be happy.
So if I'm single $60k is fine, throw in some dependents and that changes very fast. I think I'd be happier at $180k a year and $60k more for each new dependent that comes along. That takes care of health, house, education and plenty extra to stash away.
If I made, say, $1 million/year, I think I'd be happier -- for the simple reason that I could afford to only work one day per week (or a few months per year, or work for 5 years and then semi-retire, etc.). That would mean a lot more freedom to choose how to spend my time, to travel, and so on. (Of course, I'd probably end up doing something similar to "work" during a lot of my spare time, but there's an amazing difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for an activity.)<p>I've often thought that applying this on a smaller scale would be interesting -- for example, trading $140k/year for $110k/year plus an extra six weeks of paid vacation time.
This title comes off as cliché...No, money can't buy you happiness but it does <i>allow</i> one to be happy. For when you consider the other end of the spectrum, poverty won't make you happy either; but then, everyone knew that.
I suspect this is a case of using a metric (money) to explain a complex fact (what makes us happy).<p>Yes, $60,000/yr may make you happy. But I suspect that is about being comfortable and able to live without concern (over money issues, for example). I expect that if you gave a control group a comfortable life / success and just $1,000 a year then a large part would also be happy. Reverse would apply to a group with $100K but put through merry hell :)<p>A better conclusion would be that happiness is probably being comfortable and feeling successful etc.
You can be happy with really low earnings, too. It's just <i>harder</i> then but the happiness or lack of it is still inside your head.<p>It's harder with very little money because you will have to learn to be <i>truly</i> happy—not just I-don't-have-to-worry-about-paying-for-food-and-rent happy.<p>In the latter case, you can keep thinking of how happy you are because you have so few things to worry about. In the former case you can't afford to worry at all.
Last time I read the number was 12,000:<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200733.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07...</a><p>I must say, I got by with 12k (what I made in 2004), but if any emergency would have happened I would have been in trouble.<p>60k is very comfortable here in Texas.<p>I also know some very miserable millionaires who are depressed no matter how many pills they take.
I think the key take-away is this:<p><pre><code> But the real trick, Kahneman said, is to spend time with people you like.
</code></pre>
I've looked at my history of happiness, and I've found very little correlation between my salary and happiness, mostly just a short term happiness bump when I first get a raise. On the other hand, the correlation between nearness of good friends and my happiness stands clearly.
Everyone here seems to be missing the fact that in the video he differentiates between the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self".<p>With respect to the "remembering self", the reflective state, the more money you earn the more satisfied you are. Or to paraphrase Socrates:<p>The unexamined life is not worth living, unless you are poor.
Apparently you only needed $40,000 to be happy in 2004. <a href="http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000-to-be-happy/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000...</a>
Having watched how developers (even several from HN) completely mis-understood John Allspaw's talk about business needs & deployments, I now imagine part of the next generation of HN start-up types will begin offering $60k salaries to engineers citing that TED video as the basis of their market rate guesstimate.