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How much money do people need to be happy?

208 点作者 prakashk大约 7 年前

50 条评论

howeyc大约 7 年前
Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you&#x27;re set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to &quot;move the needle&quot; so to speak.<p>You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn&#x27;t change any of these obligations, or change your life in any significant way, you just put away more money into the bank.<p>Of course, stepping from 40K to 100K in salary is practically life altering. Unless you absolutely suck at budgets you can easily get out of debt and start having real vacations. You can afford hobbies, etc.<p>That&#x27;s one thing I&#x27;ve always wondered. Unless you can reach super high incomes, the &quot;buy&#x2F;rent a jet&quot; incomes, your life isn&#x27;t that different from &quot;all the rest.&quot; You still commute to work daily, have a house, etc. I mean sure, the house and car may have higher price points, but the lifestyle is still the same. Maybe I&#x27;m wrong and all those luxury brand commercials are right, spending 30 minutes (or however long) per day in a 80K car is so much more rewarding than spending those 30 minutes in a 40K car.
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Kluny大约 7 年前
Anyone else find that even as they do their best to be frugal, expenses pile up as fast as your paycheck does?<p>In my case, as soon as I started making decent money, I got a hearing and glasses (I didn&#x27;t have them before), started taking physiotherapy to fix my shoulders, going to the dentist, changing the oil in my car on schedule, buying shoes as they wore out instead of pushing them until they gave me hip and knee problems, etc... I wouldn&#x27;t say I was &quot;unhappy&quot; about any of those things before I could afford them, but I simply didn&#x27;t spend money on them.
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cdoxsey大约 7 年前
I&#x27;m always struck by this proverb:<p>&gt; “Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.<p>One thing I didn&#x27;t see in the comments here, though I may&#x27;ve just missed it, is that with more money you have more of an opportunity to give it away. You can make a real difference for people in need. I suspect not many in the HN crowd tithe, by which I mean giving 10% of your income to charity, but perhaps it&#x27;s something to consider, and probably more fulfilling than a slightly nicer car.
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derekp7大约 7 年前
Is this net income (after taxes, and possibly after 401k [or equivalent] savings)?<p>I would say that having no debt, or at least having manageable debt, along with knowing you are saving enough for retirement, and making enough that you don&#x27;t have to second-guess if you can afford every purchase you make, is the real cutoff.<p>For example, if you don&#x27;t have mortgage debt then you are probably renting. So I consider mortgage &quot;manageable&quot; debt, along with any short-term debt that you can pay off within a year.<p>The other thing to consider, is life is full of stress-inducing &quot;things&quot; (situations, people, material objects, etc). Often times throwing money at the stress makes the stress lower or go away. So if you make enough where you can throw money at most of your stress and not break the bank, then that would greatly impact your happiness.
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ivanhoe大约 7 年前
I think the correct definition is: &quot;When you have enough to survive and you make as much money as people you compare yourself with&quot;. That&#x27;s why back in the days of socialism in Eastern Europe most of the people were quite content with being relatively poor, as long as they had the sense of social security and everyone else around them was as poor as them. On the other hand, nowadays many freelancers from poorer countries (me included), who are making a lot of money compared to their compatriots, are still not really happy as they don&#x27;t make as much as their colleagues on the West. As long as you know you could be doing better you&#x27;ll not be happy about the present situation... and soc. media is not helping with this...
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Bucephalus355大约 7 年前
There are a lot of posts, articles, and general interest over the last 15 years (compared to before) on “being and maximizing happiness”.<p>At face value, this seems very natural. However I think a lot could be gained by tackling the necessity of even asking that question.<p>Nietzsche has this really interesting point that every philosopher since Plato was most interested in “the truth” without seriously considering if “the truth” was a bad thing, worth all the effort, or perhaps not as valuable as other concepts.<p>In the same way, a lot of religions invert the happiness question, to great effect. In Christianity, suffering is turned into a much more worthwhile and meaningful pursuit; other religions distance themselves from happiness and instead take more stoic and detachment-based paths. All of them don’t tend to address “maximizing happiness” though because I think, being the product of thousands of years of experience, any religion that tried to do that failed in the face of life and history and would not succeed in gathering adherents.
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jk2323大约 7 年前
&quot;Money doesn&#x27;t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.&quot; Arnold Schwarzenegger
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petethomas大约 7 年前
Years ago a real estate agent driving me around to look at property relayed a somewhat pessimistic aphorism he&#x27;d picked up from his father: Life&#x27;s a shit sandwich, the more bread you have the less it tastes like shit.
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aidenn0大约 7 年前
I&#x27;ve seen it suggested elsewhere that there is no saturation point, it&#x27;s just that the relationship is logarithmic, and truncated logarithmic datasets look asymptotic.
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glangdale大约 7 年前
I always feel compelled to introduce people to the sage words of that great philosopher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, on this topic: &quot;Money doesn&#x27;t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.&quot;
monkeyfoop大约 7 年前
Let&#x27;s ask all the employment wage slaves how happy they are and then conclude that they do not become happier above 105k based on self report.<p>What a joke.<p>A person making 500k or more or someone with high net worth is going to have a more full life (not needing to work, help community, help family)
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Gustomaximus大约 7 年前
I feel the missing piece is income security.<p>If your earning $200k and sweating bullets to keep a high pressure job your not going to be as happy as the $120k job for life middle management. Also as the higher your income goes the few jobs at they bracket exist.<p>Whereas if the $200k job is for a person largely guaranteed a job at that pay somewhere I feel that would provide more opportunity to do things you like and increase happiness.<p>I&#x27;ve come across of a few of these studies. Has anyone separated out &#x27;income security&#x27;?
IkmoIkmo大约 7 年前
To be honest, I&#x27;m kind of tired seeing this &#x27;research finding&#x27; pop up over and over again. It feels the whole world is familiar with it.<p>What I&#x27;m lacking is a thorough study of determinants and causal effects. Not just intuition that we&#x27;re satiated, but something deeper.<p>For example, where is the study that compares a $200k wage earner vs a $200k capital earner, to provide indications that money merely be an approximation for &#x27;freedom&#x27; or &#x27;lower stress&#x27;.<p>Where&#x27;s the study that looks at whether diminishing returns to happiness from money are due to social isolation the richer you get? i.e. making $100k a year makes you look great in an $80k crowd, and still allows you to mingle with a $40k crowd. But making $5m a year detaches you completely from being able to have meaningful relationships with 95% of people without eventually being viewed as different, unable to understand their daily plight and always doubting whether people envy you or dislike you.<p>I don&#x27;t know if any of those things are true, but they are interesting to investigate. Not another superficial article talking about &#x27;researchers have found the most basic correlation and share superficial 100 year old intuitive ideas about why that might be which they never investigated&#x27;.
thedirt0115大约 7 年前
I feel like this is basic economics... money, like most things, has diminishing marginal utility.<p>From a common sense standpoint, it&#x27;s not so much that having money makes you happy, but having to <i>worry</i> about money definitely can make you unhappy.<p>Probably bad analogy: Eating a meal that I&#x27;d rate 9&#x2F;10 doesn&#x27;t make me much happier than a meal that&#x27;s 8&#x2F;10, but having to worry about whether I&#x27;m going to be able to eat today at all would definitely make me sad.
stevedekorte大约 7 年前
Unless income is randomly assigned, how do we draw any causal conclusions?<p>For example, what if being predisposed to certain kinds of anxiety tend to cause one to both make more money in order to have more security, and never be satisfied with that security?
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adventured大约 7 年前
I&#x27;ve never understood the absolute premise of: money can&#x27;t buy happiness.<p>It very obviously can. I&#x27;m happy when I&#x27;m not living in a ditch. When I&#x27;m warm in Winter. When I have food and I&#x27;m not afraid of starving to death. When I can afford to pay my rent or mortgage. And those are the primitives. I&#x27;m extremely happy when I can spend a month at the beach (say I live in the mountains or midwest), or hop on a plane and enjoy the glorious creations of cultures from Paris to Rome to Tokyo to Buenos Aires.<p>Up to a point? I call bullshit on that too. That&#x27;s a lack of creativity. Assuming we&#x27;re not talking &quot;point&quot; = the scale of the universe or something beyond reasonable human potential. I&#x27;d be very happy spending my life trying to figure out how to benefit humanity with the $127 billion Bezos is sitting on. It&#x27;d be an immense joy, it&#x27;d be challenging, it&#x27;d be rewarding, it would fundamentally further my happiness.<p>There are various types of personal happiness, some are more core than others. Articles that discuss the up to a point benefits of money always collapse due to that.
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tsomctl大约 7 年前
To quote my grandpa (who started off with nothing and retired as a millionaire): money doesn&#x27;t buy happiness, but it sure makes it easier.
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wenc大约 7 年前
&gt; the psychologists who conducted the study find that the one making $200,000 is probably no happier than the one making $120,000. This is because both the $120,000 and $200,000 women have incomes above $105,000, which according to their research is the point at which greater household income in the US is not associated with greater happiness. The technical term for this cutoff is the income “satiation point.”<p>Sounds like satiation point is where the lower levels of Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy have been satisfied.<p>This article [0] makes the point that mastery, belonging, and autonomy contribute to happiness, as well as the worldview of abundance vs one of scarcity.<p>[0] Why so many smart people aren&#x27;t happy <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;why-so-many-smart-people-arent-happy&#x2F;479832&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;why-so-...</a>
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Francute大约 7 年前
Does anyone think this may be related to the fact that you don&#x27;t have a hard goal to seek for the money you are working?<p>For example; I want a new PC, so I work for 6 months working and thinking on that new pc. Then finally, when I have enough money to buy it and do it, I love it. The effort that cost me gives it an extra value to me. Exactly like when you worked as a kid for the game you really wanted to have. Didn&#x27;t matter if the game ended being horrible, for you that game was special, and also you could continue playing it after some years with nostalgia feelings.<p>If I have enough money, this effort is allmost zero. At the moment i get a new need i could satisfy it.<p>Of course, this is just another hypothesis, and could explain why some people says aren&#x27;t happier with more money, probably they want something harder to get and still achievable with money&#x2F;work.
ryandrake大约 7 年前
The real test for me is: Do I have sufficient assets to quit my job and still maintain my current standard of living and spending habits? It has nothing to do with wage income.
vinceguidry大约 7 年前
I think people vastly underestimate the happiness potential that convenience offers. Time is our scarcest asset, and wasting it is extremely distressing. Stress is a big factor in perceived happiness. So yeah, spending money to save time can have a large impact on how happy you are.
mancerayder大约 7 年前
People need enough to not feel, or be, materially insecure. It&#x27;s somewhat subjective (I might have high demands with regards to caviar and champagne) but usually not (groceries, roof, education, doctor).<p>What&#x27;s interesting is that there&#x27;s no mainstream concept for not-materially-insecure. Perhaps, if there were, it would turn into a demand by the population. And we can&#x27;t have that.
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ppeetteerr大约 7 年前
If you look at the happiness income in East Asia, you&#x27;ll note it&#x27;s higher than in the US. This indicates that the value is not absolute (things you need to be happy) but it&#x27;s relative to the area.<p>The best indicator of happiness related to income I have seen concluded that the income is relative to the income of your peers: if they make more money, you will be less happy, if they make less, you will be more happy. This goes well with the idea that people feel more fortunate when they are around people who are less fortunate.<p>In short, if you want to feel happy about your life, hang out around people who earn less.
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JepZ大约 7 年前
I think money is just a something like food: you need it to some amount to have a good life and having a bit more than you need increases your happiness slightly. Having much more, doesn&#x27;t change much.<p>There are two very important things to make you happy:<p>1. Reason and Prospect<p>2. Freedom (to execute)<p>Money can increase your level of Freedom (e.g. so you don&#x27;t have to spend your time working for someone else). A Reason doesn&#x27;t have to be the reason of your life. It just has to be something you want to accomplish (be rich; be a good parent; be admired; etc.) in combination with an idea to get there (prospect).
sharemywin大约 7 年前
- geography probably plays into that.<p>- family size.<p>- at around $2-5 Million in assets you could live off the interest and do what you want for work or not.
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sremani大约 7 年前
If money does not buy you happiness, then you don&#x27;t know where to shop!<p>- a wise man.
WheelsAtLarge大约 7 年前
The real answer, a little more than the people around you. Here&#x27;s a simple example, the upper middle class in Manhattan will need enough to keep their lifestyle plus however much more so they are not at the bottom of the social class. Let&#x27;s guess $350,000 a year. Now go to Nigeria where the per capita GNP is $1,200 a year and you give a person $5000 a year then that person would jump up with joy.<p>There&#x27;s not one number. The number is relative to where you live.<p>Here&#x27;s a quote I like:<p>&quot;When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it&#x27;s longer than any hour. That&#x27;s relativity.&quot; A. Einstein<p>It doesn&#x27;t fit 100% but you get the idea.
raister大约 7 年前
&quot;There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.&quot; - Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
tortoise1大约 7 年前
I am making 105K and i am not sure about happiness. I am happy some part of the day, then i am sleeping then i am working and then i am not happy for some reason for few mins and then i am happy again for some other reason. Sometimes mins are hours and some times day are days.<p>Is there anyone who is happy 24&#x2F;7&#x2F;365?<p>Why is there such measurement of happiness? When it cannot really be measured.<p>Some times when there is one kid playing with me i am happy and when some times there are 10 kids around me screaming i am not happy.<p>I think these days we really need a down vote and dislike buttons as i don&#x27;t understand why money and time is being wasted into such misleading research efforts.<p>You can be happy with $0 and happy with $1,000,000. and also you can be not happy with $0 and not happy with $1,000,000.<p>It is the amount of time you are happy, and i don&#x27;t think anyone on this planet can be happy 24&#x2F;7&#x2F;365.<p>The number of happy moments may be something that is measurable but that also cannot be tied to any other factor.<p>I think if the AI is built on top of such false big data then its just going to result into artificial stupidity.<p>We don&#x27;t need more of those.
mcgarnagle大约 7 年前
1,000,000 dollars, source <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs</a>
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908087大约 7 年前
Personally, there was a point where I had &#x2F; was making enough that I felt the need to conceal that fact from people, particularly when I first met them. This meant that I had to go as far as to conceal much of what makes me who I am from people, as some of my hobbies are rather expensive. That was the point where making more meant that I became progressively less happy.
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lph大约 7 年前
Alright, but let&#x27;s revisit the polled people when they&#x27;re 80 and see who&#x27;s happy... those who were able to save for retirement, or those who weren&#x27;t.<p>&quot;Are you happy?&quot; is such a first-world-problems question. I&#x27;d settle for being able to answer &quot;yes&quot; to &quot;are your basic needs met?&quot; for myself and my family in perpetuity...
petercooper大约 7 年前
<i>If</i> I were single, it&#x27;d be no more than whatever lump sum would semi-guarantee I could have $5000 turning up every month for the rest of my life (so about $1.5m, I&#x27;d say). Since I&#x27;m married with kids, however, it might as well be an infinite amount :-D
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icc97大约 7 年前
&gt; Respondents across the world were asked to rate their lives on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is the “worst possible life” and 10 is the “best possible life.”<p>I don&#x27;t think the study properly correlates to &#x27;happiness&#x27;. As the article describes, it&#x27;s more like &#x27;satisfaction&#x27;. These are not the same [0]<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-is-the-distinction-between-happiness-and-satisfaction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-is-the-distinction-between-happin...</a>
trevyn大约 7 年前
Yes, without limit, barring some sort of severe mental disorder.<p>1) Most people don’t know <i>how</i> to buy more happiness past some point.<p>2) There’s also a point at which you’re ridiculously ecstatic 24&#x2F;7, so you’re really more interested in self-actualization than “happiness”.<p>I should clarify that I don’t yet know a good way to get <i>instant</i> long-term happiness, there is some work and time involved.
golergka大约 7 年前
The region chart is almost meaningless: &quot;Middle East&#x2F;North Africa&quot; lumps together Sudan, Dubai, Syria and Israel as if these countries have much in common in terms of economic development.
dsacco大约 7 年前
tl;dr - A new study finds that $105,000 is the income level at which people no longer feel happier earning more money. This updates the previous number, $75,000, from a 2010 study.<p>Personally, I’m deeply skeptical of any psychology or sociology research that relies on magic numbers like “105,000”. As far as I can tell, the study doesn’t even account for cost of living.
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latchkey大约 7 年前
Living in Ho Chi Minh City for the last 1.5 years (from San Francisco) and seeing how dirt poor people are, yet smiling and living their lives, the answer is &#x27;not much&#x27;.
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blahfuk大约 7 年前
Used to be 75K, now it&#x27;s 105K. When will we finally admit that there is no satiation point, and rich people generally live better lives?
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CuriouslyC大约 7 年前
In my experience you only need enough money not to have to think about money. If you have simple tastes, that isn&#x27;t necessarily a lot.
propelol大约 7 年前
How does ones partner affect this? Does both need to earn the maximum, or earn the double combined?
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vectorEQ大约 7 年前
you &#x27;need&#x27; money for your wants. so basically you don&#x27;t need money, unless you want things. there&#x27;s plenty of people who are happy as can be, who have never even heard of money :s
throw7大约 7 年前
Happiness is what you give.
RikNieu大约 7 年前
Just a little bit more.
habosa大约 7 年前
Isn&#x27;t the real number just more than the people next to you? Wealth is completely relative.<p>You could feel rich in a poor area with your brand new Camry and feel poor in the Hamptons with your brand new Mercedes.
Stanleyc23大约 7 年前
this study appears built off the assume that everyone has the same &quot;satiation point&quot;. that doesn&#x27;t seem like a good assumption to me.
dingo_bat大约 7 年前
&gt; where 0 is the “worst possible life” and 10 is the “best possible life.” (This author would give himself an eight.)<p>I guess the author is really satisfied with his life. I&#x27;d give myself no more than 5.
plg大约 7 年前
This cutoff where more money doesn&#x27;t bring any more happiness ... maybe it&#x27;s true, maybe it&#x27;s not. Personally, I would like to do the experiment and then find out.
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sjapkee大约 7 年前
Enough.
chapill大约 7 年前
Trick question. People who waste their money never have enough money to be happy.