Not entirely correct. There is plenty of data that above a certain point more money doesn’t lead to increased happiness. That point is a little debated but I believe it’s around $90k/y.
Of course, the other psychological issue is research also shows we compare ourselves to others so no matter how much we have of someone has more we feel inadequate.
Update from 2021: Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year
Past research has found that experienced well-being does not increase above incomes of $75,000/y. This finding has been the focus of substantial attention from researchers and the general public, yet is based on a dataset with a measure of experienced well-being that may or may not be indicative of actual emotional experience (retrospective, dichotomous reports). Here, over one million real-time reports of experienced well-being from a large US sample show evidence that experienced well-being rises linearly with log income, with an equally steep slope above $80,000 as below it. This suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people’s day-to-day well-being, rather than having already reached a plateau for many people in wealthy countries.
I think this study is oft misquoted or misapplied. I can think of plenty of lifestyles in which 300k yields me significantly more happiness than 150k, despite 150k giving more than what I need to be happy.
I think the point of the study was to say that wealth has decreasing utility. your first 100k is gonna be insanely more valuable than your second, etc.
wealth’s weird too in that the more money you make, the easier it is to make more of it, exaggerating that effect.
got some losing picks here. as a very wise man said, “a system that spits out losers is just as good as one that spits out winners.”
beeyoft
two mega 13’s. yikes.
It definitely discounts people who are in immediate need.
Some mind blowing takes in the thread. Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug.
Imagine the happiness that would come from giving away that 300K.
people do lose sight of this but none of the takes here are that weird for the typical college grad in a good field.
i made $8/hr from 2007-2014. until black friday it was fine, but then shit got rough. the problem is you’re constantly running into unexpected (but inevitable) events that cost $$ that you can’t dig out of.
then i made $15 and i felt rich because while I was still paycheck to paycheck, I could afford to live more normally.
then outta college I started making $75,000 and it was like my life completely changed. the jump from 75 to 150 was much less noticeable because at that point you’re just saving a lot or thinking of ways to spend it. the only material difference is i drive a ridiculously silly car now
Huge +1 to the fact that the more money you make the easier it is to make more. It snowballs super hard.
There is a huge range between having enough money to not work and having a couple hundred million. When you have that much money you’re going to spend all your time managing your wealth. Your whole life will change, usually for the worse. All your relationships with friends and family will be affected. Every part of your life will now revolve around you having stupid amounts of money.
If you want to not work, do whatever the heck you want in life, and never really have to worry about money, you probably want a few million. If you can’t be happy and fulfilled with that, more money isn’t going to solve your problems.
If you put the over/under on how many people itf aren’t familiar with that angle at 1, i would take the under.
I agree.
But we’re not talking the difference between 50 million and 900 million. It’s the difference between 10k and 900 million.
i don’t have relationships with friends and family, so I’ll take the commas.
you’re not wrong but I think a lot of people already have shit relationships and would toss them aside in a heartbeat for that.
sad, but it is what it is
and managing wealth doesn’t have to be a hassle. You hire a few people to do that for you and once a quarter you review and rebalance your strategy. That’s if you’re lazy like me, some people would probably feel the need to do more than that but honestly there’s very few big mistakes you can make at a certain point. The reason lottery winners go broke as they over leverage themselves on ridiculous purchases for large chunks of their net worth like $40 million houses and boats and shit. And they give money to every single person they know.
That’s why you give most of it away. You spend the 1st month in seclusion and any asshole that abnormally contacts you gets nothing.
After you devise a distribution plan any of those assholes that would have made the cut, you give their portion to the person, least like them, that deserves it. Then you send them a letter that states this.
Once you’ve settled on a reasonable amount to keep, 1-10 million, you start a green business or 2 and offer jobs to people who you care about. I would invest heavily in dog rescues that subsidize people who take in rescues over purebreds.
Then you build your homestead. If this is done wisely, you can surround yourself with good peeps and always have something beyond money to return to.
Then you live life.
yea real talk, my gameplan in life is to bank 2-3 mill in savings and then go live in a poor but beautiful part of the world that has decent internet, and then pursue my hobbies til i succumb to my various illnesses. i hope to get there before i’m 50 because i fucking hate working.
seriously though - think of the good people like us could do with $500 million vs some hedge fund prick or CEO. the world would objectively be better if people that didn’t want wealth got it.
I’d rather not have to deal with any of this and just have a couple million. Seems so much easier, and much more attainable too.
If you win $900 million, don’t you just take the $450MM and put it into vanguard account and live off of a million or two a year?
Risk of ruin of 450MM is pretty low.
ITT we try to rationalize avarice.
people do frequently go broke with sums like this though, somehow
Unstuck could easily devise a plan to give 8900 people 10K each.
