“Although a large body of research does show that people become happier as they move from being very poor to lower middle class, after this point the impact of income on happiness is much weaker. Think of someone who makes $100,000 one year and $110,000 the next—do we really expect this additional income to suddenly make this person fulfilled, without a care in the world? (You can also think about whether such changes in your own income really make you happier with your life on a day-to-day basis: Being informed about a raise certainly makes us happy, but the $10,000 doesn’t make our siblings or in-laws any less difficult to deal with over the course of the following year. …) Although people believe that having money leads to happiness, our research suggests that this is only the case if at least some of that money is given to others.” Via HBS
I feel like money can’t buy you love; however, in the United States, where everything is dependent on cash-in-hand, money does buy you rest, calm, security, and health. In my new home, Berlin, money isn’t a number-one priority because there are social services — a safety net — that takes that baseline level of “what would I do if I lost my insurance/home/car/job feeling that constantly is renting space in all of our heads. Sadly, in America, money is all there is. Cash is the only currency. Social programs are under-funded, neglected, and shameful to actually use. We’re in a country that considers any sort of public funding, subsidies, or support to be part and parcel of a “nanny state,” considered to be a bad thing in this land of the rugged, boot-strapped, self-made, capitalistic, individualist. So, while money can’t buy me love, it can get me married, can subsidize a family, education, insurance, vacations, time off, rest, travel, schools, colleges, cars, medical care, unforeseen expenses, and the kinds of safety next that only money can buy.
Poll: How Much Do You Need to Live Comfortably?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
…and horses, money can also buy horses.
Chris I have to agree with you here 100%. Money certainly buys additional layers of comfort and ease in America – which makes one more relaxed and therefore happier. But – the truth is happiness is not in the money it is in a state of mind. Which in Berlin may be easier to attain.
I do so agree and part of what is at issue in this election are several of these issues. In Europe– everyone has a vacation. In the US, it’s a strictly capitalistic, laissez-faire society (I love Ayn Rand but poverty, hunger and illness due to substandard *everything* isn’t in my vocabularly.)
I agree that if you have sufficent $$$ here in the US, you have live comfortably. Will it buy you a Louis Vuitton bag? Hell no, but that’s not the standard of living we are talking about.
Nice post Chris. I will have something for you to chew on next week
Yea, maybe, Chris.
Money can relieve some of the stress of not having those personal safety measures and moments of relaxation, but that still might not make you happy.
Lots of really crabby people take vacations.
Pam » Some people think that the more a family or community crabs and complains, the healthier the family or community. Pissing and moaning generally requires a certain level of security.
Stevie » OK, here’s my question… how much money is sufficient in the United States to “live comfortably?”
Fair enough, Chris, if happiness = security, or the absence of unhappiness.
For me, that is just ‘even’. For me, security does not, necessarily, mean happiness.
If radiating joy and experiencing bliss = happiness, then I would need more than insurance. And vacations need not cost money.
Too Pollyanna?
If happiness is serenity then I believe that’s achieved when one is able to be 100% present, regarless of the circumstances. Money makes that tough. There are too many external necessities riding on it.
I absolutely agree with what is quoted about money at different ends of the income spectrum. In fact, I had to read it carefully to determine that it was not taken from my own book! I like to use this analogy. If you have to struggle with three buses and two transfers each day, twice a day to commute to and from work, you feel the hardship. If you earn enough to buy yourself a puddle-jumper, now you can drive direct and bypass most of the misery. No waiting in the rain. No chasing after missed buses. Lifespan increased by an-hour-per-day (that’s more than even vitamins can do!).
Now, take that same person, five years later with a much greater increase in income hopping into a brand new SUV. At first, it’s pure joy, the sensation of something new. And although it is more comfortable, the contrast is small and it is not making life that much easier, not adding more time to one’s life, etc. You quickly get used to it and take it for granted.
David Leonhardt
Pam » No, it is not too Pollyanna. However, it is hard to even think about getting into a nice freestyle swim, enjoying the warm water, the gorgeous sun, and the coral and fish if you’re drowning and never even learned how to swim. Security allows people to have the calm to not always be “in the Grip” as OD/Myers-Briggs gurus (sometimes referred to as being in the grip of the inferior function).
David Leonhardt » I think that while there is a tendency for us to normalize on luxury — and not even realize any more, the progress from poverty to wealth and then to wild success. I am not talking about that, I am talking about your first step: “If you have to struggle with three buses and two transfers each day, twice a day to commute to and from work, you feel the hardship.” I feel that there are too many people in this grip of terrible desperation. Even people with insurance who don’t have enough coverage, I consider in this place and this space. People like to stovepipe all the way into the space of comparing our working poor to the fish known as an Oscar… it tends to always grow to the size of its tank not matter what. People are not Oscars. There are quite a few people with homes, cars, school payments, and even second homes who are in this level of duress and are in the grip, so I am willing to even expand this to what I said in my poll, Poll: How Much Do You Need to Live Comfortably? — and I think that “comfortably” is literally whomever takes the poll’s call. Thanks for the passionate and thoughtful reply.