Last year I sold some stock from my last startup, a little over $1m after taxes, and I can say it's definitely changed things for the better.
In this period of time, I have been able to:
- Quit my founder position at that startup (thus avoiding potentially being tied to vesting or retention clauses, in case of an acquisition)
- Own my house, and invest in a few other apartments, which turned into a little side business with great margins
- Start a new company investing my own money, and not requiring a salary
- Travel and live in a few different cities as I build the new startup
- Completely forget about the price tag when buying small-ticket things: a taxi ride, asking for an extra plate, an occasional flight, paying a round of drinks
It's not as it money made me happy by spending it, but it did remove a lot of the constraints I had before. It's made me feel like the default state would be to be carefree and happy, and as long as you can keep the worries and the stress away, everything will go alright.
As a new worry, I now spend a lot of time thinking about how to reinvest it wisely and continue living like this. It's not overwhelming, and it's not very different than what doing my finances felt like before, but doing it a larger scale adds a new dimension to it.
> Completely forget about the price tag when buying small-ticket things: a taxi ride, asking for an extra plate, an occasional flight, paying a round of drinks
Needs a little asterisk, you're changing your lifestyle to one that you probably can not yet afford, be careful with that, these 'little things' really add up over time.
i completely disagree - he has a small but successful real estate business and has presumably close to or over $1M in assets. he definitely can afford a tax ride, an extra appetizer, or a flight somewhere without thinking about the implications of the cost. if not this guy, then who? do you have to be a billionaire before you can order an appetizer without guilt?
i'll describe the lifestyle you probably can't afford - $20k vacations, $500 dinners, $100k cars, and $1M houses. not appetizers and taxi rides. appetizers and taxi rides are normal things that normal people buy. even normal people who don't have a successful exit under their belt and don't have a successful new business as an investor.
this irrational overemphasis on frugality i always see on hn just seems like a different form of elitism / pedantry to me. since most of us have money, it's just a covert way of signaling an extra level of self-control and discipline (which are usually required to make money, but since so many of us make money, we've got to find novel ways to signal that extra status).
True :) that probably deserves clarification: I made a clear separation between "spending money" (rent, travels, food, leisure) and "investment money".
Anything spent is either an investment, where I try to keep returns over 5% yearly, or just everyday stuff. I've found that everyday stuff ends up not being very different than my previous spending levels.
EDIT: I also live outside the Bay Area, which definitely helps.
Money can increase your effective lifespan. A typical billionair has a staff of about 100 people who take care of all the small things that otherwise sip away time from whatever is left over for normal people after work day. They do not have to worry about doing laundry or tidy up the house or even shopping their own cloths (they have concierge who monitors trends and knows your preferences and sends you whole bunch of cloths to try out on demand). They don't typically waste time in booking a travel or wait for a flight or taxi or waiting for coffee at Starbucks. All these "chores" and "waits" out of the way, they can focus on pure experiences and living it up to do exactly what they want. A typical billionair has capability to have 20X more life experiences than a regular guy. So in effect they can live equivalent of 20 lifetimes in same amount of lifespan.
Of course, in reality things don't pan out exactly like that. Many superrich would eventually be too stressed, constantly keeping scope of their wealth, spend 18 hours a day in work that likely won't be relevant in just a decade, end up in divorce or become substance abusive. But what is interesting to me is that money can actually expand your effective lifespan.
I have often thought about how much happier I would be if I had enough money to not really balk paying for a mid-level sushi restaurant every week or so. Though ultimately I'm not sure how much more money I'd have to make before having that comfort. It would be nice though.
It is interesting. 99% of the time you don't even think about it, or write it off with half a thought as you are busy and want to eat healthy, quality food but occasionally it occurs to you "You know, I don't even have to think about this." and remember a time when you did. Progress is a great feeling.
Kind of same here. And if you are not in the US or in Europe you can actually not even look at the price and just think "What do I want to do?", "What do I want to eat?", ... it's so reliving
Money is the most tricky thing men will ever face. Not talking about extreme poverty here, the following is what I've learned:
More money leads in almost all people to artificial value, short term superficial happiness, degradation of the soul. On the outside it looks great and shiny, but on the inside the soul starves and craves true happiness. Unfortunately, most rich people react unconsciously by spending more and more, in a desperate effort to fill the ever growing gap.
Longer term less money creates in almost all people higher valuation of the most simple and basic things, which translates to true happiness for the soul. Less money can restore happiness if people are willing.
But there is of course a lot more affected by the money in our lives, especially the ego. A rich men easily thinks he is really someone, a 'great' man, special, gifted, etc.. The poor man will most often struggle with the opposite thoughts and feelings, while in the end it's all false.
If I ever again have quite some money to spend, I'll be very vigilant, you'll see me desperately trying to hold myself back. Never trade your soul for money (or power) is my advice. And if you have a lot of it, use a substantial part to help poor children for example, give them food, education, that will create you some ever lasting happiness, at least, if you can hold yourself back from growing your ego on that.
>More money leads in almost all people to artificial value, short term superficial happiness, degradation of the soul.
I could not disagree more. In the vast majority of cases, money leads to less misery. Then you just lead your life without the obsessive material thoughts so many struggle with.
I do agree with your last point, though, that once you reach a certain level of stability, you should focus on either reducing other people's misery if you have the power to do so or creating things (either yourself or by proxy) that wouldn't exist in the world without your help.
Eh I definitely would agree with his point, everyone I know who has a net worth > 100 million USD is absolutely miserable. At that point I've noticed what those people want is a real human connection, which is impossible if others are aware of your wealth.
It seems like more common is to start obsessing about how to retain your wealth, pass it on, grow a fortune, leave a legacy, etc. You replace one obsession with another, and that's really not surprising. An obsessive person will always find something to obsess about. Money isn't going to fix a poor perspective on life.
It's strange to me that people think having or not having money is directly tied to obsessing over money. These are two separate things that aren't actually connected--the number in your bank account and the state of your mind.
You can have $1bn and be totally miserable and miserly, you can have .15 and be generous and happy, and vice versa.
>More money leads in almost all people to artificial value, short term superficial happiness, degradation of the soul.
>Longer term less money creates in almost all people higher valuation of the most simple and basic things, which translates to true happiness for the soul.
Having been dead broke, severely underemployed while freelancing, and in a position where I would have been homeless were it not for my amazing girlfriend I can't help but feel a visceral amount of disagreement with this sentiment. Not having money is miserable. Currently I am pretty well off (greater than 75th percentile in the US) and the change in my life that I can directly attribute to having more money is astonishing. Placing a high value on basic things doesn't lead to happiness. It leads to stress, worry, sadness, self loathing, and worst of all envy. And if you have kids I can't even imagine the amount of guilt one might feel if you can't provide for them.
If you go to the grocery store and agonize over every item you place in your cart because not doing so means you might not be able to pay your rent there's almost no way you're going to have the will and the energy left at the end of the day to really enjoy the things that matter in life. It's just too draining and has a real opportunity cost. That's not placing a higher value on basic things, that's putting on blinders and only focusing on your immediate future.
I can feel this in other domains too: relationships (short term, hormonal, struggle-free), knowledge (web era, ease of access, no deep integration, no effort into reaching, organizing, interpreting).
There's a subtle paradox in ourselves for we crave easiness when I believe what we need is to learn how to abstract over complexity.
I was happiest 15 years ago working as a raft guide and traveling the world. I had very little money then, but I was very happy. I got to do what I loved every day. I usually made two large purchases per year (the opposite of what this article suggests) - a kayak and a return ticket to my next destination.
I now sit in front of a computer. Earn OK money but not enough to retire on anytime soon (I am in Spain just now, money isn't great here). I guess I make lots more smaller purchases than I did in the old days (though they are usually far less meaningful to me than the large purchases I made back then). I was definitely happier back then.
It's probably true to the extent that buying small pleasures vs large pleasures works in this case. However there's another factor they mention, "Buy experiences not things". This was fulfilled for you simply by doing the raft guide and travelling without spending money for it. It's also arguable raft guide means helping others ,but not necessary to explain why you were happier in the old day.s
The difference is that you have to fish everyday, or you starve and you can't "play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos" any more.
Where as in the 15 years later version, you don't need to fish at all.
I can't tell if I'm happier now. When I was a grad student I was always stressed over money, and my health was very bad (this is atypical, I should have been on more responsible about my health rather than dismissing it to promising to see the doctor after the next deadline). I have to work harder to learn new things, and I don't have access to a community that is intrinsically connected to the computer science research community.
My health is better now, and I can depend on myself to provide for myself, but sometimes it does just feel like there's a hole that money can't fill. I often feel like I have to continually keep my mind focused on not giving up on higher education or the act of responsibly confusing myself with too much study, just because I happen to be good at software development in a different regard. The ability to be totally lost in a class way beyond the depth I saw myself capable of surmounting was a luxury I took seriously for granted.
My parents tell me they're way happier now, in their 50s, than they were in their 20s. I'm in 25 now and I'm not feeling that good. It's become all right, but I wouldn't want it to get worse, that's for sure.
If you're not getting progressively happier with your life under fairly normal circumstances, you're doing it wrong.
Seriously; unless there is something that has fucked your life so badly, you should have been spending your time thinking, reflecting and experiencing what makes your happy and more satisfied, and trying to pierce through the bullshit of society's expectations versus your own needs and wants.
No one is exempt from the tragedies of life, but there's not excuse for not being mindful of what enriches your soul.
Worked in Austria, Inn, Oetz, Sanna, Mexico on the Copalita and Chile on the Petrohoue. Chile is a superb destination for whitewater, I spent the start and end of the season kayaking in different areas.
There are all sorts of complexities here that's difficult to capture in sweeping statements, statistics, principles or studies.
Money (problems) are the source of lots of unhappiness. Stress and its consequences. Failing to make ends meet is stressful and unhappy. While being a broke and careless 26 year old in love might be fun, in most circumstances being broke sucks. Choosing between a dentist or ballet class for your 5 year old is not pleasant.
There are noncausational correlations between making money and happiness. To a large extent, having money is one big example of successfully functioning in our society. It's therefore probably correlated with all sorts of other types of functioning. Making money is often succeeding at controlling your life. It's similar to other successes at controlling one's life (deliberately and successfully choosing a career or family life). These are related to happiness.
Feeling successful is pleasant in itself. Most of us work most of our lives. Money is the main reason. Not making much money is (with many exceptions) failing to make more money, failure is unpleasant.
My Shtick recently is attempting to be deliberate. There's a lot of romanticism around serendipity, less so about deliberate action. They're not really competitive, but they often feel like they are. In any case, spending your money in a more happiness generating way is being deliberate about being happy. It extends past money. Be deliberate about spending your time, your effort and anything else you spend on happiness and you will probably be more happy.
Money are the source of lots of unhappiness, but as they point out: We adapt.
The research does not support that "being broke sucks".
The research supports that starving and being homeless sucks. The moment you are not starving, and have shelter, peoples happiness level is on average almost as high as the happiness level of a rich person.
> Feeling successful is pleasant in itself.
It may be, but as we adapt to having little money and success, so do we adapt to having lots of money and lots of success. It does not bring substantial added happiness other than shortly after we achieve it. Being given a raise, or promotion, or public praise gives us happiness, but that happiness fades very quickly. Similarly, not making much money, or failing, is unpleasant but the unhappiness it causes is very much temporary unless you keep doing worse.
Avoiding adaption to an improved situation, and ensuring adaption to a worse situation is key to maximising happiness. You are best served by a slow, steady "drip" of improvement than suddenly achieving wealth, fame or success for example. Conversely, if you need to make cuts, you are far better off cutting your expenditure further than necessary, get used to it, and slowly see things improving, than you are making small cuts with the risk of having to cut back further.
Apart from relative effects on adapation, money overall has very little direct impact on happiness other than at the extremes:
If you starve; if you're homeless; if you lack access to mental health services; if you lack access to health services that can prevent or slow a degenerative condition (pretty much any catastrophic health change is subject to adaptation as long as the change is over quickly - e.g. amputees are as happy as most people relatively soon afterwards - but conditions that slowly become worse avoids adaptation).
(See Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" for more on this, and a decent chunk of references)
I'm far from up on the research, and I've heard conflicting versions of what research supports. But, this article seems to be treating the relationship as clearly causal but modest.
From the first paragraph:
"Scientists have studied the relationship between money and happiness for decades and their conclusion is clear: Money buys happiness, but it buys less than most people think (Aknin, Norton, & Dunn, 2009; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2000). The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest.."
My understanding of the research is that there is a point at which more money doesn't increase your emotional happiness (i.e. the amount of joy minus the amount of sorrow in your life), but that point is considerably higher than not-starving-and-not-homeless. I think you have misread The Happiness Hypothesis
You can probably skip one of a five year old's twice-annual dental checkups, given that they've still got baby teeth and likely to just get a clean. More of a choice than one might think, especially if you've got a kid who truly loves ballet.
Whatever the choice made, it sucks to have to make it.
Try living in a medium size city in the Philippines.
There are neighborhood stores here all over the place and they don't charge much more than you would have to pay by buying in bulk at a larger store. When I'm not shopping at a neighborhood store, I go to the local market. Each of these places are very bland. Basically just a bamboo or concrete house with the products hanging or stacked up in shelves. Often you just order through a barred window and they give you what you ask for. After shopping like this for months, walking into a regular grocery store is an assault on the senses. Packaging, marketing and colors everywhere. Things at the smaller stores are also really cheap because the locals have to be able to afford them. At the larger grocery stores I'm floored by the prices of everything. I avoid grocery stores as much as possible.
The selection of products here is slim. I can spend all day looking around different stores and not find one thing on my wishlist. Otherwise I find nothing interesting. Many products are cheap and low quality because expensive items don't sell. I'm happy living here and I have the things I really need.
Happy + have everything I really need + have money + nothing to spend money on = abundance of sorts. I don't know if I feel rich, but it's strange feeling like money doesn't really do me much good. Daily expenses are super cheap. I only have going out to eat to spend money on. My favorite meals only cost $1 - $3. When everything is cheap, an expensive meal seems excessive.
Further screwing with me is that I can help out with simple tech stuff at these restaurants and I can eat for free. Business owners here don't know how to use things like Facebook, which is basically the internet for the Philippines. It's not really worth my time, but I like to help. There goes my main expense outside of rent and utilities.
Indeed. It's somewhat durable, too -- while I certainly experience a lot more luxury since I left Davao, I'm no longer comfortable with even LA-without-a-car level extravagance being treated lightly.
I think it's worth pointing out the mirror of your thoughts (which are completely correct -- if you haven't had cheap and simple options, there is a deep luxury to it): If you're going to buy nice things -- which are the only options in America, truly -- enjoy them.
Food and housing seem so obvious to me. Like, you can get a chicken sandwich here, and eat something that is recognizably made of chicken (you can in the Philippines too, it's just that's more fancy than normal). I guess it never struck me how much of a luxury even the low-end of American foodstuffs are.
And I can get an apartment near Detroit that (1) can be air-conditioned to exactly the temperature I want, and not just a tolerable temperature, and (2) is, well... nice. Not falling apart, no holes in walls or things, consistent electricity, internet speeds exceeding 100kb/s (often by 30x).
Now, I don't need all this luxury, but man, the modest increase in expenses (maybe 2x? I live pretty cheap in America) definitely increases quality of life. If it didn't, I would probably not live here.
Money may not buy happiness, but it's strange how often it's a factor in things that make you unhappy.
The unhappiest I've ever been was during a difficult period with my family. Money was definitely involved, and the center of much of the issue, but it was the troubles in the relationship with people close to me that made me unhappy.
If money had never been an issue, I never would have had either trouble and things would be different today. The money part of the situation was trivially resolvable, but the relationship one has lingered for the better part of two decades and looks like it'll never find a satisfactory conclusion.
"Money doesn't buy happiness" is something said by either the very rich - who don't have to worry about money - or the very poor - to avoid getting even more unhappy about their situation. Having trouble paying the bills will cause stress, stress causes relational issues and whatnot.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does help with the basics of life. Which is why a minimum wage and by extension liveable income if you're unable to work should be a basic human right. That, or a similar form of supplying basic human needs - housing, food, water, clothing, privacy, access to information, hygene, etc.
"Money doesn't buy happiness" is largely demonstrably true for most people in their current situations. The available research does not back up any large correlation - causative or not - between happiness and wealth outside of very extreme situations:
If you starve, or lack shelter, money unambiguously increases average happiness substantially. Once you are fed and have somewhere to live - even if crappy - peoples happiness are minimally affected by additional money.
There are ways which you can leverage more money to increase your happiness, but interestingly the best approaches involve living below your means, no matter how much or little you have: The most efficient way of leveraging wealth into happiness is to ensure that you build a buffer so that you can maintain a slow, steady upwards trajectory as much as possible.
In motivational theory there is a concept called Two factor theory[1]. Some things provide job satisfaction, and some things cause job dissatisfaction. An employee could have all the job satisfaction in the world, but still be unhappy because there is other elements bothering him. Or another way round, nothing bothers him at work, but also nothing excites him.
Perhaps money is the same. It doesn't provide happiness, but lack of money does cause unhappiness.
For anyone who is interested in a shorter version of this journal article, Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew Blackman posted an article today titled "Can Money Buy Happiness? Here's What the Science Says." It's behind a paywall, which is why the harvard journal article is listed here (I'm assuming).
1) at the margin, it's better to spend money on fleeting experiences over material goods
2) money buys happiness up to a point (i.e. $75K per year, then there's diminishing returns)
3) don't get into debt or you're in for sadness
Readit News
In this period of time, I have been able to:
- Quit my founder position at that startup (thus avoiding potentially being tied to vesting or retention clauses, in case of an acquisition)
- Own my house, and invest in a few other apartments, which turned into a little side business with great margins
- Start a new company investing my own money, and not requiring a salary
- Travel and live in a few different cities as I build the new startup
- Completely forget about the price tag when buying small-ticket things: a taxi ride, asking for an extra plate, an occasional flight, paying a round of drinks
It's not as it money made me happy by spending it, but it did remove a lot of the constraints I had before. It's made me feel like the default state would be to be carefree and happy, and as long as you can keep the worries and the stress away, everything will go alright.
As a new worry, I now spend a lot of time thinking about how to reinvest it wisely and continue living like this. It's not overwhelming, and it's not very different than what doing my finances felt like before, but doing it a larger scale adds a new dimension to it.
> Completely forget about the price tag when buying small-ticket things: a taxi ride, asking for an extra plate, an occasional flight, paying a round of drinks
Needs a little asterisk, you're changing your lifestyle to one that you probably can not yet afford, be careful with that, these 'little things' really add up over time.
Other than that: Congratulations :)
i'll describe the lifestyle you probably can't afford - $20k vacations, $500 dinners, $100k cars, and $1M houses. not appetizers and taxi rides. appetizers and taxi rides are normal things that normal people buy. even normal people who don't have a successful exit under their belt and don't have a successful new business as an investor.
this irrational overemphasis on frugality i always see on hn just seems like a different form of elitism / pedantry to me. since most of us have money, it's just a covert way of signaling an extra level of self-control and discipline (which are usually required to make money, but since so many of us make money, we've got to find novel ways to signal that extra status).
Anything spent is either an investment, where I try to keep returns over 5% yearly, or just everyday stuff. I've found that everyday stuff ends up not being very different than my previous spending levels.
EDIT: I also live outside the Bay Area, which definitely helps.
Of course, in reality things don't pan out exactly like that. Many superrich would eventually be too stressed, constantly keeping scope of their wealth, spend 18 hours a day in work that likely won't be relevant in just a decade, end up in divorce or become substance abusive. But what is interesting to me is that money can actually expand your effective lifespan.
Dead Comment
More money leads in almost all people to artificial value, short term superficial happiness, degradation of the soul. On the outside it looks great and shiny, but on the inside the soul starves and craves true happiness. Unfortunately, most rich people react unconsciously by spending more and more, in a desperate effort to fill the ever growing gap.
Longer term less money creates in almost all people higher valuation of the most simple and basic things, which translates to true happiness for the soul. Less money can restore happiness if people are willing.
But there is of course a lot more affected by the money in our lives, especially the ego. A rich men easily thinks he is really someone, a 'great' man, special, gifted, etc.. The poor man will most often struggle with the opposite thoughts and feelings, while in the end it's all false.
If I ever again have quite some money to spend, I'll be very vigilant, you'll see me desperately trying to hold myself back. Never trade your soul for money (or power) is my advice. And if you have a lot of it, use a substantial part to help poor children for example, give them food, education, that will create you some ever lasting happiness, at least, if you can hold yourself back from growing your ego on that.
I could not disagree more. In the vast majority of cases, money leads to less misery. Then you just lead your life without the obsessive material thoughts so many struggle with.
I do agree with your last point, though, that once you reach a certain level of stability, you should focus on either reducing other people's misery if you have the power to do so or creating things (either yourself or by proxy) that wouldn't exist in the world without your help.
You can have $1bn and be totally miserable and miserly, you can have .15 and be generous and happy, and vice versa.
>Longer term less money creates in almost all people higher valuation of the most simple and basic things, which translates to true happiness for the soul.
Having been dead broke, severely underemployed while freelancing, and in a position where I would have been homeless were it not for my amazing girlfriend I can't help but feel a visceral amount of disagreement with this sentiment. Not having money is miserable. Currently I am pretty well off (greater than 75th percentile in the US) and the change in my life that I can directly attribute to having more money is astonishing. Placing a high value on basic things doesn't lead to happiness. It leads to stress, worry, sadness, self loathing, and worst of all envy. And if you have kids I can't even imagine the amount of guilt one might feel if you can't provide for them.
If you go to the grocery store and agonize over every item you place in your cart because not doing so means you might not be able to pay your rent there's almost no way you're going to have the will and the energy left at the end of the day to really enjoy the things that matter in life. It's just too draining and has a real opportunity cost. That's not placing a higher value on basic things, that's putting on blinders and only focusing on your immediate future.
There's a subtle paradox in ourselves for we crave easiness when I believe what we need is to learn how to abstract over complexity.
Sounds like voice of experience from both sides... ?
Dead Comment
I now sit in front of a computer. Earn OK money but not enough to retire on anytime soon (I am in Spain just now, money isn't great here). I guess I make lots more smaller purchases than I did in the old days (though they are usually far less meaningful to me than the large purchases I made back then). I was definitely happier back then.
An experience is either something genuine or a product. A product is a thing, and money changes a lot of it's attributes.
http://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbeit...
Well worth reading if you speak German:
http://www.aloj.us.es/webdeutsch/s_3/transkriptionen/l_26_st...
Where as in the 15 years later version, you don't need to fish at all.
My health is better now, and I can depend on myself to provide for myself, but sometimes it does just feel like there's a hole that money can't fill. I often feel like I have to continually keep my mind focused on not giving up on higher education or the act of responsibly confusing myself with too much study, just because I happen to be good at software development in a different regard. The ability to be totally lost in a class way beyond the depth I saw myself capable of surmounting was a luxury I took seriously for granted.
It does with me, though the being alone part might bother me after a bit, despite traveling on my own most of my life.
Seriously; unless there is something that has fucked your life so badly, you should have been spending your time thinking, reflecting and experiencing what makes your happy and more satisfied, and trying to pierce through the bullshit of society's expectations versus your own needs and wants.
No one is exempt from the tragedies of life, but there's not excuse for not being mindful of what enriches your soul.
Money (problems) are the source of lots of unhappiness. Stress and its consequences. Failing to make ends meet is stressful and unhappy. While being a broke and careless 26 year old in love might be fun, in most circumstances being broke sucks. Choosing between a dentist or ballet class for your 5 year old is not pleasant.
There are noncausational correlations between making money and happiness. To a large extent, having money is one big example of successfully functioning in our society. It's therefore probably correlated with all sorts of other types of functioning. Making money is often succeeding at controlling your life. It's similar to other successes at controlling one's life (deliberately and successfully choosing a career or family life). These are related to happiness.
Feeling successful is pleasant in itself. Most of us work most of our lives. Money is the main reason. Not making much money is (with many exceptions) failing to make more money, failure is unpleasant.
My Shtick recently is attempting to be deliberate. There's a lot of romanticism around serendipity, less so about deliberate action. They're not really competitive, but they often feel like they are. In any case, spending your money in a more happiness generating way is being deliberate about being happy. It extends past money. Be deliberate about spending your time, your effort and anything else you spend on happiness and you will probably be more happy.
The research does not support that "being broke sucks".
The research supports that starving and being homeless sucks. The moment you are not starving, and have shelter, peoples happiness level is on average almost as high as the happiness level of a rich person.
> Feeling successful is pleasant in itself.
It may be, but as we adapt to having little money and success, so do we adapt to having lots of money and lots of success. It does not bring substantial added happiness other than shortly after we achieve it. Being given a raise, or promotion, or public praise gives us happiness, but that happiness fades very quickly. Similarly, not making much money, or failing, is unpleasant but the unhappiness it causes is very much temporary unless you keep doing worse.
Avoiding adaption to an improved situation, and ensuring adaption to a worse situation is key to maximising happiness. You are best served by a slow, steady "drip" of improvement than suddenly achieving wealth, fame or success for example. Conversely, if you need to make cuts, you are far better off cutting your expenditure further than necessary, get used to it, and slowly see things improving, than you are making small cuts with the risk of having to cut back further.
Apart from relative effects on adapation, money overall has very little direct impact on happiness other than at the extremes:
If you starve; if you're homeless; if you lack access to mental health services; if you lack access to health services that can prevent or slow a degenerative condition (pretty much any catastrophic health change is subject to adaptation as long as the change is over quickly - e.g. amputees are as happy as most people relatively soon afterwards - but conditions that slowly become worse avoids adaptation).
(See Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" for more on this, and a decent chunk of references)
From the first paragraph:
"Scientists have studied the relationship between money and happiness for decades and their conclusion is clear: Money buys happiness, but it buys less than most people think (Aknin, Norton, & Dunn, 2009; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2000). The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest.."
That's simple: dentist. Of course the 5 year old will definitely not agree with that choice but health comes first no matter what.
Whatever the choice made, it sucks to have to make it.
There are neighborhood stores here all over the place and they don't charge much more than you would have to pay by buying in bulk at a larger store. When I'm not shopping at a neighborhood store, I go to the local market. Each of these places are very bland. Basically just a bamboo or concrete house with the products hanging or stacked up in shelves. Often you just order through a barred window and they give you what you ask for. After shopping like this for months, walking into a regular grocery store is an assault on the senses. Packaging, marketing and colors everywhere. Things at the smaller stores are also really cheap because the locals have to be able to afford them. At the larger grocery stores I'm floored by the prices of everything. I avoid grocery stores as much as possible.
The selection of products here is slim. I can spend all day looking around different stores and not find one thing on my wishlist. Otherwise I find nothing interesting. Many products are cheap and low quality because expensive items don't sell. I'm happy living here and I have the things I really need.
Happy + have everything I really need + have money + nothing to spend money on = abundance of sorts. I don't know if I feel rich, but it's strange feeling like money doesn't really do me much good. Daily expenses are super cheap. I only have going out to eat to spend money on. My favorite meals only cost $1 - $3. When everything is cheap, an expensive meal seems excessive.
Further screwing with me is that I can help out with simple tech stuff at these restaurants and I can eat for free. Business owners here don't know how to use things like Facebook, which is basically the internet for the Philippines. It's not really worth my time, but I like to help. There goes my main expense outside of rent and utilities.
I think it's worth pointing out the mirror of your thoughts (which are completely correct -- if you haven't had cheap and simple options, there is a deep luxury to it): If you're going to buy nice things -- which are the only options in America, truly -- enjoy them.
Food and housing seem so obvious to me. Like, you can get a chicken sandwich here, and eat something that is recognizably made of chicken (you can in the Philippines too, it's just that's more fancy than normal). I guess it never struck me how much of a luxury even the low-end of American foodstuffs are.
And I can get an apartment near Detroit that (1) can be air-conditioned to exactly the temperature I want, and not just a tolerable temperature, and (2) is, well... nice. Not falling apart, no holes in walls or things, consistent electricity, internet speeds exceeding 100kb/s (often by 30x).
Now, I don't need all this luxury, but man, the modest increase in expenses (maybe 2x? I live pretty cheap in America) definitely increases quality of life. If it didn't, I would probably not live here.
The unhappiest I've ever been was during a difficult period with my family. Money was definitely involved, and the center of much of the issue, but it was the troubles in the relationship with people close to me that made me unhappy.
If money had never been an issue, I never would have had either trouble and things would be different today. The money part of the situation was trivially resolvable, but the relationship one has lingered for the better part of two decades and looks like it'll never find a satisfactory conclusion.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does help with the basics of life. Which is why a minimum wage and by extension liveable income if you're unable to work should be a basic human right. That, or a similar form of supplying basic human needs - housing, food, water, clothing, privacy, access to information, hygene, etc.
If you starve, or lack shelter, money unambiguously increases average happiness substantially. Once you are fed and have somewhere to live - even if crappy - peoples happiness are minimally affected by additional money.
There are ways which you can leverage more money to increase your happiness, but interestingly the best approaches involve living below your means, no matter how much or little you have: The most efficient way of leveraging wealth into happiness is to ensure that you build a buffer so that you can maintain a slow, steady upwards trajectory as much as possible.
Perhaps money is the same. It doesn't provide happiness, but lack of money does cause unhappiness.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory
I'm guessing this was submitted because I linked to it in a comment.[1]
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8581524
But if you have a subscription, the link is at http://online.wsj.com/articles/can-money-buy-happiness-heres...
The main points seem to be:
1) at the margin, it's better to spend money on fleeting experiences over material goods 2) money buys happiness up to a point (i.e. $75K per year, then there's diminishing returns) 3) don't get into debt or you're in for sadness