

After $75,000, Money Can't Buy Day-to-Day Happiness - gscott
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642850.html

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yalurker
Am I the only one who thinks 'household income' is a terrible measure for
this? Isn't a single person making 60k/year living a more affluent lifestyle
than a married couple at 75k?

Isn't it a huge confounding variable that they are using a single value for
the money, but that may be for just a single person or shared among an entire
family?

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noodle
i could've sworn that there was an article recently stating that $60k was the
magical number for an individual, since you mention it.

edit: its in this TED talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html)
and we've talked about it before here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1381927>

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Shakattack
I'm guessing this is for an individual, and not a family (since family size
isn't even defined)

So with that, I think 75k is definitely enough to live a happy life - at least
when you're young and only supporting yourself. Say you live in Chicago or New
York, here's how I see it breaking down:

    
    
       10k in taxes
    
       20-25k for monthly rent, bills, and expenses (sure that's not a Lakeshore drive 40th floor apartment, but still nothing shabby). 
    
       10k for food (I'm being really generous here)
    

That's pretty much everything you need to survive, and survive comfortably. So
that's still, what, 35k in free spending money? Of course it's not too
difficult to spend 35k, but the point is that it's a lot of money for free
spending. Some save, some buy nice cars and things, most are usually somewhere
in between. I still have a couple years till graduation, but if I'm making
70-75k after graduation, there's no way I'm complaining.

Beyond 75k, the happiness it brings definitely varies by person. If I had
significantly more than 75k a year, the first thing I would think is "Now I
have some money to do something I really want". I'm talking about startups,
which I think becomes a lot more doable when you have some money to spend on
an idea.

Also lets not forget the happiness more money can bring. I think the
householder pulling 300k a year is going to feel a lot more relieved going
home then someone else making 75k. Person 1 could be unemployed tomorrow, and
still be okay. But Person 2, if they lose the job, could be in a lot of
trouble trying to support kids and pay the mortgage. The stress Person 1 has
is significant, and I don't think this study really considers that.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Same topic, many articles:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668979>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668909>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668478>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1667603> <\- This one

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acqq
The most interesting for me was:

"In 2008, average U.S household income was about $71,500, while the median --
or the point at which half of incomes are higher and half are lower -- was
$52,000."

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dgordon
Income distributions are almost always skewed to the right (mean > median),
since you can't make less than $0 a year, but you can make millions or more in
a year, and the mean is never much more than $50,000.

~~~
acqq
I wasn't surprised about difference, only that up to now I didn't know that
half of the families in US live on less than 50K USD per year.

~~~
pchristensen
The US has a lot of crappy jobs and cheap towns that don't get near as much
attention as SV, LA, and NYC.

