[HN Gopher] Experienced well-being rises with income, even above...
___________________________________________________________________
Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per
year
Author : paulpauper
Score : 111 points
Date : 2021-01-24 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
| quotemstr wrote:
| Psychology is such a garbage field. It seems like every feel-good
| counterintuitive TED talk myth of the past few decades is falling
| apart under scrutiny.
| hehehaha wrote:
| $75k is nothing in the US. It's the bottom end of living wage.
|
| Edit: $75K is basically two people working at proposed min wage
| with moderate OT. $3000 per month with even laughably low $1K
| mortgage would leave you with just enough for family of four.
| thepangolino wrote:
| In big cities perhaps but it allows you to live quite well in
| smaller towns.
| dwighttk wrote:
| ...in (admittedly populous) _parts of_ the US
| rubidium wrote:
| Hahaha. Not in the middle. Many are raising a family and owning
| homes on $75k a year.
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Median _household_ income in the US is below that number.
| lolinder wrote:
| Where I live it's the 80th percentile. Not everyone in the US
| lives on the coasts.
| lolinder wrote:
| Respecting your edit: $75k is $6.5k/mo, which gives you
| $1820/mo for a mortgage. That's not enough for a large home in
| an expensive area, but it's plenty in most of the US.
| hntrader wrote:
| The causes behind the relationship likely differ at each end of
| the income distribution. Below $50k, marginal increases in wealth
| drive utility primarily through improved material comfort. Above
| $250k, it becomes more and more about status as the driver of
| improved utility (e.g. status attenuates chronic stress).
|
| However, I believe part of the relationship below $50k is also
| status-related, in addition to the material comfort explanation.
| The people most opposed to the minimum wage are those earning
| just above it, presumably because it would decrease the status
| differential between them and the people earning less, which
| negatively impacts their genetic fitness.
|
| I'd also hypthesize that the correlation above $250k is stronger
| for men than women, due to status being the likely driver.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Hahaha, I've known this to be true. All those articles that kept
| spouting the $75k threshold nonsense over the years... I just
| internally chuckled at. It's just some make-yourself-feel-better
| fluff.
|
| That number for me is about half a million. We're all different
| and I don't appreciate being pigeonholed by the "experts"!
| Axsuul wrote:
| How did you arrive at half a million?
| newbie2020 wrote:
| That is my personal number. I'm not there yet, but after
| calculating when I want to buy a home in my area (at least
| three bedroom) and when I would have to pay for my future
| kids' private undergrad /grad educations while maintaining a
| decent lifestyle in retirement... I think this number would
| just get me past the threshold for being able to do that
| without stressing on the daily.
| natenthe wrote:
| Duh.
|
| Whoever authored the original 75k year study had a bias and/or
| agenda against our current economic system.
|
| We didn't need a study to show that even above a 75k salary, more
| income is correlated with more well-being.
|
| This is a prime example of why scientific research should be used
| as a tool to advance society, not as a religion.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Why don't we need a study? What is obvious? (Seriously)
| natenthe wrote:
| For someone to not understand this without a study, I think
| they would need to be oblivious to the state of the economy,
| the cost of living in the average metropolitan area where the
| average American lives, and social dynamics / cultural issues
| in America.
|
| Also, if you've experienced significantly different levels of
| salary then this is obvious.
| klyrs wrote:
| "Money doesn't buy happiness" is also considered obvious
| common sense. The study is looking for the phase boundary
| where one obvious statement ceases to apply and the other
| takes over.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I think you've missed the point of science somewhere.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Sometimes common sense lets us take shortcuts without
| having to wait for or spend on the science.
| nojito wrote:
| Except they didn't. Their findings got morphed away from the
| actual study over time.
|
| Here's the original graph from the study.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/38/16489/F1.large.jpg
| natenthe wrote:
| It would be helpful if you actually posted the study, not a
| quantitative graph without context of the data contained
| within. It is misleading.
|
| The study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489
|
| "Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there
| is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000"
|
| "We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not
| happiness, and that low income is associated both with low
| life evaluation and low emotional well-being."
|
| The study states that emotional well-being does not rise with
| income over 75k. The study also concludes that high income is
| not correlated to happiness.
|
| These conclusions are clearly erroneous.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Tell that to Fauci and our governors please.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Apparently you're not aware of a previous study that showed
| that income above $75k/yr did _NOT_ increase well being.
| sjg007 wrote:
| That study was funded by the international employers society.
| hobofan wrote:
| Maybe it's just me but the study (and also the studies it is
| trying to disprove) seem a bit ridiculous to me, as none of them
| seem to adjust for cost of living, even though that will vary by
| a huge factor in basically every country.
| anm89 wrote:
| No one who didn't have a philosophical axe to grind in the other
| direction is surprised by this.
|
| I think probably this and the original article it's countering
| are both essentially junk science and represent a serious problem
| though. We have become used to having strong binary statements
| about nuanced socio/economical/physcological phenomenon throw out
| as capital S Science. And then the obvious second paper comes out
| with the opposite conclusion which is also presented as
| "Science".
|
| Think of all the stuff online "Science says this is the beset way
| to fold your clothes" and they link to some weak paper that
| mentions that there is some benefit to doing something maybe in
| some constrained situation. Is it any wonder we have a society of
| people half of whom think it's all bullshit?
|
| Yes, these studies use the same scientific process regarding
| hypotheses and data collection as a physics or chemistry
| experiment but the nature of that data is VERY different and
| conflating the two is a mistake in my opinion.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I'm a very scientifically minded person, but also hang out in
| some circles that have an anti-science crowd.
|
| My attitude after getting to sort of see things from the
| outside is pretty similar to yours. I believe in the power of
| repeatable observations. I'll pass most science allegiance
| tests you throw my way. But I'm also pretty damn disappointed
| in the world of science today. Academic incentives are whack.
| Journalistic incentives are worse. Then throw some social media
| on top and it's just a mess.
| wazoox wrote:
| Yes, the immediate problem I see with this new study is that it
| presents the relation between happiness and income as almost
| linear, which is, on the face of it, almost unbelievable at
| lower income levels. Can you really believe that going from
| dirt poor to OK doesn't make more difference than going from
| very rich to very, very rich? I myself can't without further
| evidence. I can believe there is no plateau as such, but a
| linear progression requires explanation.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Scale _does_ indeed matter.
|
| The life you can live at $35,000 a year is going to be
| dramatically less pleasant than the life you can live at
| $350,000 a year, just as the life you can live at $35,000,000
| a year is going to be dramatically more pleasant than at
| either of those, but eventually you reach a point where even
| if you were to make $35,000,000,000 a year, it cannot
| dramatically change your life.
|
| At some point, you become so wealthy that the only
| difficulties that life can present to you are difficulties
| from which no person has immunity.
| jcheng wrote:
| Just want to point out that the abstract says the
| relationship is linear with log(income). And Fig 1 shows an
| x-axis range of 15,000-500,000; even if their conclusions are
| true, I wouldn't be surprised if the relationship breaks down
| beyond those limits.
| croissants wrote:
| There are a couple of comments about it here, but I think this
| point in the paper deserves emphasis: they say that "well-being
| rises with income" in the sense that well-being increases
| linearly with the _logarithm_ of income past $75,000. The
| logarithm they use seems to be base 2 in Figure 1, so that means
| a person making $500k is roughly 17% happier than a person making
| $75k. 20% isn 't nothing, but it's not much either. Especially
| since I think a lot of people in tech can get to ~$100k with a
| lot less effort than ~$500k.
| undefined1 wrote:
| $75k varies from hard mode to easy mode, depending on where you
| live, how you live, and other factors.
| adventured wrote:
| $75,000 isn't what it used to be, so this is a pretty comically
| obvious headline.
|
| The median sale price of a house in the US in the year 2000 was
| around $163,000. Now it's $324,000.
|
| Meanwhile $48,000 in income then is now $75,000 today inflation
| adjusted, according to the BLS. If you stayed in that general
| income bracket, you've been royally punched in the face
| economically.
|
| And then we get to the cost of healthcare and education over the
| past 20 years. Someone in the $75,000 tier has spent the last two
| decades being financially tortured as their disposable income is
| being eroded by persistently rising costs they can't do much
| about (go without healthcare, don't buy a house, don't send the
| kids to college, don't have kids).
|
| That $324,000 house today will cost you $1,500 per month. After
| all taxes are accounted for, in a normal tax state, you're going
| to likely have ~$4,250 per month; after that house, you're down
| to $2,750; and that's before you get to any bills or saving. The
| only shot a person at $75,000 has today, is to live somewhere
| where the cost of living is quite low, or to pair up with someone
| and hopefully double that income (and that still won't be enough
| if you're in a more expensive location).
| sokoloff wrote:
| That $163K house in 2000 at 8% mortgage rate cost you $1196 in
| principal and interest.
|
| That $324K house in 2020 at 3% mortgage rate costs you $1366 in
| principal and interest. (assuming 100% financed, decrement both
| amounts as you see fit)
|
| That's only a 14% increase in monthly payment over 2000, while
| general inflation has increased by 56% over that same time (all
| using your figures above, with the exception of researched
| mortgage interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages). I'm not
| saying it's not hard now, but it wasn't easy then either. Life
| has pretty much always been a struggle for most people.
| ayyyolo wrote:
| Exactly! 75k is peanuts today, especially if you're single.
| Most people from my generation aren't even making that...what
| hope is there for them, let alone for Z.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The only hope is political organization. You can say it's
| peanuts, but it's also above the median _household_ income.
| Sit back and think about that: what you consider peanuts (and
| you may well not be wrong) is more than the median
| _household_ income in this country. If you are not outraged
| by this, then sure, there 's no hope :)
| briefcomment wrote:
| I think bitcoin as an inflation hedge is another promising
| answer.
| briefcomment wrote:
| And most salaries have not kept up with inflation, especially
| inflation in scarce desirable assets. Most people are worse
| off.
|
| Edit: Lol, parent is < 0 at the moment. Downvotes sound fine in
| theory, but are usually low-effort, passive aggressive
| enforcements of bias in practice. If you have real counter
| arguments to make, please make them.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This can all be true but unless you combine it with the fact
| that median _household_ income in the USA is only around $60k,
| you lose the full impact of what is actually a deeply and
| immersively political description.
| jedberg wrote:
| I feel like there are a few plateaus that are different for
| everyone, but probably within a fairly tight range.
|
| $a/yr is when you no longer worry about how to pay for
| food/clothing/shelter and have a little extra for some
| relaxation, which is probably right around $75K a year in most of
| the country.
|
| $b/yr is when you no longer need to check your bank account for
| small purchases.
|
| $c/yr is when you no longer have to maintain a family budget --
| you make enough to know that whatever you consider reasonable
| will be affordable.
|
| $d/yr is when you no longer worry about larger purchases, like
| cars or cruises or multi-week vacations.
|
| $e/yr is when you no longer have to work.
|
| $f/yr is when you no longer have to work nor maintain a budget.
|
| The order of the last few might change depending on the person
| and their lifestyle, and obviously if you aren't working you
| aren't really thinking about dollars per year anymore but total
| assets. I feel like after "no longer have to work", there is not
| much to go after that, unless you have a personality disorder
| where you cannot be happy unless you have power over others.
| cbozeman wrote:
| This is an excellent breakdown. There was a reddit post some
| years back that I saved as a text file along with the original
| poster's name, I think it might be a good analogue to this
| post.
|
| _As originally posted by a1988eli on Reddit, as a reply to a
| question about the lives of wealthy people:_
|
| I can answer this one. For some reason, I attract these people
| into my life. I don't do anything super extraordinary. I am not
| famous. But I count many peoplewith ultra high net wealth among
| my close friends and I have spent more time than even I can
| believe with 8 different billionaires. This is not just meet-
| and-greet time. This is small group and even one-to-one time. I
| dated the daughter of one billionaire several decades ago. So I
| have gotten a peek into this life.
|
| Let's get one thing out of the way. There are gradations of
| rich. I see four major breaking points:
|
| Worth $10mm-$30mm liquid (exclusive of value of primary
| residence). At this level, your needs are met. You can live
| very comfortably at a 4-star/5-star level. You can book a $2000
| suite for a special occassion. You can fly first class
| internationally (sometimes). You have a very nice house, you
| can afford any healthcare you need, no emergency financial
| situation can destroy your life. But you are not "rich" in the
| way that money doesn't matter. You still have to be prudent and
| careful with most decisions unless you are on the upper end of
| this scale, where you truly are becoming insulated from
| personal financial stress. (Business stress exists at all
| levels). The banking world still doesn't classify you as 'ultra
| high net worth'
|
| Net worth of $30mm-$100mm
|
| At this point, you start playing with the big boys. You can fly
| private (though you normally charter a flight or own a jet
| fractionally through Net Jets or the like), You stay at 5 star
| hotels, you have multiple residences, you vacation in prime
| time (you rent a ski-in, ski-out villa in Aspen for Christmas
| week or go to Monaco for the grand Prix, or Canne for the Film
| Festival--for what its worth, rent on these places can run
| $5k-20k+ per NIGHT.), you run or have a ontrolling interest in
| a big company, you socialize with Conressmen, Senators and
| community leaders, and you are an extremely well respected
| member in any community outside the world's great cities. (In
| Beverly Hills, you are a minor player at $80 million. Unless
| you really throw your weight around and pay out the nose, you
| might not get a table at the city's hottest restaurant). You
| can buy any car you want. You have personal assistants and are
| starting to have 'people' that others have to talk to to get to
| you. You can travel ANYWHERE in any style. You can buy pretty
| much anything that normal people think of as 'rich people
| stuff'
|
| $100mm-$1billion
|
| I know its a wide range, but life doesn't change much when you
| go from being worth $200mm-$900mm. At this point, you have a
| private jet, multiple residences with staff, elite cars at each
| residence, ownership or significant control over a
| business/entity that most of the public has heard of, if its
| your thing, you can socialize with movie stars/politicians/rock
| stars/corporate elite/aristocracy. You might not get invite to
| every party, but you can go pretty much everywhere you want.
| You definitely have 'people' and staff. The world is full of
| 'yes men'. Your ability to buy things becomes an art. One of
| your vacation home may be a 5 bedroom villa on acreage in Cabo,
| but that's not impressive. You own a private island? Starting
| to be cool, but it depends on the island. You just had dinner
| with Senator X and Governor Y at your home? Cool. But your
| billionaire friend just had dinner with the President. You have
| a new Ferrari? Your friend thinks their handling sucks and has
| a classic, only-five-exist-in-the-world-type of car. Did I
| mention women? Because at this level, they are all over the
| place. Every event, most parties. The polo club. Ultra-hot,
| world class, smart women. Power and money are an aphrodisiac
| and you have it in spades. Anything thing you want from women
| at this point you will find a willing and beautiful partner.
| You might not emotionally connect, but damn, she's hot. One
| thing that gets rare at this level? friends and family that
| love you for who you are. They exist, but it is pretty damn
| hard to know which ones they are.
| cbozeman wrote:
| _cont 'd_
|
| $1billion
|
| I am going to exclude the $10b+ crowd, because they live a
| head-of-state life. But at $1b, life changes. You can buy
| anything. ANYTHING. In broad terms, this is what you can buy:
|
| Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and
| you will get a call back. I have seen this first hand and it
| is mind-blowing the level of access and respect $1 billion+
| gets you. In this case, I wanted to speak with a very well-
| known billionaire businessman (call him billionaire #1 for a
| project that interested billionaire #2. I mentioned that it
| would be good to talk to billionaire #1 and B2 told me that
| he didn't know him. But he called his assistant in. "Get me
| the xxxgolf club directory. Call B1 at home and tell him I
| want to talk to him." Within 60 minutes, we had a call back.
| I was in B1's home talking to him the next day. B2's opinion
| commanded that kind of respect from a peer. Mind blowing. The
| same is true with access to almost any Senator/Governor of a
| billionaires party (because in most cases, he is a
| significant donor). You meet on an occassional basis with
| heads-of-state and have real conversations with them. Which
| leads to
|
| Influence. Yes, you can buy influence. As a billionaire, you
| have manyways to shape public policy and the public debate,
| and you use them. This is not in any evil way. the ones I
| know are passionate about ideas and are trying to do what
| they feel is best (just like you would). But they just had an
| hour with the Governor privately, or with the Secretary of
| Health, or the buy ads or lobbyists. The amount of influence
| you have can be heady.
|
| Time. Yes, you can buy time. You literally never wait for
| anything. Travel? you fly private. Show up at the airport,
| sit down in the plane and the door closes and you take off in
| 2 minutes, and fly directly to where you are going. The plane
| waits for you. If you decide you want to leave at anytime,
| you drive (or take a helicopter to the airport and you leave.
| The pilots and stewardess are your employees. They do what
| you tell them to do. Dinner? Your driver drops you off at the
| front door and waits a few blocks away for however long you
| need. The best table is waiting for you. The celebrity chef
| has prepared a meal for you (because you give him so much
| catering business he wants you VERY happy) and he ensures
| service is impeccable. Golf? Your club is so exclusive there
| is always a tee time and no wait. Going to the Superbowl or
| Grammy's? You are whisked behind velvet ropes and escorted
| past any/all lines to the best seats in the house.
|
| Experiences. Dream of it and you can have it. Want to play
| tennis with Pete Sampras (not him in particular, but that
| type of star)? Call his people. For a donation of $100k+ to
| his charity, you could probably play a match with him. Like
| Blink182? There is a price where they would simply come play
| at your private party. Love art? Your people could arrange
| for the curator of the Louvre to show you around and even
| show you masterpieces that have not been exhibited in years.
| Love Nascar? How about racing the top driver on a closed
| track? Love science? Have a dinner with Bill Nye and Neil
| dGT. Love politics? have Hillary Clinton come speak at a
| dinner for you and your friends, just pay her speaking fee.
| Your mind is the only limit to what is available. Because
| donations/fees get you anyone.
|
| The same is true with stuff. You like pianos? How about
| owning one Mozart used to compose music on? This is the type
| of stuff you can do.
|
| IMPACT. Your money can literally change the world and change
| lives. It is almost too much of a burden to think about.
| Clean water for a whole village forever? chump change. A
| dying child need a transplant? Hell...you could just build
| and fund a hospital and do it for a region.
|
| RESPECT. The respect you get at this level is just over-the-
| top. You are THE MAN in almost every circle. Governors look
| up to you. Fortune 500 CEOs look up to you. Presidents and
| Kings look at you as a peer.
|
| PERSPECTIVE. The wealthiest person I have spent time with
| makes about $400mm/year. i couldn't get my mind around that
| until I did this: OK--let's compare it with someone who makes
| $40,000/year. It is 10,000x more. Now let's look at prices
| the way he might. A new Lambo--$235,000 becaome $23.50. First
| class ticket internationally? $10,000 becomes $1. A full time
| executive level helper? $8,000/month becomes $0.80/month. A
| $10mm piece of art you love? $1000. Expensive, so you have to
| plan a bit. A suite at the best hotel in NYC $10,000/night is
| $1/night. A $50million home in the Hamptons? $5,000. There is
| literally nothing you can't buy except.
|
| Love. Sorry to sound so trite, but it is nearly impossible to
| have a normal emotional relationship at this level. It is
| hard to sacrifice for another person when you are never asked
| to sacrifice ANYTHING. Money can solve all problems for
| someone, so you offer it, because there is so much else to
| do. Your time is SOOOO valuable that you ration it. And that
| makes you lose connections with people.
|
| Anyway, that is a really long answer, but I have a very
| unique perspective because I have seen behind the curtain of
| the great and mighty OZ. just wanted to share
|
| EDIT: Wow! An unbelievable response to this (8x gold and 6000
| upvotes. OMG) Thank you for all the comments and PMs. I am
| working 14 hour days right now, so I can't answer most, but
| to answer the most common PMs:
|
| Seeing all of this doesn't make me want to get into the top
| tier. Different lives have the same emotional degree of
| difficulty: I met Sylvester Stallone at a party a few months
| back for the first time. Great guy. Has a beautiful, smart
| wife and a great career. He had a special needs son who died
| young.[1] Nobody has it all. Nobody.
|
| [1] - Poster's comment - He's referencing Sage Stallone, who
| had a rare heart condition and died at the age of 36.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Wow, do we know if that poster was telling the truth or if
| it's a creative writing exercise? Interesting nonetheless
| jedberg wrote:
| From my very limited experience of knowing billionaires,
| it sounds about right.
|
| I was having a small group lunch with the founder of eBay
| once when I worked there, and someone asked him how his
| life is different now that he's a billionaire. He started
| to mention some of these things, and at the end he said,
| "I'm still just as ugly as I ever was, but now lots of
| smart beautiful women seem to be interested".
| crumbshot wrote:
| Interesting, but also disgusting. No-one should be a
| billionaire.
|
| Having that much wealth and power concentrated in the hands
| of such a few is a societal sickness.
|
| They're effectively stealing a disproportionate amount of
| our world's resources for their own pleasure, at the
| expense of everyone else.
| jedberg wrote:
| > They're effectively stealing a disproportionate amount
| of our world's resources for their own pleasure,
|
| Not really. Think about this way. One share of Amazon
| costs $3,292.23. If someone gathers $3,300 and offers to
| buy that share at that price, Jeff Bezos's wealth just
| went up $424,000,000. But it's not like he took $424MM
| from anyone. And he wouldn't actually be able to get that
| $424MM, because if he started selling his shares, there
| would need to be enough people with $424MM more than they
| had before that want to buy it.
|
| At that level of wealth, most of the money doesn't
| actually exist. It just represents control. It's
| basically created from nothing.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _At that level of wealth, most of the money doesn 't
| actually exist. It just represents control._
|
| I agree, and that's part of the problem as well.
|
| But also, to use your example of Bezos, he cashes out a
| few billion dollars of shares per year for his own
| personal gain. All while Amazon's workers (whose hard
| work enabled him to do this) are being treated so badly.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| There is another aspect to these plateaus most people forget:
| privilege of the rich in paying for better deals.
|
| Don't need to rent when you can buy and break even within a few
| years. Meanwhile, the poor are perpetually derived from their
| opportunity of cutting down their monthly expenses. Similar
| cases exist for first-hand purchases vs second-hand purchases,
| higher quality goods that will cost less over their entire
| duration than low quality goods, etc.
|
| It can be that once you get past one income plateau and obtain
| enough wealth, you can drop down an income plateau and still
| reap most of the benefits thanks to your reduced costs compared
| to your peers.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Anecdotally, there was a point somewhere between $x and $y where
| I just stopped looking at the bank account when making minor
| purchase decisions.
|
| This fed into an attitude of buying the right thing the first
| time. It is a contributor to my ability to spend money to eat
| better and the resulting health improvements that further
| feedback into a better life.
|
| Furthermore, my attitude has shifted from "get wealthy" (20s) to
| "optimize for time." (30s) and that too has impacted my
| perception on what career and lifestyle I want.
|
| All this is to say: I do believe there is a soft cap on what
| money does for your wellbeing. I think the cap probably varies
| from person to person, and that everyone should try to figure out
| how to detect what it is for them, lest they burn non-renewable
| resources going past it. No amount of money makes you or your
| kids young again.
| winphone1974 wrote:
| And yet rich people live significantly longer. Money is
| important for a lot of things impacting life expectancy
| benmaraschino wrote:
| The causation arguably goes in the other direction too. You
| can't make money if you're unhealthy at baseline. Nor can you
| as easily acquire more education or new skills.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. Which is why I'm personally huge on paying plenty of
| taxes and having lots of social systems. If someone's time
| is spent fulfilling basic needs, it will take generations
| for them to get out of that.
| bch wrote:
| I think part of what you're qualifying as "and yet..." may be
| _exactly_ what GP is talking about. They worry less and get
| on with things, comfortable that they can, rather than
| harming themselves with 1000 "economical" cuts. See too the
| boot metaphor[0] that is a real impediment to getting to
| somewhere comfortable. There's a potential tipping-point
| that's personal to each person.
|
| [0] https://moneywise.com/a/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-
| unfair...
| cortesoft wrote:
| I think it is also about being smart in what you spend your
| money on. Being rich doesn't help at all if you buy things that
| don't actually improve the quality of your life.
|
| Now, what will improve the quality of life varies from person
| to person, but I don't think it is the case that everyone is
| getting the most out of their money.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Furthermore, my attitude has shifted from "get wealthy" (20s)
| to "optimize for time." (30s)
|
| I always thought the reason for being wealthy was having free
| time.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I live on a beach in my 30s with relatively meager income
| compared to other people on HN and I constantly meet expats
| aged 60+ who live at the beach, happy to finally retire after
| 40+ years of grueling work so they can finally live at the
| beach.
|
| I'm glad I snapped out of the delusion that you need to waste
| your youth working so that you can finally enjoy life when
| you're old and have trouble getting a boner.
|
| We have a cultural problem where we don't use money to buy
| time. We instead use money to buy everything else. You're
| usually looked down on for making the time trade, like some
| sort of deadbeat who doesn't want to work hard. We make day
| to day decisions as if we were immortal.
| dilap wrote:
| Beach bum lifestyle seems appealing, except if you want
| kids. I'm guessing you don't?
| potions wrote:
| do kids hate the beach? I feel like 'relatively meager
| compared to HN' could be low 100k and that would be
| plenty livable, 2-3x the household median income at non
| super fancy beach towns in the east/south US.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| I'd say a good amount of it is for status.
| Fricken wrote:
| There's a leisure class at both ends of the socioeconomic
| spectrum.
| nullsense wrote:
| Wealthy people have less free time. Most time is spent
| acquiring the wealth, right?
| jerry1979 wrote:
| I wish I had the source, but around 2004 I learned that the
| leveling-off point for happiness vs income sat at around
| 200k-250k per year.
|
| I can imagine that the ability to buy stability drives these
| happiness curves.
| DC1350 wrote:
| $75,000USD a year is barely enough to buy a small condo in
| regions of Canada where 1/3 of the population lives. I don't know
| how anyone could possibly believe happiness ends at $75k.
| adjkant wrote:
| This is a relatively minor nit, but the 75K conclusion was
| reached in 2010. You can at the very least adjust that to 90K now
| given inflation. I don't think this changes the refutation, but
| I've seen a lot of comments talking about the 75K with more
| granularity, and it's worth pointing that inflation effect out.
| war1025 wrote:
| It really all depends on the lifestyle you think you need to
| maintain.
|
| I like to think of money a bit like gasoline.
|
| 100 gallons of gas will last you pretty well forever if you ride
| around on a moped.
|
| It will get you maybe an hour or two down the road if you're
| driving around in a fully loaded semi.
|
| What most people need in order to be happy is somewhere in the
| middle. Unfortunately, many people are determined to live in a
| way where their reach always exceeds their grasp.
|
| You can't outrun financial idiocy.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| > many people are determined to live in a way where their reach
| always exceeds their grasp.
|
| You mean being able to pay the rent, send their kids to
| university, pay their medical expenses without getting
| bankrupt? Because that's the kind of life most people aspire
| to.
|
| > You can't outrun financial idiocy.
|
| Following this line, most people are financial idiots, which
| means they are responsible for their poverty?
| war1025 wrote:
| > Following this line, most people are financial idiots,
| which means they are responsible for their poverty?
|
| Your whole comment is conflating poor financial planning with
| actual poverty.
|
| If you break people into: those legitimately without enough
| resources to get by, those who would have enough if they knew
| how to manage money, and those who have enough whether or not
| they can manage money; I would wager that the people with
| enough money but terrible planning skills would be the
| plurality, whether or not they were the outright majority.
|
| Once you slip into the "I can afford this because I can make
| the monthly payments" line of thinking, you are pretty much
| by definition living at the cusp of your means. That's where
| most people are, whether or not it's a good idea for them to
| be.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| I understand what you mean but I find curious the term
| "idiocy" when we live in a society that doesn't educate us
| on financial planning and at the same time does everything
| it can (succesfully) to make us spend more, because the
| economy itself depends on keeping consumption high at all
| times.
|
| Financial illiteracy is a better term, since I don't see
| why we should expect financial planning to be an innate
| ability.
|
| At some point we have to decide if we want people to
| consume the most they can or if we want them to be
| "responsible".
| war1025 wrote:
| Call it what you like. I agree our society goes out of
| its way to mis-educate people on the matter.
|
| I guess maybe the difference in my mind vs illiteracy and
| idiocy is that someone illiterate in a matter may still
| manage to put together that whatever they are doing isn't
| working and maybe they should try something else.
|
| The idiocy comes in when people know it's not working,
| and know it's designed not to work, but dammit if they
| aren't going to live that way anyway and complain the
| whole time.
| endymi0n wrote:
| I think the age old adage of happiness not rising after something
| $80k'ish per year is simply a misapplication of the linear scale
| to the problem.
|
| There's ample evidence that happiness still rises with income,
| just logarithmically:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/29/yes-m...
|
| Which honestly makes a _lot_ of sense to me, since most human
| senses work on the log scale for better magnitude compression:
| Light sensitivity, Hearing and lots of others.
|
| The log scale just fits very well with any perception application
| designed to not overload neural networks -- and if you plot this
| on the linear scale, it always looks like there's a knee in the
| curve where it stops rising, when in reality, it's just gradually
| getting slower.
| perl4ever wrote:
| Well duh. Obviously experiencing well-being results in making
| more money.
|
| [looks around] am I..am I surrounded by lizard people?
| adjkant wrote:
| This paper seems to mask just how much of an effect there is. For
| the people who aren't deep into stats and reading statistical
| scientific papers, can someone help translate what the z-scores
| here mean practically? Is this a log scale or just raw? What's
| setting 0.0? Is +/- 0.1 a notable range?
| aaron695 wrote:
| Yes well-being rises with income, yes it's past $75,000 per year.
|
| Yes it still rises at a significant rate past $75,000.
|
| Yes this was already known before this study.
|
| Yes our intuition was always correct, before scientists said it
| wasn't, than said it was to a level, then corrected themselves,
| then now gaslight us into thinking they haven't already corrected
| themselves.
| throwaway_goog wrote:
| Could also be that the environment has changed since the original
| studies were done in 1999-2002.
|
| I know that my subjective well-being was higher with an income of
| $100K in 2008 than it is with a half-mil+ in 2020. Why? Because
| the social system around me wasn't crumbling. Pre-GFC it was hard
| to imagine the degree to which your fellow Americans could end up
| hating and distrusting each other. $100K/year was a very
| respectable upper-middle-class income that could buy a house and
| have plenty left over for savings.
|
| Now, you can be making a couple million a year and only be
| worrying about who's about to take it from you or whether your
| assets are going to be worthless in the next financial crash.
| You're certainly better off with that couple million than without
| it, though.
| war1025 wrote:
| I think that's just the rat race. Wherever you go, there you
| are. The company you keep at 50k / yr is probably different
| than at 100k / yr and certainly different than at 500k / yr.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Not neccesarily. Only if you're the sort of person who values
| money and chooses to asscoiate with people based on how much
| money they have. Of course people with lots of money do tend
| to be people who value having lots of money. But not always.
| war1025 wrote:
| That's sort of the point of it though, right?
|
| If you equate your income with your self-worth, then you'll
| never feel that you have enough.
|
| If you can step outside that framework, you'll find that
| you may still make significant money, but it doesn't really
| matter so much.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| It isn't a rat race, it is inflation. My dad purchased a
| house in the city for $30,000 in 1981. No amount of stop-the-
| rat-race mentality gets me a house for $30,000.
|
| My elder cousin purchased a house in the city for $300,000 in
| 2001. No amount of stop-the-rat-race mentality gets me a
| house for $300,000.
|
| Prices have gone up, way more than salaries.
| nilkn wrote:
| Affordable housing is out there -- quite a lot of it too.
| My parents paid $140k for their house a few years ago in
| flyover country. $300k would be going overboard. My mom's a
| nurse and my dad is basically an account executive for a
| food distributor in the area -- both thoroughly normal
| middle class jobs. My guess, though, is many folks here
| wouldn't be willing to do either of those jobs or they
| wouldn't be willing to live in middle America. If you want
| an interesting, trendy job in a hot urban center where
| you're constantly surrounded by the best restaurants,
| parks, bars, museums, and more, naturally you're going to
| need to either make a lot of money or make sacrifices in
| your life.
|
| > No amount of stop-the-rat-race mentality gets me a house
| for $300,000.
|
| Note that the median price of a home in the US is somewhere
| in the $250k - $300k range.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| The question is :will the accounting job still be there
| in five years? Or will the office or job) move to the
| city?
|
| Thats what's happening the last five years.
| dilap wrote:
| Back in the 50s the beats hung out in North Beach because
| it was cheap. In the 60s and 70s the hippies all had old
| victorians out in the Haight Ashbury because it was
| cheap. San Francisco wasn't some obscure fly-over country
| place, it was a cool place to be.
|
| Where is cool + cheap now?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans
|
| New Orleans
|
| Montreal
|
| Kansas City
|
| Pittsburgh
| nilkn wrote:
| I bet you can pick out almost any medium-sized city and
| find some "cool" neighborhoods that are pretty
| affordable.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Are those kind of people busy hanging out on youtube now?
|
| Are there enough creatives in meat-space to attain the
| critical mass necessary to generate those places like in
| the past? Or are many of them staring at their phones all
| day?
| bballer wrote:
| We aren't ready collectively to confront these types of
| truths about the new way of life we have slowly settled
| into over the last 10-20 years.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Yeah, but you're comparing a house in the city to a house
| in flyover country. If you want to make a good
| comparison, i'd say --
|
| What was the median price of a home in the US in 1980 vs
| 2020. Then, what was the median salary in the US in 1980
| vs 2020. Thats the real comparison.
|
| No reason to note that houses are still cheap in some far
| off country, thats not really a convincing argument.
| [deleted]
| croissants wrote:
| > What was the median price of a home in the US in 1980
| vs 2020. Then, what was the median salary in the US in
| 1980 vs 2020. Thats the real comparison.
|
| Per the St. Louis Fed [1], the median American home price
| in 1980 was ~65k. The median American home price in 2019
| was ~320k. That's an approximately 4.9x increase. Also
| from the St. Louis Fed, the 1980 median American family
| income was ~21k, and the 2019 median American family
| income was ~86k. That's an approximately 4.1x increase.
| So it looks like median house price has increased about
| 20% more than median salary.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
|
| [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes _and_ the interest rates in 1980 were such that the
| mortgage P &I payments on a 1980 mortgage were $1106 per
| $100K borrowed vs $422 per $100K @ 3% today.
|
| 65K borrowed in 1980 cost $719/mo. 320K borrowed today
| costs $1349/mo (both are principal and interest only).
|
| $719 in 1980 is $2258 in 2020.
|
| [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US - I
| picked 13% as an approximate (somewhat low even) average
| rate for 1980.
|
| [1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Yeah the "whats my monthly" being about the same doesn't
| quite capture what's happening though.
|
| Compare what happens when you get a raise or a small
| windfall and try to pay your mortgage off early.
|
| I'd pick "small amount, high interest" over "massive
| amount, low rates" if that were an option.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That option requires governments to not be printing
| massive amounts of money, though.
|
| I am planning to refinance again (back to a 30-year
| mortgage) and won't be in any hurry whatsoever to pay it
| off early. Borrowing money at 3% nominal with the
| (hopeful) prospects of economic growth allowing inflation
| to return means that I expect to borrowing that money at
| negative real rates in the back half of that loan.
| pb7 wrote:
| Something else to consider: how does the median house
| today compare to the median house then? Is it bigger and
| better? Same? Worse? Perhaps expectations have changed in
| 40 years.
| war1025 wrote:
| That's just the world shifting around.
|
| I wish I could find the source, but I read a quote from
| someone that grew up back around the turn of the last
| century.
|
| She said, "I never thought I'd be so wealthy as to have my
| own automobile. And I never thought I'd be so poor to not
| afford any servants"
|
| Also, housing prices are highly regional. My brother bought
| his first house (4 bed, 2 bath) in our hometown for $58k
| about five years ago. Now he lives in a similarly sized
| house on 20 acres of land that he paid $200k for.
|
| I live in a more populated area, but I also bought my house
| (3 bed, 2.5 bath) three years ago for $100k.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Its automation / systemization / manufacturing vs.
| limited throughput.
|
| Cars can be built on assembly lines, mostly by machines,
| with very few humans doing the labor, and thanks to the
| speed of manufacturing, many millions can be built every
| year.
|
| How do you "build" servants? Right now, a Mommy and a
| Daddy have to romp around until Mommy gets pregnant, then
| it takes 18 years and 9 months minimum to build that
| servant. But what about the systems in place to identify
| top talent and utilize that servant better? What happens
| if that servant is tested and has a 140 IQ. Well then we
| need her to be a nuclear physicist, or a cardiovascular
| surgeon, or an AI researcher. She's wasted as a servant,
| and we can't afford to waste our resources in the modern
| world.
|
| The problem with Agatha Christie's quote is her outdated
| understanding of the world. In 1910, when Christie was 20
| years old, the smartest person born to the lowest class
| of British society had precisely dick-all chance of
| rising to become a Fellow of the Royal College of
| Surgeons, even if it was _clear_ to everyone he
| interacted with that he could easily do the requisite
| work.
|
| I suppose one day someone will say, "I never imagined I
| would be rich enough to afford a robotic kitchen, but too
| poor to live on Mars..." or some such nonsense.
| setgree wrote:
| I believe the person who said that was Agatha Christie.
|
| As to measuring inflation generally via the proxy of
| housing, the relationship is confounded by regulation
| that subsidizes demand and restricts supply, especially
| in cities like SF & NY, which is almost guaranteed to
| raise prices. In lots of other arenas, e.g. access to
| fresh food, real prices have gone down over time in
| America.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And just goods in general, but a lot of jobs with it as a
| lot of retail markups were from retail inefficiencies.
|
| Now you're increasingly < 10 miles from a Walmart and
| Amazon will deliver nearly everywhere.
|
| 15 years ago, a lot of this was still accessible, but
| you'd have to plan your Walmart trip or trudge through
| eBay or umpteen online retailers to cut out the b&m
| markups.
| derekp7 wrote:
| I bought my house about 4 years ago for 162K, and am about
| 45 minutes from a major Midwestern city (Chicago). Plenty
| of shopping and entertainment, high speed internet,
| recreation all within reach. Tech salaries are around
| 6-figure for many jobs (systems engineer), higher for
| developers. Oh, and if I felt like doing handy-man work, I
| could have gotten a house for 90K (would be livable, but
| require renovation to make it "good").
| wodenokoto wrote:
| For housing there is usually more to the equation than just
| inflation vs salary.
|
| When my parents got their first house in the 80s, I think
| the interest was just shy of 20%
|
| If I buy a house today, I can literally get 0%* interest on
| the loan.
|
| 20% interest over 30 years means you have paid almost 6
| times the value of the loan with your last payment.
|
| So if they could afford the house at 20% interest, they can
| afford it at 5 times the price with near zero interest.
|
| This has been one of the main factors for pushing house
| prices way faster than salary growth. The monthly payment
| can grow (somewhat) with salary while the sticker price on
| the house can grow much, much faster.
|
| * Don't live in the US, but house prices in the EU are just
| as crazy as anywhere
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Back then you cold use your bonus payments, holiday
| money, Christmas money, whatever to pay the credit WAY
| faster.
|
| Now, you would save two months of payments..
| loosetypes wrote:
| This reads similarly to me as conversations that justify
| medical bills being so high in the US when there's a
| closed loop between the those charging and those paying
| (ie, not the one receiving medical care). "You should be
| thankful that we saved you 99.5% of this artificially
| high price tag even though we're complicit in its fantasy
| pricing!"
|
| Medical service doesn't exist for the industry on top of
| it. Housing doesn't exist for the industry built on top
| of it. I wish our government considered the well-being of
| the host nearly as much as the parasites rather than
| asking Mr. Mosquito what he thinks would be beneficial.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| For all the folks commenting "oh, but you can still buy a
| house for 30,000 in XYZ city" -- no, when calculating
| inflation you have to compare likes.
|
| If a loaf of bread cost $0.10 in 1950 and now you're like,
| well a slice of bread in Vietnam still costs $0.10, thats
| not really a good argument.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| For all the folks commenting "oh, but you can still buy a
| house for 30,000 in XYZ city" -- no, when calculating
| inflation you have to compare likes.
|
| If a loaf of bread cost $0.10 in the US in 1950 and now
| you're like, well a slice of bread in Vietnam still costs
| $0.10, thats not really a good argument.
| ayyyolo wrote:
| The problem is corporations: they want employees clustered
| in hubs, not wfh, where they cannot "control" them.
|
| Aside from a couple tech companies out there, good luck
| trying to relocated and wfh in the mid-west.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| Baked into this theory is the belief that people only
| live in cities for job prospects, and not because they
| want to for every other part of their life. The belief is
| untrue at least for me and everyone I know.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Observer's bias? Of course you observe people in that
| situation, because of where you are.
|
| I agree though, that folks also live in cities by
| inertia. They've always lived there, and don't know any
| better. Even though they've got problems getting
| employment and housing, they can't see any solution.
| That's a demographic too.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| Oh it's very clearly observer's bias, I don't mean to
| suggest otherwise. That's exactly my point. I just wanted
| to push back on the idea that there are two kinds of
| people - those who don't live in cities, and those who
| live in cities reluctantly.
|
| Working from home seems to have a similar narrative on
| hacker news I've found, probably for similar reasons -
| either you work from home happily or you reluctantly go
| into the office.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I relocated and wfh in the midwest. It's not been hard at
| all.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I do think corps are part of the problem, but not
| necessarily due to control. Cities are self-reinforcing
| growth due to the inherent chicken-and-egg problem
| regarding jobs and companies. Companies don't want to
| move to the boonies, not enough workers. Workers don't
| want to move to the boonies, not enough jobs. And
| everyone wants to be close to universities, because
| networks, while universities aren't willing to spend
| resources to move. This was already the case before
| telecommunication became as advanced as it did in the
| recent 15 years.
|
| WFH might help break the cycle to some degree, but the
| majority people will still be in cities (by virtue of,
| well, being a city), which creates incentives for younger
| generations to go there (dating + outgoing life), even
| for those who would rather settle outside the city once
| they find a partner.
| wincy wrote:
| Based on your username I'm assuming you're around NYC. My
| wife is from West Islip on Long Island and faced a similar
| quandary as she was coming of age. $2000 a month to rent a
| crappy apartment in the mid 2000s, so she moved out to the
| Kansas City metro area. We bought a 2200 square foot house
| in the suburbs that cost us $245,000 just a few years ago,
| maybe $300,000 now.
|
| I'd say the stop-the-rat race mentality is to move to a
| smaller city, unless you're literally working on Broadway
| or some job that's uniquely tied to a large city, there's
| plenty of jobs and lots of space out in flyover country.
| lfowles wrote:
| Then the rat race intensifies for those originating in
| the smaller cities.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > No amount of stop-the-rat-race mentality gets me a house
| for $300,000.
|
| Many many houses, including mine, cost less than that. Some
| of them cost an order of magnitude less. If you're not
| considering moving out of a city with fancy tech career
| prospects a viable option, then you are possibly not
| understanding the concept of a rat-race.
| jcomis wrote:
| Exactly. Some prices have just gone up way more
| disproportionately, like housing, making it difficult to
| compare to older metrics.
| nullsense wrote:
| > No amount of stop-the-rat-race mentality gets me a house
| for $30,000
|
| 30 year old 1 room apartments in small town Hokkaido. Just
| saying.
| stickfigure wrote:
| You can get nice house for $300,000, just not in a major
| metro zone. It works if your "stop-the-rate-race" mentality
| includes moving to a rural area. Especially if you leave CA
| or NY.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Interest rates have crumbled since then and dramatically
| so.
|
| That 30k is around 85k today. Interest rates then vs today
| would make for the same monthly payment in actual dollars
| of around $500/month. $500/month in 1981 is like $1400
| today. This would mean the house should be worth around
| $300k today at today's interest rates.
|
| Of course the location may be more or less in demand which
| greatly influences price.
|
| Where I grew up the houses are more expensive than in the
| 80's but the location isn't in demand so the inflation and
| interest adjusted cost is well below the cost back then.
| tebbers wrote:
| I recently saw a graph of the average monthly mortgage
| payment in the UK (a country where house prices have
| rocketed in the last 30 years). The average monthly
| mortgage payment has basically been flat over the last 30
| years so I think your point is absolutely correct -
| affordability on a monthly basis hasn't budged.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| But the house could be bought quicker with bonuses from
| work for example.
|
| Those extra down payments are worthless now..
| nemo44x wrote:
| Possibly but would bonuses be adjusted too?
|
| I do think the down payment is more difficult for many
| people today. The solution to this was to allow less than
| 20% down. But then the borrower has to pay PMI until they
| have 20% equity. There are tax rebates for first time
| buyers too.
|
| People need more discipline in saving and investing and
| looking for smaller places in areas with less demand. Get
| into the market and build equity and scale up over time.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _Now, you can be making a couple million a year and only be
| worrying about who 's about to take it from you or whether your
| assets are going to be worthless in the next financial crash._
|
| Are you being serious? If you're lucky enough to somehow be
| paid a couple of million dollars per year, you could work for a
| small few years and retire without any financial worries at
| all.
|
| That's an absolutely massive salary, and I don't understand how
| someone could be getting that amount of income and have any
| reasonable grounds to be worried about their financial
| situtation.
| jyu wrote:
| The point is the fabric of society is unraveling quickly in
| 2021 than 2008. What does it matter if you win the career
| lottery if every neighborhood is covered in feces, sidewalks
| are full of tent cities, and your fellow man is 1 health
| crisis away from becoming an other.
| hnarn wrote:
| It matters because you're rich, which means you don't have
| to live in those neighborhoods.
| crumbshot wrote:
| I don't think that was the main thrust of their comment,
| which comes across as mostly a selfish appraisal of a
| perceived risk to their riches ("only be worrying about
| who's about to take it from you or whether your assets are
| going to be worthless in the next financial crash"), rather
| than concern about others.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| One is forced to wonder if making millions and being
| surrounded by tent cities is somehow correlated. Almost
| like wealth is being concentrated in the hands of a
| relative few or something.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| Semi unrelated, but is FAANG still a comfortable path to such
| income? I've been debating between doing FAANG or starting my
| own business for years and the wavering hasn't done me any
| good.
|
| If it's still possible to make 500k+ working at FAANG now that
| stocks aren't increasing so rapidly, I need to get on that
| right away :)
| naveen99 wrote:
| How can someone take take your income from you ? Assets aren't
| income. All assets have a carrying cost / risk, it's always
| been that way.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Lose your job, lose your income. That happens increasingly
| frequently as the pace of change heats up in various
| industries.
| naveen99 wrote:
| I would think people whose labor is worth $2 million per
| year also have options, starting with self employment
| bondarchuk wrote:
| GFC?
| cle wrote:
| Global financial crisis, presumably.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Would your experienced well-being have been higher in 2008 with
| half-million in income? Would your experienced well-being in
| 2020 be lower if you were making $100K/yr?
|
| I suspect the answer is yes to both, from which I conclude
| "2020 was worse across the board by important stability
| measures that you value, but for any given year, $500K in
| income is better than $100K."
| throwaway_goog wrote:
| > Would your experienced well-being have been higher in 2008
| with half-million in income?
|
| Probably not by much. All I really wanted was a basic place
| to live, enough food on the table, and a reasonable
| expectation that that'd continue into the future. My job was
| already doing what I would do for fun beforehand.
|
| "Would your experienced well-being in 2020 be lower if you
| were making $100K/yr?"
|
| Yes, because those things - food & housing security - are
| increasingly precarious on $100K/year now. You can still live
| on $100K/year in the Bay Area, but you're a couple years of
| rent increases from being priced out, and forget
| homeownership.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| with 75k you'll have a hard time doing anything else than
| renting, some saving/investing ... buying a house f.x. will come
| with a long-term commitment and the stress resulting from owing
| money. not sure how far you get with 75k in the US. in Germany
| you won't be able to do much. so, obviously earning more will
| make life better. somewhere north of 100k one will be able to buy
| a house with tolerable risk, a car etc. below that - possible but
| difficult and risky. 75k means either enduring that stress or
| accepting having to rent forever - which is also a stressful
| prospect for a couple of reasons.
| 121789 wrote:
| This is really regionally dependent. It would be extremely
| difficult to do 75K in the bay area or many parts of the
| northeast. Very easy in many parts of the southeast and
| midwest.
|
| Regardless, I think the point of 75K is that it's the threshold
| where you are generally confident that you can start thinking
| about future planning rather than immediate needs. Yes you
| still have to rent, think about budgeting, and be a bit
| cautious in spending, but at least you know that the basics of
| living are covered.
| pid_0 wrote:
| This always seemed true to me. I was really surprised to see so
| much acceptance about the findings that put 75k as some magical
| cut off point. I can say from experience the difference in my
| life from 75k to what I am at now is monumental especially
| considering I make 4x more than all of my friends.
| ZitchDog wrote:
| Are you 4x as happy as your friends?
| oa335 wrote:
| He is something like log(4) times happier than his friends,
| according to the paper /s.
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