Money Doesn't Make You Happier.....

Spark

A big part of happiness is how much you feel in control of your life. And the more money you have, the more in control you feel, because more choices are opening up to you.
Of course there are some things that money can't buy, like health, or love, but somehow if you got the money it makes you feel better, as health wise you know you will be able to look further afield for treatment or it gives you the means to look for love in more places than if you had less money, as you got the means to travel more often, and further away.
Having lots of money give you peace of mind, the assurance that, if anything happen, you will have more means to solve the problems that will arise in your life, or the means to protect yourself better.
But more importantly, happiness is half way there when you have a job that you like doing. It is a fact that you spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else, and if you don't like your job you will be stressed and feel you are not in control, and therefore feel the poorer for it, whether you earn the minimum wage or a six figure salary.

the_flying_pig

the problem i had with stuff like this is that it's all based on 'subjective well-being', i.e. how happy people say that they are [presumably at the point in time at which they fill out the survey].

this obviously isn't anywhere near as accurate a measure as you'd get by [hypothetically] wiring up some kind of machine that constantly monitored the amount of, er, activity in a person's brain's left prefrontal cortex over the space of a typical week.

an example of the subjective well-being measure falling down - a university chum of mine has recently got to top ranks of a big american bank. how much does he earn per year? i dunno but it's in seven figures certainly, quite possibly nearer eight than six. on a survey like this he'd mark himself as 10/10 for happiness without even thinking about it, because, well, he's a 'master of the universe', innit, top of the tree, with an expensive house in an expensive part of london, expensive car [not absurdly flashy but the membership of a supercar club or whatever you call it where you borrow something daft to pose in for a weekend sorts that out], expensive second home near the coast and the expensive boat, etc. but when you spend time with him, well, all of his 10 finger/thumb nails are bitten down as far as they'll go, he's a stone or two lighter than in his university days [not in a good way]. he's got a couple of minor tics & twitches and, well, i don't really want to know the details but i vaguely understand that he's had a few problems with his bowels and whatnot. if you wired him up to my hypothetical brain scanner [see previous paragraph] then for very large stretches of the week [he flies long or medium haul most weeks, is always in the office for seven, is under huge pressure to deliver results, etc], in fact probably most of it, he'd score very low indeed, much worse no doubt than your average minimum wage drone who gets 8 hours sleep a night & manages at least a couple of hours in front of the tele [or web, or whatever] most days.

but then in those few bits of leisure time that he does get he's no doubt very content indeed. and when he retires a multimillionaire at 40 or so he'll have, well, the world will be his oyster i suppose.

so it's all a bit questionable, i reckon. in particular, if money is closely correlated with how hard someone works [a big if] then, well.... yeah, it's complicated.

maybe for retired people it'd be entirely straightforward? more money = better unambiguously?

kloana

"Having money's not everything, not having it is..." - Kanye West.

I don't think an abundance of money would make me any happier (though I'm completely up for testing this theory!), but can truly say that barring family deaths, my greatest problems in life have been due to lack of money. OK, we're talking pretty low-level stuff (never had any serious problems, and certainly don't have any now), but life can be miserable without even the smallest bit of surplus income. Or downright terrible if what you have doesn't meet your immediate needs.

strapped_student

David Lee Roth once said "Money can't buy you happiness, but it does let you moor your yacht next to happiness".

I think it relates to your goals in life: if you succeed in them you will be happy; often you will need a certain level on income in order to help achieve those. If, however, you don't have anything set out or goals to achieve, no amount of money will actually make you happy - it will just provide a distraction at best(and often gets frittered away).

grizzly1911

the_flying_pig wrote: »

the problem i had with stuff like this is that it's all based on 'subjective well-being', i.e. how happy people say that they are [presumably at the point in time at which they fill out the survey].

this obviously isn't anywhere near as accurate a measure as you'd get by [hypothetically] wiring up some kind of machine that constantly monitored the amount of, er, activity in a person's brain's left prefrontal cortex over the space of a typical week.

an example of the subjective well-being measure falling down - a university chum of mine has recently got to top ranks of a big american bank. how much does he earn per year? i dunno but it's in seven figures certainly, quite possibly nearer eight than six. on a survey like this he'd mark himself as 10/10 for happiness without even thinking about it, because, well, he's a 'master of the universe', innit, top of the tree, with an expensive house in an expensive part of london, expensive car [not absurdly flashy but the membership of a supercar club or whatever you call it where you borrow something daft to pose in for a weekend sorts that out], expensive second home near the coast and the expensive boat, etc. but when you spend time with him, well, all of his 10 finger/thumb nails are bitten down as far as they'll go, he's a stone or two lighter than in his university days [not in a good way]. he's got a couple of minor tics & twitches and, well, i don't really want to know the details but i vaguely understand that he's had a few problems with his bowels and whatnot. if you wired him up to my hypothetical brain scanner [see previous paragraph] then for very large stretches of the week [he flies long or medium haul most weeks, is always in the office for seven, is under huge pressure to deliver results, etc], in fact probably most of it, he'd score very low indeed, much worse no doubt than your average minimum wage drone who gets 8 hours sleep a night & manages at least a couple of hours in front of the tele [or web, or whatever] most days.

but then in those few bits of leisure time that he does get he's no doubt very content indeed. and when he retires a multimillionaire at 40 or so he'll have, well, the world will be his oyster i suppose.

so it's all a bit questionable, i reckon. in particular, if money is closely correlated with how hard someone works [a big if] then, well.... yeah, it's complicated.

maybe for retired people it'd be entirely straightforward? more money = better unambiguously?

I have a couple of friends who are continually jet setting to the States, round Europe and Middle East. They both have digestive problems from not being in any routine and regularly switching large time zones.

They both rarely see their family. One gets sporadic weekends the other has much longer periods away but the family are adults now. The former is in a very good position the latter in a senior management role, not exec level.

John_Pierpoint

When you go to a Buddhist temple in traditional China, there is usually a series of sub temples as you approached the major shrine.
Your first retail opportunity, is to buy some joss sticks and give thanks for your safe journey etc,................ and then dispose of the still burning joss sticks.

In a particular temple, admittedly on the side of the three gorges dam lake, so frequented by middle class Chinese tourists, there were two bronze cauldrons in which to place the joss sticks.

A bit like having a go at the Xmas turkey wishbone, one cauldron was a request for wealth, the other for good health.

I counted the two cauldrons and wealth outnumbered health by 5 to 1.

Sad really.

I think I would get the greatest satisfaction in life, if some wonderful insight won me a Nobel prize.

If that was for a "fake" Nobel prize for economics for some algorithm, that would be OK; the billion dollars it made me would be incidental.

It is the journey in life that counts not the arrival - we all know that is 6ft under.

At least we know what these two did for their money; I am not entirely convinced that casino banking is a win win process:

lostinrates

BobQ wrote: »

I can appreciate this argument, but I think its not the availability of money that makes people happy its the availability of enough money to satisfy their needs and aspirations. Some people feel deprived if they cannot buy a new hours every five years, or take a holiday abroad 3 times a year or but a better car every other year, or surround themselves with material things that impress their friends. Equally there are those who live frugally through choice, repair things, holiday at home and drive an old banger.

So I would say money only brings happiness to those who feel the need to spend it. To those who do not it can be a source of stress to have money. But maybe this is what you mean!

There are those, of course. There are others who couldn't give a fig about the opinions of others but appreciate fine crafts, arts, experiences...the money to enjoy them brings satisfactions.

27col

Money doesn't make you happy, but it enables you to be miserable in comfort.

Moby

marlot wrote: »

I went to a talk by Ann Widdecombe recently, and one of the wise things she said was not to spend your life obsessing about the people who had more than you, but if anything to think of those who had less.

True of course............ but easier said than done in our modern consumer based free market society in which advertising plays such a large part? Our children are raised to believe that the most important thing in life is to have the latest gadget/mobile phone etc.

OffGridLiving

Generali wrote: »

....but it does make you more satisfied.

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/04/subjective%20well%20being%20income/subjective%20well%20being%20income.pdf

It's a brilliant paper and well worth reading in full however to summarise they make 2 points:

1. The Easterlin Paradox is wrong.
2. The modified Easterlin Paradox is wrong.

Good eh?

Ah, yes sorry. What's the Easterlin Paradox you say? Good question.

The unimaginatively named Easterlin Paradox was discovered by a bloke called Richard [STRIKE]Paradox[/STRIKE] Easterlin. He (thought he had) discovered that once peoples' basic needs were met, further increases in income did not lead to greater satisfaction or happiness. This is true across countries.

However, more recent work has shown that this is partly incorrect. This led to the modified Easterlin Paradox. This states that the point at which people stop getting happier isn't when their basic needs are met but at an income point above that but that there is a point. The way this was shown was by demonstrating that for each incremental bit of income, slightly less extra happiness is gained. The leap that was made from there was that eventually the gain in happiness from more income must become zero.

This new piece of work by Betsey and Justin has done what nobody has tried to do before, which if you think about it is pretty obvious. If there is a level of income at which people stop getting happier, what is it? It should be definable and pretty clear, albeit possibly subject to change over time.

When they looked for this mystical level of income at which point extra income doesn't make you happier they found it doesn't exist. Every single extra pound, dollar or yen earned makes you a little bit happier and every single extra pound, dollar or yen on average GDP per head makes the people in a country happier.

TBH I find the thought of this really quite depressing, that increased happiness is to be found in the ceaseless pursuit of money. Oh well.

My idea of happiness would be to have an independant income that covered my basis life expenses. I'm trying to work towards this goal by reducing my outgoings to a point where the income can be quite modest. Step one is to reduce or eliminate utility bills by getting as 'off grid' as is possible and yet still be part of a modern society. Rather difficult.