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by camelNotation 3822 days ago
People say that and it seems true to some extent, but financially, people rarely fall into the categories of "limitless wealth" and "not a penny to my name." It's almost like a false dichotomy is being implied by this statement, claiming that if you don't prioritize money, you will be left penniless and ruined. That simply isn't true. There are a wide range of conditions between wealth and poverty and studies like this show that you do not need to be closer to rich than poor to be happy.
3 comments
lmm 3822 days ago
I think it's more the opposite: that the richer you are the more you can afford to prioritize time. This study doesn't even try to control for that; they measure materiality and a measure of subjective feelings of wealth, but they never measure e.g. parental income.
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JimboOmega 3822 days ago
I think studies have shown that past a relatively low (by SV standards) level of income ($75kish I think) the relationship between money and happiness breaks down.

The argument can definitely be made that the happiness difference between "comfortable and independent" and "Zuckerberg" is not all that great.

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jkyle 3822 days ago
> I think studies have shown that past a relatively low (by SV standards) level of income ($75kish I think) the relationship between money and happiness breaks down.

This is true. But while that is low by SV standards, the $75k threshold from the study is targeted to "median america" cost of living.

If you adjust for cost of living and for purchasing power over the 6 years since the study was conducted, you end up with quite a bit more for areas like San Francisco. In fact, you'd probably be looking at more like 175-185k. [1]

1. http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Happi...

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monsieurbanana 3821 days ago
That's not intuitive for me. I personally think my threshold would rather be "comfortable and independent without having to work".

Not that I don't want to work anymore, but being able to leave my programming job and becoming a dog breeder would make a lot of difference. And take month longs vacations to travel whenever I wanted.

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tamana 3822 days ago
The statement plots two points. You can interpolate.
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