[johnrydell]

Here is my own piece of financial advice that I learned from a wise man 20 years ago: You have to double your income in order to improve your standard of living by 10%. Many people get a raise or a new job and they think they are now rich and can spend like crazy. You can't. Double your income and you'll honestly only see a 10% lifestyle change. Don't forget it. Keep saving. Limit spending. And give a percentage of your income back to charity.

[debacle]

While it sounds like a compelling anecdote, it's complete bullshit. If you are just squeaking by at 30k, and you get a raise up to 60k, you suddenly have an extra 30k per year to play with.

That can mean many things - for every year you work, you could theoretically retire one year earlier. You could now afford a car that doesn't cost more in maintenance than gas each year. You could now afford to double your extremely tight grocery budget and spend more money on healthier foods.

"Lifestyle" and "standard of living" are unquantifiable, which is why this is a compelling factoid, but the reality is that, ignoring inflation, a 10% increase in salary is a 10% increase in disposable income.

Now obviously if you have more disposable income than you need, a 10% increase doesn't mean much. If I was pulling down 200k I wouldn't move for 220k if I was happy where I was at, but if I was pulling down 40k I would move for 44k in a heartbeat.

[dblock]

"While it sounds like a compelling anecdote, it's complete bullshit. If you are just squeaking by at 30k, and you get a raise up to 60k, you suddenly have an extra 30k per year to play with."

That is if you live in a tax-free zone :)

[jiggy2011]

You do have to take taxes into consideration if you are in a country with progressive taxation.

I think it might better to think that if your income doubles you should only increase your lifestyle by 10% or so.

You should put as much of the extra income into investment , savings , getting clear of debt etc.

[zurn]

> "Lifestyle" and "standard of living" are unquantifiable

Happiness can be quantified, then there are things like the Human Development Index, Satisfaction With Life Index etc.

[debacle]

Please quantify happiness.

[zurn]

It generally works by asking people how happy they are + statistics to work out causes or correlations. I gather psych people do this kind of thing all the time about seemingly subjective things.

WP on measuring happiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness#Measures_of_happines...

More generally: Measures of emotion: A review <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756702/>;