[palmotea]

> An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.

$95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.

[embedding-shape]

> $95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.

That's because most of us here are so used to the amount of money we earn. But for people who literally struggling with month-to-month payments, 100K feels like a life-changing amount of money. If they were just saving month by month, they might have never reached that amount in their entire life.

Our perspectives here on HN are very one-sided when it comes to things like this, anyone who been poor previously (or is currently) could attest to this.

[isleyaardvark]

There was a thread here not too long ago about employees getting fired because they were cheating on their expense accounts. C-level execs cheating on pretty trivial amounts. And others brought up star athletes getting paid millions, then getting busted placing thousands of dollars on insider bets. There's a lot of irrationality in these decisions.

[joe_mamba]

Greed knows no limits. That's how polls showed the happiest people earn around 60-80k a year, and both the people below and above that threshold, reported to be less and less happy the less they made and also the more they made.

It's as if the more money you make, the more you need to feel fulfilled, so people start stealing and scamming to cover a self inflicted psychological money deficit.

[ninjagoo]

> That's how polls showed the happiest people earn around 60-80k a year, and both the people below and above that threshold, reported to be less and less happy the less they made and also the more they made.

This is a myth. The original 2010 Kahneman-Deaton study showed that how favorably people judged their overall lives continued to improve beyond $75k. Daily emotional well-being appeared to stop improving around that level. [1]

A larger 2021 study by Killingsworth using real-time reports found no happiness plateau at $75k; instead, well-being continued increasing with income, including above $200k. The relationship was logarithmic - going from $40k to $80k mattered more than going from $160k to $200k, but the benefit didn't disappear. [2]

So of course, in 2023, Kahneman and Killingsworth jointly re-analyzed to resolve the conflict, leading to more nuanced conclusions: in the least-happy 15-20%, unhappiness declined as income went up but eventually leveled off; for the majority of people, happiness continued rising with income beyond $75k; in the happiest people, the association sometimes became stronger at higher incomes. [3]

Science, baby!

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107

[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2016976118

[3] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120

[joe_mamba]

>This is a myth.

Not if the jump from 80k to 120k also means a jump from working 40h to 60h.

[WalterBright]

If anyone here makes more than 80k and is unhappy, I can help! Simply wire me the excess.

[swiftcoder]

I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures. Less-than-a-year's-salary is definitely a weird thing to throw a comfortable 6 figure income out the window for - it's not like 95k is "never work a day in your life" money.

[embedding-shape]

> I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures.

What does that mean for where and how the person live though? How much money were they realistically having left at the end of the month? 6 figures surely means a lot in some places, in others not so much and maybe they didn't have much left after all. Even with 1K left in a month on average, that's 95 months (~8 years) of saving for the same amount, maybe it was always the plan to just get the fuck out once they got close to 100K or whatever.

Humans do rash things, especially when some shortcut appears. But all this is also speculation and hypothesizing, who knows the real reasons behind it for sure.

[swiftcoder]

> What does that mean for where and how the person live though?

It means they lived somewhere where a 6-figure income is feasible, which already puts it on the expensive end of the spectrum. If they are fleeing to somewhere where 95k looks like retirement money, that's not going to be a place where replacing that 6-figure income is feasible (especially with a default judgement against them blocking access to the whole US-influenced banking network)

[spwa4]

Is that allowed to be discussed? That the main factor in income is not even job, but merely location and access to work visa?

Talk about deeply unfair ...

[swiftcoder]

> That the main factor in income is not even job, but merely location and access to work visa? Talk about deeply unfair ...

For sure unfair. It drove whole generations to seek to emigrate to the US to work in Silicon Valley - one lucky break in the Bay Area, or 10-15 years of regular work, could set your whole family up for life back home. Now the equation is shifting, as US immigration policies become less predictable, and BigTech is back in layoff mode.

I expect that the EU's more moderate (but still high globally) salaries coupled to robust worker protections, cheap healthcare + education systems, are going to start looking pretty good for the next while.

[mr_toad]

People can earn six figures and still be living paycheque to paycheque, and up to their ears in debt.

[danudey]

Now he's up to his ears in debt and a felon in his original country, plus he's not likely to get another six-figure job from any country willing to do a background check. I hope that extra $95k was sufficient to set him up for life.

[swiftcoder]

I don’t think that changes the equation any? If you are underwater on 100k/year, you sure as shit are going to end up underwater on 95k for the entire rest of your life…

[joe_mamba]

If you're so financially fucked that you can't live on 100k/year then you're still be fucked even with an illicitly obtained extra 95k.

Crazy how many people try to find excuses for crime. There's people living on fractions of that that don't commit crime. No, income is no excuse.

[danudey]

But the poster said that that was basically his yearly salary. He fled the country and has to spend the rest of his life worrying about extradition (and/or having people find out he's a felon) for a year's pay.

[davidwritesbugs]

Indeed, a lot of HN readers don't realise their good luck in life. It takes a dose of poverty to bring perspective.

[small_model]

Yes seems like would cost a portion of it to execute the escape. Should have just bet it on a 10/1 shot and then kept the 900k if it worked out.

[jurgenburgen]

And gone to jail when it doesn’t pan out?

[small_model]

Not your problem they made the mistake, cant get blood from a stone, sue me etc etc.

[chongli]

The person had a 6 figure job. They’d end up having their salary garnished to pay the debt. It would be far worse than just giving the money back.

[small_model]

Yes I mean vs what they did, at least there would be a chance of a good outcome, just returning the money would have been optimal.