We're talking about human happiness, the capacity for love, freedom, and self actualization. Happiness.
We're not talking about buying overpriced liabilities such as fancy cars, furniture and clothes.
I make over 150k and it's awful working 160 hours a month.
Think about why this study is messed up:
Wage earners spend the Best part of day typically indoors, taking orders from another person.
Wage earners send their children to be taken care of by strangers.
Wage earners send their kids to the zombie factory (public schools)
The fact is that someone with a few million can:
- take care of their own children/babies
- educate their own children
- take care of their aging parents
- take care of sick relatives
- can explore the world
Don't tell me that having 2M in the bank will not make you, your family, and neighborhood FAR "happier" than someone making 300k in wage slavery.
I can tell you for a FACT that making that much money (millions) will objectively lead to higher quality of life for people and their families.
I'm personally working hard now to accumulate several investment properties and live free for life so that I can retire before 40 so that:
- I can raise my kids
- help parents, family, friends
- explore world and learn
- focus all my free time on healthy living
- get best medical treatments
You damn right it will make me happier to be able to do yoga 3 times a day, raising my kids and also building cool shit without Having to answer to a boss.
You know it's true that lots of money makes you immeasurably more fulfilled. Don't listen to socialist lies that you only need some bullshit 105k (<75k after tax)
I agree this study is BS. They have no one in their data who has $5 million+ in the bank and has F* you money... because those people are supposedly outliers.
I would be an order of magnitude happier if I could work on my own projects instead of working for someone else. There's a reason people do side-hustles and punish themselves trying to get something going outside of their normal $100k salary... it's for the hope of having true financial freedom. The study is correct that $100k vs $150k doesn't make much difference at all... but if I had $1 million in a bank it would be a huge difference.
Socialists were the first and the main critics of Wage Slavery. More recently, you have the Situationist movement, which coined the slogan "Ne Travaillez Jamais!" (Never Work!) and has a body of work criticizing this model (both in capitalist and in marxist-leninist countries).
Anyone saying you "only need 105k" is not a socialist.
I did - seriously. Think about it: Single, living in Pittsburgh (reasonable CoL area). I had a cute apartment that I enjoyed coming home to, went running in gorgeous parks or cycling in lovely outlying hills almost every day, worked my butt off at a job that was challenging as hell that I enjoyed, and was putting away enough in savings that it was clear I was on a good trajectory for long-term FI. It was great.
Oh, and the better kicker: I was even happier in grad school when I was earning $24k/year. One of the happiest times of my life. That doesn't apply to everyone's grad school experience, but for me, it was awesome. Lived in a shitty apartment above central square in one of the more expensive regions of the country (hi, Cambridge, still love you but glad I don't have to deal with your housing market). My roommates and officemates at work have become life-long friends.
I will indeed tell you that having 2M in the bank has been a much smaller factor in my happiness than almost anything else, particularly the effect of the people in my life. My day-to-day happiness is much more affected by whether I got a good night's sleep, whether my children are healthy, whether my wife and I are communicating well, whether I'm healthy and able to do the things I like or whether I've once again managed to injure myself pretending I'm 24 instead of 42. :-)
(I'm not unsympathetic to the desire for FI, btw -- quite the opposite. But I've noticed that I want it primarily in a theoretical way, for the comfort in knowing I could quit, not because I actually want to quit. Yes, I'm lucky that I have .. multiple .. jobs that I absolutely love, but I've also chosen to accept a 66% paycut to work in a job I love instead of blasting to FI in industry, and I'm good with that. Sometimes it annoys me and I go do some consulting or bitcoin mining to help make up the difference. :-)
I'm totally with you here. But we need to realize very feel people perceive/realize the world under these terms. Most people feel like they are destined for a job their entire lives and that extreme wealth are for the few lucky/extraordinary other ones. Even in an YC forum.
The perception does not matter in as much as it is actually aligned with reality. Which I suspect it actually is if you're not one of the initially rich.
Few can produce ground-breaking ideas or are lucky enough to actually earn a million dollars quickly (as opposed to stealing it).
We're talking about human happiness, the capacity for love, freedom, and self actualization. Happiness.
We're not talking about buying overpriced liabilities such as fancy cars, furniture and clothes.
I make over 150k and it's awful working 160 hours a month.
Think about why this study is messed up:
Wage earners spend the Best part of day typically indoors, taking orders from another person.
Wage earners send their children to be taken care of by strangers.
Wage earners send their kids to the zombie factory (public schools)
The fact is that someone with a few million can:
- take care of their own children/babies - educate their own children - take care of their aging parents - take care of sick relatives - can explore the world
Don't tell me that having 2M in the bank will not make you, your family, and neighborhood FAR "happier" than someone making 300k in wage slavery.
I can tell you for a FACT that making that much money (millions) will objectively lead to higher quality of life for people and their families.
I'm personally working hard now to accumulate several investment properties and live free for life so that I can retire before 40 so that:
- I can raise my kids - help parents, family, friends - explore world and learn - focus all my free time on healthy living - get best medical treatments
You damn right it will make me happier to be able to do yoga 3 times a day, raising my kids and also building cool shit without Having to answer to a boss.
You know it's true that lots of money makes you immeasurably more fulfilled. Don't listen to socialist lies that you only need some bullshit 105k (<75k after tax)