Chris Jones: "Being Poor Sucks"

I actually heard about a study correlating income to personal happiness, and is said that once you go above $70,000, the line pretty much levels out. There's no meaningful difference is moment-to-moment happiness from a person making $70,000 and $700,000.

 

I'm sure it greatly depends on where you live (and discounting professions like doctors and lawyers, who took on huge debt and expense before they got those salaries), but that sounds about right. Hell, I think there's a vast difference between $20k and $40k, and neither are anyone's idea of rich. I could be perfectly happy on one, though (as a single person), but not the other.

 

That's exactly what I want to know and really the only reason I posted in this thread, asking typefitter the definition since he claims to have been "rich." But crickets continue to chirp.

I mean, if "rich" equals the happiness cutoff in the studies clintrichardson and I cited, well then, that's not really "rich." But that may in fact be the amount of money some people on here are coveting and considering "rich."

 

Since you asked, here are a couple of articles on the one I specifically remember...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642850.html

But I don't know JackSquat about methodology or regression, and am not really interested discussing it. I just want to know typefitter's definition of rich.

 

Speaking of people's different perceptions of being rich, did anyone see this exchange of tweets?

Literally think it's one of Twitter's greatest moments.

http://stereogum.com/1049152/t-boone-pickens-stunts-on-drake/franchises/wheres-the-beef/

 

I was talking to someone who said that anyone with a household income over over $100K should be considered "rich" which just seemed absurd to me.

 

That's absurd

 

Bill Gates wouldn't be rich if he blew through all of his cash, either. Even in Manhatten, $100K is a decent sum of money. Not rich, but you're making enough to be comfortable.

 

Compared to whom? Or what?

 

This whole discussion is absurd.

If you make $30k, and suddenly you're making $100k, you're going to feel 'rich.' But unless you keep living as if you make $30k, that new-found prosperity vaporizes pretty quickly...pay off the bills, buy a nicer car, do some landscaping, a little vacation...oops, where's all that new money?!

But no one makes 100 and lives on 30. When you hit 100, 200 starts looking better. At 200, you think about what you could do with 300. 500. A million.

It's not about 'any one can live on (fill in the blank).' It's what you WANT to live on that makes you 'rich.'

And even then, you'll still want more. Never met anyone who said, 'Yeah, I think I make enough now.'

 

Looking at those studies about money and happiness -- the conclusions of which I happen to agree with wholeheartedly -- the best explanation is the underlying reason for why people have money. They work more. People who make crazy money work crazy hours. And people who work crazy hours, on the whole, enjoy life less. There was another study that came out a few months ago that looked at Ivy League grads and others over the course of their lives and found that the Ivy Leaguers lived shorter lives and were less fulfilled during those lives, despite making more money.

But if you stay in journalism, you have a shot at the best of all worlds -- work crazy hours, live a shorter and unhappier life, AND make no money!