4 ms·

Not being attacking or sarcastic. Once you hit $25K, you likely wish you could get to $40K because you could finally buy a nice.... etc., etc. It is the rare in

Not being attacking or sarcastic. Once you hit $25K, you likely wish you could get to $40K because you could finally buy a nice.... etc., etc. It is the rare individual that can stop the chase. With a 7 figure salary, you just have a nicer and bigger house. Your vacations are to Europe and first class instead of driving to the beach, etc. The one thing that most studies have shown is that (in today's dollars) once you get above about $80K household income, any more income doesn't make you any happier. If you think about it that makes sense, since at the level and above you can have some financial security and not be paycheck to paycheck (in most areas), have a small house and decent cars which greatly reduces your stress and leaving room for contentment. Of course, each person's goals are different and the amount of Jonesing they can control is too.

pc86 8y ago
Not to be nitpicky but you can do a European vacation with first class airfare when you make much less than a million dollars a year in income. Two people NYC to London 6/18-25 is $10,200 for airfare. Assume that everything else you do costs 2x that much if you're going all out (the few times I've purchased first class tickets, that cost has ended up being 50% or more of the entire trip). You're still at $30k for a vacation, which is an astounding amount of money to spend on a week for sure. But at the same time, if you make $250k a year and this is a special event, 10th/20th/30th anniversary, big birthday event, etc, it's not outside the realm of possibilities to spend 2 months salary on something like that. Obviously you still need to save and plan it, and if you're making $1 million a year you can probably spend $30k without thinking about it. But just wanted to point out that it's doable. As for the $80k study you're mentioning I've seen numbers all over the place, from $70k up to $105k, but I've definitely noticed the satisfaction from each raise has decreased even while the raw dollar amounts have gone up. The last raise I got only served to go toward paying down debts faster, which I can attest makes me very happy.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I just want to point out that if you live in NYC, that $30k vacation will cost you about $50k in pre-tax income. And no one I know in NYC who makes $250k is going to spend 20% of their annual income on a vacation. And ironically, those who could are disciplined and frugal enough that they probably never would.
  - pc86 8y ago
    Well nobody calculates the cost of their vacation based on pre-tax income. And someone making $250k in NYC is doing much worse off than someone making $200k within a few hours drive of major NYC airports. I just picked NYC because there are a lot of one-way flights to London.
kome 8y ago
I already live in Europe; but point well taken. People needs more and more money... I wonder if there is a marginal utility: at what point you would stop thinking about money? I think that around 40k perhaps 50k per year, I would completely stop thinking about money.

pc86 8y ago

Not to be nitpicky but you can do a European vacation with first class airfare when you make much less than a million dollars a year in income. Two people NYC to London 6/18-25 is $10,200 for airfare. Assume that everything else you do costs 2x that much if you're going all out (the few times I've purchased first class tickets, that cost has ended up being 50% or more of the entire trip). You're still at $30k for a vacation, which is an astounding amount of money to spend on a week for sure. But at the same time, if you make $250k a year and this is a special event, 10th/20th/30th anniversary, big birthday event, etc, it's not outside the realm of possibilities to spend 2 months salary on something like that. Obviously you still need to save and plan it, and if you're making $1 million a year you can probably spend $30k without thinking about it. But just wanted to point out that it's doable. As for the $80k study you're mentioning I've seen numbers all over the place, from $70k up to $105k, but I've definitely noticed the satisfaction from each raise has decreased even while the raw dollar amounts have gone up. The last raise I got only served to go toward paying down debts faster, which I can attest makes me very happy.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I just want to point out that if you live in NYC, that $30k vacation will cost you about $50k in pre-tax income. And no one I know in NYC who makes $250k is going to spend 20% of their annual income on a vacation. And ironically, those who could are disciplined and frugal enough that they probably never would.
- pc86 8y ago
  Well nobody calculates the cost of their vacation based on pre-tax income. And someone making $250k in NYC is doing much worse off than someone making $200k within a few hours drive of major NYC airports. I just picked NYC because there are a lot of one-way flights to London.

kome 8y ago

I already live in Europe; but point well taken. People needs more and more money... I wonder if there is a marginal utility: at what point you would stop thinking about money? I think that around 40k perhaps 50k per year, I would completely stop thinking about money.