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That's a pretty wild tradeoff though!

lolinder 4y ago
Is it? At my current wage I make enough to pay for all my family's needs and retire at 50. Could I use more money? Probably. But would I be happier with more? The research suggests I wouldn't.
- Panzer04 4y ago
  Presumably the tradeoff is more along the lines of retiring at 40, if you don't care about the money.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Fair, but I actually enjoy my work (one of the things I feel like I have gained by avoiding FAANG), so retiring at 40 doesn't have that much appeal.
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      It's true, I could afford to retire now (I am <40), but I expect to keep working until I'm completely unemployable (or physically incapable). It's just more fun than anything I've found in my free time. I do work at FAANG btw so it can't be that bad ;).
- cipheredStones 4y ago
  Daniel Kahneman, the famous psychologist who authored the paper you're probably thinking of (the one popularized as "no increase in happiness above $75k/yr") actually just released a new paper a few days ago, finding that for the large majority of people, happiness continues to rise with income far past that point. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
  - lolinder 4y ago
    That's a quite an interesting paper! That said, the final results still line up with my intuition, which is that there are diminishing returns, as evidenced by the log(income) relationship that that new study identifies. I already make a 90th percentile income for my area, and I don't feel that investing additional mental and emotional resources in maximizing salary is the best route forward for pursuing happiness. I think that at this point there are other axes to optimize on that provide greater marginal gains to happiness.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    A big issue with any analysis of happiness is that it's rated on a "capped" scale. For example they ask you "how happy are you 1-10". However income is "uncapped". That means there will always inherently be a sublinear relationship between the two in any analysis, because you are compressing the top end of happiness. I think for most people amounts up to something like 200-500k/yr (depending on COL) would provide increased happiness. Basically, if you ever have to worry about not having enough money, you could stand to make more. Of course that doesn't mean it's necessarily worthwhile to work more to achieve that, that would be a personal decision you have to make yourself.

Is it? At my current wage I make enough to pay for all my family's needs and retire at 50. Could I use more money? Probably. But would I be happier with more? The research suggests I wouldn't.

Panzer04 4y ago
Presumably the tradeoff is more along the lines of retiring at 40, if you don't care about the money.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Fair, but I actually enjoy my work (one of the things I feel like I have gained by avoiding FAANG), so retiring at 40 doesn't have that much appeal.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    It's true, I could afford to retire now (I am <40), but I expect to keep working until I'm completely unemployable (or physically incapable). It's just more fun than anything I've found in my free time. I do work at FAANG btw so it can't be that bad ;).
cipheredStones 4y ago
Daniel Kahneman, the famous psychologist who authored the paper you're probably thinking of (the one popularized as "no increase in happiness above $75k/yr") actually just released a new paper a few days ago, finding that for the large majority of people, happiness continues to rise with income far past that point. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
- lolinder 4y ago
  That's a quite an interesting paper! That said, the final results still line up with my intuition, which is that there are diminishing returns, as evidenced by the log(income) relationship that that new study identifies. I already make a 90th percentile income for my area, and I don't feel that investing additional mental and emotional resources in maximizing salary is the best route forward for pursuing happiness. I think that at this point there are other axes to optimize on that provide greater marginal gains to happiness.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  A big issue with any analysis of happiness is that it's rated on a "capped" scale. For example they ask you "how happy are you 1-10". However income is "uncapped". That means there will always inherently be a sublinear relationship between the two in any analysis, because you are compressing the top end of happiness. I think for most people amounts up to something like 200-500k/yr (depending on COL) would provide increased happiness. Basically, if you ever have to worry about not having enough money, you could stand to make more. Of course that doesn't mean it's necessarily worthwhile to work more to achieve that, that would be a personal decision you have to make yourself.