7 ms·

Yeah. When you have to work in order to live, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that you would be happy if only you had money to quit your job and time

Yeah. When you have to work in order to live, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that you would be happy if only you had money to quit your job and time do the things you want to do. Once you get there, you have to face reality: while being poor leads to unhappiness, being financially independent does not lead to happiness either. Don't believe me? Look at billionaires out there; do all of them look like happy and well-adjusted people to you? Not naming names. And that's why wealthy celebrities repeat again and again that "Money doesn't buy happiness". It's because they know from experience that it really doesn't help all that much.

scotty79 2y ago
> Money doesn't buy happiness Yeah, but it let's you suffer in relative comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > suffer in relaive comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for If you have never met a person who is content with their life you may benefit from expanding your social circle. There are sincerely happy people out there.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    No, thanks. There's really nothing to learn from people with this particular rare flavor of brain chemistry.
    - tough 2y ago
      lmfao
    - jamieplex 2y ago
      Well, that's definitely an interesting take...
      - scotty79 2y ago
        Yeah, if only people who chase happiness their entire lives, just because they saw it few times in others and suffer immensely in the process had this insight ...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
zusammen 2y ago
Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either. My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  society subjects people to artificial misery? society is all we have, it's the most authentic misery you'll ever experience.
  - littlecosmic 2y ago
    Maybe artificial in the way that we hypothetically could do things better if there wasn’t so much inertia to the status quo.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Ah, idealism. Truly the root of much of misery of the world.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded. Thank you for sharing your own experience.
madrox 2y ago
It's like that old saying, "where ever you go...there you are."
- david-gpu 2y ago
  Yup. Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote a great book with the same title.
  - varelse 2y ago
    [dead]
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    The much better philosopher Buckaroo Bonzai said it first.
nox101 2y ago
I'm not sure I'm convinced. I guess I haven't had real money. I had > 1m at one point. It was enough not to work. It wasn't enough to experiment with random things without risk. Couldn't buy a house in NYC,SF,LA,Seattle. Would just have to go back to work. Couldn't start a business for a project that required 10-20 people. Couldn't really start co-working space for 20-40 people at current rent prices without feeling like I'd probably just be throwing away a few hundred k. What I could do is travel. Could also live anywhere for a few years. OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more. I might hire people to do them. There are 5 to 10 apps I'd like to see exist. Would be happy to pay some people to make them and make them open source, if I had FU money. Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum the size of at least most major museums in big cities. Would consider funding startups. I have one friend, x-coworker, that picked a different path than me and made lots of $$$ (no idea how much). But, they invest in startups. Goal is to invest $1 million a year. They visit startups and pitch events once or twice a month. They also have a personal project. Otherwise they travel with their S.O. and visit their adult kids around the world.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more Sure, there's no lack of things that one can do with money. But would you be substantially happier? That's the issue at hand. Do you look at people with exorbitant wealth and see unlimited happiness? Do they appear to be in a permanent state of contentment and satisfaction?
  - vidarh 2y ago
    What I've learned, both in terms of personal experience and from reading up on the psychology, is that to maximize happiness over time you need to optimize for ensuring you can maintain a steady upward trajectory. Win the lottery or sell a company? Invest most of it, and allow yourself a "raise" you can permanently sustain every year. It will do far more for you than raising your expenditure once, as you get used to it and return to near your baseline happiness very quickly.
    - 2y ago
mewpmewp2 2y ago
I suppose it depends on a person. I am pretty sure the more money I have started to make throughout my life the happier I have become. Simply because of having more freedom over how I spend my time. I feel like there is almost infinite amount of things to do in this World, I just wish I was able to 24/7 do those things. I don't have enough to not work for rest of my life, but I have been able to buy my own apartment, house, which has given me a lot of confidence in my self and feelings of freedom. I started out with no connections or education though. I am sure it can be different for everyone, people see the World differently.
- jjeaff 2y ago
  I think that is most people's experience but it only works up to a point. you will get diminishing returns the more money you have until, in some cases, maybe negative returns.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Probably diminishing returns, but sometimes I think there is also selection bias, with ultra rich getting there because of never ending satisfaction, so it is contingent on the type of the human. Satisified person would stop sooner while never satisfied would naturally become the richest.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  All that sounds sadly familiar. Once you cross the threshold of not having to work for a living, the illusion fades away. You are still you, your problems are still there, you are still bound to a slowly decaying body, there's no GAME OVER banner and credit roll proving that you have won the game of life. Because you haven't. Hah. You can of course keep yourself entertained with all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter. Or you can accept that there are still only a handful of things that bring people contentment, and you don't need to be financially independent to do any of them. I'm talking about bland obvious stuff like spending some time with loved ones (including pets and plants), going out for a walk in the park, etc. Unsurprisingly, a ton of retirees do just that. It's not because they are old and can't do anything else, it's because they have finally figured out what works. And it's not like doing five times as much of that stuff is going to make you five times happier, either. Anybody with a full time job can carve out some quality time instead of arguing with strangers online.
yojo 2y ago
What research there is suggests money/happiness follows a log-linear relationship.[1] So it kind of does buy happiness, but the rate of increase falls off pretty fast over the range most of us experience. 1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120

scotty79 2y ago

> Money doesn't buy happiness Yeah, but it let's you suffer in relative comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for.

david-gpu 2y ago
> suffer in relaive comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for If you have never met a person who is content with their life you may benefit from expanding your social circle. There are sincerely happy people out there.
- scotty79 2y ago
  No, thanks. There's really nothing to learn from people with this particular rare flavor of brain chemistry.
  - tough 2y ago
    lmfao
  - jamieplex 2y ago
    Well, that's definitely an interesting take...
    - scotty79 2y ago
      Yeah, if only people who chase happiness their entire lives, just because they saw it few times in others and suffer immensely in the process had this insight ...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

zusammen 2y ago

Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either. My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.

fsckboy 2y ago
society subjects people to artificial misery? society is all we have, it's the most authentic misery you'll ever experience.
- littlecosmic 2y ago
  Maybe artificial in the way that we hypothetically could do things better if there wasn’t so much inertia to the status quo.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Ah, idealism. Truly the root of much of misery of the world.
david-gpu 2y ago
> Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent. I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded. Thank you for sharing your own experience.

madrox 2y ago

It's like that old saying, "where ever you go...there you are."

david-gpu 2y ago
Yup. Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote a great book with the same title.
- varelse 2y ago
  [dead]
- giantrobot 2y ago
  The much better philosopher Buckaroo Bonzai said it first.

nox101 2y ago

I'm not sure I'm convinced. I guess I haven't had real money. I had > 1m at one point. It was enough not to work. It wasn't enough to experiment with random things without risk. Couldn't buy a house in NYC,SF,LA,Seattle. Would just have to go back to work. Couldn't start a business for a project that required 10-20 people. Couldn't really start co-working space for 20-40 people at current rent prices without feeling like I'd probably just be throwing away a few hundred k. What I could do is travel. Could also live anywhere for a few years. OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more. I might hire people to do them. There are 5 to 10 apps I'd like to see exist. Would be happy to pay some people to make them and make them open source, if I had FU money. Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum the size of at least most major museums in big cities. Would consider funding startups. I have one friend, x-coworker, that picked a different path than me and made lots of $$$ (no idea how much). But, they invest in startups. Goal is to invest $1 million a year. They visit startups and pitch events once or twice a month. They also have a personal project. Otherwise they travel with their S.O. and visit their adult kids around the world.

david-gpu 2y ago
> OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more Sure, there's no lack of things that one can do with money. But would you be substantially happier? That's the issue at hand. Do you look at people with exorbitant wealth and see unlimited happiness? Do they appear to be in a permanent state of contentment and satisfaction?
- vidarh 2y ago
  What I've learned, both in terms of personal experience and from reading up on the psychology, is that to maximize happiness over time you need to optimize for ensuring you can maintain a steady upward trajectory. Win the lottery or sell a company? Invest most of it, and allow yourself a "raise" you can permanently sustain every year. It will do far more for you than raising your expenditure once, as you get used to it and return to near your baseline happiness very quickly.
  - 2y ago

mewpmewp2 2y ago

I suppose it depends on a person. I am pretty sure the more money I have started to make throughout my life the happier I have become. Simply because of having more freedom over how I spend my time. I feel like there is almost infinite amount of things to do in this World, I just wish I was able to 24/7 do those things. I don't have enough to not work for rest of my life, but I have been able to buy my own apartment, house, which has given me a lot of confidence in my self and feelings of freedom. I started out with no connections or education though. I am sure it can be different for everyone, people see the World differently.

jjeaff 2y ago
I think that is most people's experience but it only works up to a point. you will get diminishing returns the more money you have until, in some cases, maybe negative returns.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Probably diminishing returns, but sometimes I think there is also selection bias, with ultra rich getting there because of never ending satisfaction, so it is contingent on the type of the human. Satisified person would stop sooner while never satisfied would naturally become the richest.
david-gpu 2y ago
All that sounds sadly familiar. Once you cross the threshold of not having to work for a living, the illusion fades away. You are still you, your problems are still there, you are still bound to a slowly decaying body, there's no GAME OVER banner and credit roll proving that you have won the game of life. Because you haven't. Hah. You can of course keep yourself entertained with all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter. Or you can accept that there are still only a handful of things that bring people contentment, and you don't need to be financially independent to do any of them. I'm talking about bland obvious stuff like spending some time with loved ones (including pets and plants), going out for a walk in the park, etc. Unsurprisingly, a ton of retirees do just that. It's not because they are old and can't do anything else, it's because they have finally figured out what works. And it's not like doing five times as much of that stuff is going to make you five times happier, either. Anybody with a full time job can carve out some quality time instead of arguing with strangers online.

yojo 2y ago

What research there is suggests money/happiness follows a log-linear relationship.[1] So it kind of does buy happiness, but the rate of increase falls off pretty fast over the range most of us experience. 1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2208661120