I don't earn that much, but in my country, I earn about 3-4 times the median salary. I really enjoy having the money and the liberty they provide. That doesn't stop me from being anxious and depressed most of the time though. I used to think money buys happiness. And for a time it did. However, that wears off as people adjust to the new financial status.

It highly depends. I'm in my early 40s now, still now owning a property, me and my SO are finally one step away from getting into (quite considerable, for our standards) debt so that we can take that out of the way. 30-40 years ago property was a lot more easier to get hold of, even for the less financially fortunate. Forgot to mention that we do not have kids, partially because of the stress of not owning a property just yet.

I don't know if I agree with that. Just because those things don't make you happy doesn't mean there aren't other things you can do with money that make you happy. Or maybe I just haven't matured enough yet?

At least I think I am at the point I don't care too much about having a fancy car or nice house.

Still, the thing that I have found to increase my happiness the most is giving it to someone else and seeing someone be really grateful. If I had more money I could do the same thing but to more people probably.

And probably just knowing that I have enough money that I don't need to worry would increase my happiness significantly. Even better would be that my parents don't have to work.

Two unfunded assumptions that seem to be based on your own experience.

Here's another, based on my own experience: a component of what makes you happy is to not have to worry about money at all, either because you live a lifestyle that require little of it, or because you have enough that a 50% change in wealth has zero impact on your life.

Fortunately, not everybody feels like that.

I think this varies. I've had my fair share of purchases that made no difference and I'd probably not repeat if given the opportunity. But I also have a good number of purchases that made a significant difference in the quality of my life.

Honestly, I LOVE (love, love love) being a homeowner. Cheaper than rent and I can customize to my hearts content.

Spent 40k on a porch 3 years ago, and I don't really have any regrets - We knew we wanted it, we knew it would make a lot of things easier (pet care, laundry, chest freezer access) and it's a great spot to just sit and enjoy myself.

Plus, it's on a house I intend to own until I die - not because I plan to live here forever, but because I bought an affordable place where the numbers for renting it work with my mortgage. So for now, my wife and I will enjoy it, in 5 years we'll either still be enjoying it or it will be adding to the monthly rent the place can pull.

We're in the middle of spending about 55k on a bathroom remodel with a similar expected return - We get to enjoy it now, and if we decide at some point it's not working for us or we're no longer happy here, it becomes revenue generating.

The flip side of this was my car - I just didn't care at all about what I was driving as long as it could get me from point A to point B with minimal hassle. I have coworkers & family who don't understand why I'm still driving a crappy 94 mazda protege. Doesn't matter how many times I tell them I don't care.

Similar for the lawn - I grew up in a nice neighborhood, and I got to see first hand exactly how expensive lawn care is and how little time most folks actually spent in their yard. Its like a nightmare of keeping up with the joneses - So we bought in a place with no HOA, and we ripped up most of the grass and have put in beds and paths in the front instead.

Some of the neighbors judge us (or complain openly, to our faces) about how the yard looks, but fuck em. Its not their yard, and I'm not spending the time and money to make other folks happy.

And really - I think that's the crux of the issue. If you're doing something because someone else might judge you if you don't, or because someone else did something similar and you want to show off too... then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

I suspect quite a few people are looking at the odds of achieving various goals, and simply changing the goals. Such as owning a home in desirable areas, or having kids if you cannot afford a food school district or a job that allows you to be home for dinner.

Or if you have experienced income instability, and you do not feel comfortable bringing children into the world. I probably would not have if I did not find a spouse with income in the top two quintiles. Not that there’s nothing wrong with the alternative, but different people have different risk tolerances and higher (perceived) volatility can be a cause for change in some population wide changed we are seeing.

Indeed. I lived with my parents into my 30s, saved up for ~10 years and bought a nice house cash, no mortgage. Was it financially optimal? Probably not, but the peace of mind of being immune to market crashes or interest hikes (we tend to not have 20+ years fixed mortgages here) is just really nice.

Would you mind sharing what changed? This is actually something I've been thinking about lately. I'm trying to plan out the type of lifestyle that I'd ideally like to have while also estimating how much it would cost me. This way, I don't get needlessly tempted by chasing ever higher and higher salaries.

A lot of people are going to read that and think - how the hell is that even possible?

It does not seem to matter how many times it is said, or what studies show, but people don't seem to get it into their heads that how much money you have and how happy you are are completely unrelated once a certain level of income is attained. Or, putting it another way, happiness is mostly unrelated to the amount of money you have in your bank account.

I was once £150K in debt, and people don't believe it when I tell them they were actually some of the happiest years of my life!

So what to do?

I would talk to someone first off. I would suggest a good life coach as a starting point - Tim Brownson at A Daring Adventure (just google 'A daring adventure') is a stand up guy (known him for years) and a fellow Brit! He might help you find some focus on a new direction. He's lived in American for about ten years now I think so maybe his accent is decipherable now and he doesn't sound like a mad Australian.

So what kinds of things affect happiness?

- exercise / health - relationship - friends - purpose - contribution

and that special little thing a lot of workaholic Americans forget all about:

FUN!

I'm taking some time off from working right now and I think about this a lot.

American life right now is a lot like a combination wager/equation you have to solve.

At some point in life, you're own your own. This could be at 18, post college, or for some - after your parents have paid for college, a car, and maybe a down payment on a house for you.

Whenever this is for you, the game is on - how long will it take you to amass enough savings to pay for your housing, food, and health care, until the age you think you'll die? Variables include your earning capacity, investments (which obviously have all sorts of options and risk), at what age you will no longer be able to do your work (and thus, forced to live off of savings), if you have offspring, etc.

Failure at this game results in potentially terrible living conditions in old age, losing potentially years of life because you can't afford to treat some sort of condition, not being able to pay for food, etc.

Personally, I think it's a tough game to play even with a marketable skill (though to be fair, I wasn't one of the lucky few starting out at 0 when I entered the workforce after college, but most of us aren't.)

I shudder to think how the average American is supposed to win that game.

Taking a year off, it really messes with your head doing the calculus of balancing extended time/freedom to enjoy your life, do want you want, reduce stress, exercise, read, not be a sycophant to some boss/comapny, etc - vs the loss of a six figure salary, and what that would turn into by age 65 (or thereabouts) after hopeful compounded interest and all that.

On the other hand, I could die at 40, or earlier.

How would you fare if she lost that job though?

It's your business, so a rhetorical question really, but a "few years" at a high income rarely produces any lasting fortune.

That gave me pause as well. Work 10x as hard for 10 assets? Not worth it for everyone.

My problem is with that statement. I know this is a very common belief, but has anyone actually hit that point?

I have gone through several cycles over the past 10 years, where I thought 20% more money would get me there. At each point, what was required to be comfortable would change.

At first it was having enough money for me, then having enough that I could get married and buy a house and help my wife, then it was having enough money for my kids to go to a decent day care. Now I'm worried we don't have enough to send our kids to private school.

Once I hit that, I will probably want to have enough money that my wife doesn't need to work. I wonder if that's when I can relax and the stress of finance will go away?

I care about my finances. But I don't worry about them. I have a high degree of certainty that, barring getting a disease that prevents me from working for multiple years, I won't have major financial problems for the rest of my life. The fact that I live in a country with good public healthcare (Spain) is a factor here.

>? could you handle, say, your house burning overnight with all your belongings ?

100% yes. My belongings are worth less than $10k. It would be annoying, but completely manageable.

Can you explain this further? I'm in my 20s, have over 6 figure income, and I'm curious what problems you ran into.

This pretty much sums it up as far as I'm concerned. We all have only one shot at life on this planet, so unless you're comfortable spending all of your productive years working for just enough money to stay afloat, you'll want to save up as much money as you can, to buy yourself the freedom to make radical changes to the course of your life when the time comes that's what's necessary to 'increase happiness'.

I always get a little annoyed when people say or write stuff such as 'money does not buy you happiness'. In our modern, western societies, it actually does buy you happiness, provided you have enough of it, and don't blow it all on materialistic things. All those quasi-romantical perspectives how it's immaterial things like health, family and friends that make you happy are missing the point. It's not about money, that's just a medium of wealth, but about the opportunities you have for yourself and your loved ones to enjoy life. If you're lucky enough to have good health, family, friends and the financial means to make the most out of the privilege of having all that, you can be much happier than when you have to miss either one of those.

I realize that this may sound awfully shallow and materialistic, but it's just my observation of how this world turns. Sure enough you can be happy without being wealthy, but in the end, almost everyone would prefer being happy and wealthy, for the simple fact that it provides opportunities that are simply unattainable if you're happy but broke.

I mean, sure... but your wealth was only negative for a VERY short period of time. Your car still had value and you could close that gap in probably a few months and be net-worth positive.

I think there are way more people who are paycheck-to-paycheck at best. The average credit card debt in the USA is thousands of dollars. I don't think that's because people are just stupid with money, I think a lot of that comes out of necessity because they can't keep their head above water.

Unless said parent(s) get clever with reverse mortgaging, and spend all the cash on travel or whatever ;)