You've undoubtedly heard the old adage "money can't buy happiness". As with most adages, it has some truth to it but is an oversimplification. Money may not be able to guarantee happiness, but the two are positively correlated. This is not because happiness results from the purchase of material possessions, but rather because money buys financial independence and financial independence facilitates happiness. Consider the following financial independence ladder:
Level 1: Being forced to work in order to pay off debt.
Level 2: Being forced to work to support yourself right now, i.e. living paycheck to paycheck.
Level 3: Being able to take some time off if you want, but knowing you'll eventually be forced to return to work.
Level 4: Being able to live comfortably without work.
Level 5: Being able to live however you want without having to work, although you may still choose to work.
Each successive level increases the likelihood of happiness (although even Level 5 doesn't guarantee it). Whatever level you currently find yourself on, it's likely that you can increase your happiness (and your overall quality of life) by striving to reach the next level.
Level 1: Being forced to work in order to pay off debt.
Level 2: Being forced to work to support yourself right now, i.e. living paycheck to paycheck.
Level 3: Being able to take some time off if you want, but knowing you'll eventually be forced to return to work.
Level 4: Being able to live comfortably without work.
Level 5: Being able to live however you want without having to work, although you may still choose to work.
Each successive level increases the likelihood of happiness (although even Level 5 doesn't guarantee it). Whatever level you currently find yourself on, it's likely that you can increase your happiness (and your overall quality of life) by striving to reach the next level.
posted by howtolive.org at
5:55 PM
3 Comments:
"Each successive level increases the likelihood of happiness..."
Would you care to back that up with some facts? I think that a survey of real people at various levels of financial independence will show little correllation between that and happiness.
"Most folk are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
-Abraham Lincoln
By
Rick Miller, at 5:46 AM
My claim is well-supported by studies. e.g. Diener and Diener (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Diener+and+Diener+1995) found a correlation of 0.58 between the gross domestic product per capita of fifty-five nations and their level of subjective well-being. If you'd like to explore further I'd suggest a google search on "positive psychology correlation money happiness" or something similar.
Can you source your Lincoln quote? It surprises me that he would say such a thing, given that he suffered from profound depression.
By
howtolive.org, at 11:25 AM
Guy Debord said it with unparalleled simplicity: "Only those who do not work live."
Regarding the correlation between happiness and money, in an article I read recently it noted that demographic variables such as age, income, and education did not account for much variance in reports of well being in Americans. (“Subjective Well-Being” by Ed Diener, Richard E. Lucas and Shigehiro Oishi, in Handbook of Positive Psychology, ed. by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Also, according to another researcher within the positive psychology camp, Jonathan Haidt, in the majority of cases where a sudden change occurred (someone won a lot of money, had an accident that left him paralyzed etc.) people after a year, as remarkable as it may sound, returned to the levels of subjective well-being they had before the occurrence of the major event (J. Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006). Haidt claims that there seems to be a biological set point of happiness that we keep returning regardless of what happens in our lives, with some exceptions (if I remember correctly one of them was being homeless).
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By
Alexander Pagidas, at 11:48 PM
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