That's always been my take. The old adage that money can't buy happiness is just something rich people say to stop poor people from speaking out about their problems.
@@ethansloan i think i heard somewhere that the saying "money can't buy happiness" was invented by poor people invented to get rich people to give them more money
@@ethansloan While that's probably not untrue, I suspect there's more to it. Specifically, rich people tend to be wholly focused on money. Especially self-made rich people. How many stories do you hear about how the world's richest people all wake up before the roosters, work 16 hour days where they're horrible to their employees and do it all again tomorrow 6 or even 7 days a week? Like.. that might be satisfying in some ways, but I don't know that it could ever make a person "happy." Maybe some addiction-style dopamine bursts but not real happiness. No time for leisure, not room for friends, if they manage to get a family its likely the family either has much the same set of values or just kind of dissociate with each other outside of social events. You can't have much of a connection when you're only together for 8 hours a day and most of that is sleeping. I would guess that older rich people get happier - after they've run their course of tryharding in the "grind" and actually allow themselves to relax and enjoy their wealth. Not sure if any of these surveys have bothered differentiating by age cohort but they probably should if they haven't.
The best way to think of it is, "Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy off misery," meaning you can go to the doctor, run the air conditioning, buy food that doesn't suck, and replace your shoes when the cushioning wears out.
@@halfsourlizard9319 Well, no. Those people wouldn't mind being rich. It'd definitely make them happpier. They don't have to worry about making money ever again, go on extravagant trips and relax, sitting around and sipping a bottle of whatever rich people drink.
have been poor (food stamps and all) cuz 2008 happend and poof, now im back and earn very very well, let me tell you i prefer it to being poor 1000 times more
Money doesn't buy happiness, money purchases options depending on it's value. Happiness is a state of mind and lifestyle. Elon Musk can't comprehend my life in the same way I can't comprehend his.
@@linkydubs it does... A lot of factor help in being rich, And if you think no hard work is needed, then you are just a socialist my friend As some dude i forgot name to said 'success is when hardwork meet opposite' You need, hardwork, luck, know-how, courage and lil bit psyopathic behaviour to be rich
Antidepressants don't make you happy. The real happy drugs are mu agonist opioids, such as oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl, etc.. Opioids flood your brain with dopamine and things like breakups barely even matter to you. + MDMA and some others.
Even if money don't necessarily buy happiness, but it can sure prevent unhappiness associated with being hungry, thirsty, exposed to the environment etc.
@@MC_Grenada if you assume the value of marriage($105k) is calculated the same as the value of friendship ( + $97.265/yr), it should be added on top of their salary and the monetary value of friendship, if the person in question is both married and sees his friends at least once a month. Otherwise Sam would've said that the monetary value of marriage is only $8k/yr. This can't be true because at 0:18 ''marriages are worth a little more about 105 000 dollars'', with more referring to the value of friendship.
Making money is not the same as keeping it there is a reason why investments aren't well taught in schools, the examples you gave are well stationed, the market crisis gave me my first millions, people shy away from hard times, I embrace them.. well at least my advisor does.
This is superb! Information, as a noob it gets quite difficult to handle all of this and staying informed is a major cause, how do you go about this are you a pro investor?
@@edward.abraham Not at all, having monitored edge my portfolio performance which has made a jaw dropping $473k from just the past two quarters alone, I have learned why experienced traders make enormous returns from the seemingly unknown market. I must say it's the boldest decision I've taken since recently.
@@hunter-bourke21 I've been thinking of going that route, been holding on to a bunch of stocks that keeps tanking and I don't know if to keep holding or just dump them, think your Fin-coach could guide me with portfolio-restructuring. Who guides you on the process of it all?
@@Believer292 I won't pretend to know everything, though. Her name is "Julia Ann Finnicum" say anything more. Most likely, you can find her basic information online; you are welcome to do further study.
@@hunter-bourke21 Thanks, I just Googled her name and her website came up right away. It looks interesting so far. I'm going to book a call with her and let you know how it goes.
If you're unhappy because of money problems then yes, money can definitely buy happiness (to a certain point). The point is knowing when to recognize if your unhappiness is because of the lack of money or having too much money. People have won millions in the lottery and remained unhappy because of what that kind of money did to them and their social life. Constantly not knowing if people are your friends because of your money can't make for a very happy person at times.
Bruh if they have shitty money management skills that's on them, I've seen plenty of people winning lottery and being smart with and generally being very happy with the money they got
@@cybersentient4758 It’s not about their “money management skills” that I’m talking about. It’s about everybody coming out of the woodwork and always wanting something from them. That has to effect some people negatively in the happiness department.
Make enough money to not be unhappy due to money problems and then hide the money from your friends and family so you can keep your money, stay happy, and have real friends.
"if you want a good GPA, you're gonna have to stop doing ethnic cleansing" might be the most absurd, funny, and surprising twist on a video for me in a while. And also, good advice.
"Evading taxes or whatever it is rich people do for fun"😂 Technically, money does buy happiness by providing a means to attain those things which make life easier, more convienient or more fun, thus relieving stress, which, in turn makes you happier
Yes but also creates more new variables of stress like money management and extreme levels of paranoid I have been with ton of millionaires in my life, never really felt they were happier than me, but they did have excellent levels of prosperity
Money does give you power, which does provide satisfaction. While money isn't technically limited, unfortunately power is a zero-sum game because by definition it's your relative advantage over someone else.
Looked at another way, how much money would it take to get you to leave your current job, house, city, friends, family, etc. and move somewhere far away? (Yes, if it was enough money you could probably bring the friends & family with you)
@@Maxawa0851 thats a lot, I live in a EU country where people make 500$ per month and everything is more expensive then in the US where people make 10 times more...
@@Maxawa0851 that’s why ya gotta invest it or put it in a high return savings and live off the interest. A credit union I used to bank with increased the interest rate of your savings based off how much you had in there. A million dollars net you a 10% interest rate or 100,000 a year. Or when the stock market isn’t totally screwed and you’re invested evenly in all sectors you can typically see a 9% return historically. And that’s just what grows without dividends. Essentially the more money you have the easier it is for that money to make you money.
I read about the $75k study years ago when it came out and then made it my goal out of college to reach that number. It was true to a point. Once I started making $75k, I no longer worried about how I would pay for things, I just was bother that I had to pay for these things. Like if I got a flat tire, a traffic ticket, or some medical bill. I then moved my way up to peaking at $130k a year and nothing improved. I was able to save more and improve my quality of life (buy a better car and rent a nicer apartment) but it didn't solve any issues with relationships, or life in general. In fact I actually got depressed because it felt like there was nothing to strive for as I quickly realized that instead of removing any problems from my life, it just let me arrive at those problems in style.
"Monday doesn't buy happiness" made a lot more sense at a time when the average to below average financially individual could still afford life's basic necessities and a tad more. Today, the average person struggles mightily to keep up with the increasing number of necessities required to live in the modern world and while those things also become relatively more expensive. I agree that to a certain point more money isn't going to do much for you. But most people are so far below that point that money absolutely contributes to an individual's happiness.
Money can get a person past the first two levels of "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" (physical needs and safety). Beyond that money only provides time and opportunity to move up the hierarchy, but doesn't guarantee it to the same extent as it does the first two.
agreed. Money is really good for taking away some stresses and insecurities in life up to a point. If I punture a tyre, I can just buy another one without the need to stop going to restaurants for a month or to buying less groceries. I can live away from a crime infested neighborhood, take a vacation once in a while, pay heating or air conditioning, farmaceuticals if I'm sick, so on. Past a point, you just get better stuff. An expensive tyre for a nice car, better restaurants, gourmet bread in a grocery store, a very nice home, more expensive vacations, top hospitals and educatoin so on and so forth.
This is one of those "necessary" & "sufficient" conditions. I.e. Money can get you a whole lot of what is necessary for happiness, or removing obstacles to happiness, but it isn't sufficient for happiness.
There is also a kind of "would you rather" method where you say "would you rather have a committed spouse or $X?" And you vary X until it's about equal
It's pretty obvious the effect of money on happiness is non-linear (the less you have, the more getting a little more improves your life), but awfully hard to pin down a specific curve. It was interesting to hear that people seem to have different 'ceilings' in how much of their problems can be improved by money, in hindsight that makes a lot of sense. People have many different stresses, not all of which can be helped much by more money.
If I could give a definitive answer based on my understanding, I’d say it would go something like this. Yes, money can buy a certain kind of happiness. It’s called material happiness. The kind of happiness you get when you live without having to worry about residence, your next meal or clothing. The kind of happiness most who are earning money are after. (I think in some ways, it is less about happiness and more about assurance even.) This is a very transient feeling, and over time people realize that there is even stress and unhappiness associated with the possibility that this sense of security will be taken away someday. Yes, true bliss and happiness exists, but they cannot be attained by materialistic means. Those who have attained that state live much much much more blissfully and peacefully than our wildest materialistic imaginations; they have attained that which truly matters in life. But to even begin to move in their direction, it has to be through our own choice. You cannot tell someone who desperately desires materialistic security that they would be better off without it. It would simply agitate them further. A good example would be rich people saying that minimalism is the pinnacle of life, while they make a joke out of it. It is not evil or sinful to want materialistic security, you simply need to know how to let go of your attachment with it once you have attained it. Through righteous means, of course. (This is just my opinion. If you don’t agree, feel free to scroll past it. Do not waste precious energy typing out a hateful response that you’ll feel embarrassed upon when you look back at it.)
I don’t know, having $50 million might not make me happy, but it means I wouldn’t have to work (my job makes me unhappy), I could take better care of my health (chronic pain and illness make me unhappy), and I could afford to go on long, amazing vacations to sunny places, and Vitamin D makes me happy. Also, as Daniel Tosh pointed out, money can buy a jet ski, and I’ve never seen anyone frown while riding a jet ski.
Something important to add to this: this wildly varies depending on country. For example the minimum amount to avoid unhappiness in the US is far higher compared to the average in Europe, however the ceiling for max happiness is same between both regions. Moreover, a huge international exception to this is Latin/South and Central America where the minimum and ceiling amounts are far lower than anywhere else on earth. It's currently unknown why this is and it's theorized that culture can have a huge effect on happiness regardless of income.
Any hard numbers to back this up? Without the original study, all I can wager is this is just average income/cost of living in each area. USA has higher income than much of Europe and Latin America is lower than both Europe and US.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 I sadly can't post the link due to youtube filters, but the study is called: Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world
Its still a pretty good salary. I think the US average is somewhere around $45k? Of course one can ask how useful it is to average the salaries of Silicon Valley tech workers and West Virginia oxy addicts, so I guess it depends on how demographically diverse their sample set was when they came up with that $75k number.
@@halfsourlizard9319 That's household income. Individual income median is much lower. Edit: Err yes, I guess that would indeed be the per capita median which is the more important number for this discussion.
Money definitely does not buy happiness. I am old, and I have been wealthy and poor at various times in my life. My level of happiness was never, and could never be influenced by my financial situation. People are the key to happiness. Your family, your friends, and even casual community members. . . . The quantity and quality of these people in your life is what will be the largest influence on your happiness. The rest is up to you. - "No man is happy, who does not think himself so"
To me, it cannot be quantified but it doesnt really has a set limit either... is not really about the money but rather what you can do with it (duh). The first level to me would be covering needs (including quality. This is food, clothing, vacations, doctors... comfort and care), the second level would be "wants" (want to have, want to do. This is not something that I feel adds a lot of happiness with the "have" but not having it brings dissapointment, and having it, specially the opportunities, the "want to do", can lead to a lot of experiences. This also includes vacations, but im talking more about hobbies and such) and the last and fuzzier level would be "legacy" (helping your descendants, funding reserach and tech, people in need, etc. This has no roof and you could spend billions here and not be done)
2:38 - That's about like rating pain on a 1-10 scale. How do you know what a pain level of 10 is unless you've suffered 3rd degree burns over a significant part of your body? How would anyone know what a life enjoyment of 10 is unless they could have infinite pleasure without developing an addiction and harming others? People can barely handle thinking objectively about a three point rating system (Better, Same, Worse).
So I told my wife that our house is worth more than twice as much as our marriage and it did not go down well. Somehow I feel these economists are off.
before i watch the video im going to say it really depends on the person because some people might value materialistic things and experiences that money can buy while others do not
Money may not buy happiness, but we sure won’t find happiness in poverty. Like that song I heard on the radio a little while ago says, “Whoever said money can’t solve all your problems must have not had enough money to solve them.” On that occasion I would agree with the singer, despite observing things from a different standpoint than her. Think about what the problem is. Let’s say you go to drive to work one morning and, no matter how many times you turn the key, your car doesn’t start. You call a mechanic and you get told it’s because a solenoid went bad. It’ll cost money to get you back on the road as that mechanic ain’t gonna fit that new solenoid for free. Kapeesh?
Actually a great video. Basically $75,000-$110,000 prevents financial stressors on average. Then people who have greater stability can continue to utilite money to get happier above that, but many don't have the capacity.
One thing I will say about this: none of these dollar amounts should be constant. The true currency here is not dollars but utility units. If we define 1 utility unit as the value of being content for 1 hour, and 0 as not existing (but not suffering or being bored either), we can determine that clearly most people are willing to trade a Utilon for something in the $10s range, NOT because $ has any innate value in Utilons but because they rationally expect to achieve greater utility by spending that money on products and services than by not having that money. Working instead of playing, then, is an investment. Utilons lost now with the expectation that more will be gained later. Note when I say you lose Utilons at work, I don't mean relative to being content or not existing. I meant relative to what you would do otherwise. Maybe you love your job at 2.9 Utilons an hour, but you'd probably love doing something else slightly more at 3.2 Utilons an hour. One thing worth mentioning, diminishing marginal utility applies to almost everything EXCEPT utility itself. 5 Utilons is 5 Utilons and equally important to you whether you're extremely depressed or extremely happy. This is NOT the case for money. The expected value in Utilons of $1 is not the same if you have different amounts of happiness or different amounts of money or just different life circumstances.
I think Chelsea Fagan from The Financial Diet did the best video on money buying happiness I've ever seen. Basically, you can't be happy or content if you're constantly worried if you'll have enough food to feed your family tomorrow or if you need to put that money towards rent and but then you might be behind on car payments, which you need in order to drive to work. So yes, money 100% buys happiness, or at least the baseline contentless that is absolutely necessary for happiness.
It's important to note that the "seeking" parts of the brain (the pathways that make you want and crave things) aren't perfectly linked to the happiness parts. Ie, confirming conventional wisdom, getting something that you want doesn't always make you happy
money can buy happiness to a point. If a person is making enough to take care of his family, buy what they want within reason, handle financial and medical emergencies without going into debt and breaking the bank, and can buy things for the people they care about...they can be generally happy. In the US it's someone making between 90k and 110k (exactly what you said in the video. though I feel that making anything between 75k and 90k will do it too)
Money can buy happiness, but it can also lead to more problems. For example: Elon Musk is so wealthy that he could afford to spend $44 billion on Twitter, but even though he now owns it (on top of Tesla & SpaceX) that didn't automatically make him happier. Meanwhile, if I could make $44,000 a year I would be more financially stable than I currently am, which would provide me with more opportunities to enjoy life.
Money might not automatically bring happiness, but it opens the doors to "happy" opportunities, including stability (financial, food, clothing, shelter, medical, etc), the ability to make MORE money, and, for better or worse, a richer group of friends/acquaintances/company of people to interact with. Maybe obtaining 10 million bucks won't make EVERYONE happy, BUT having a safety net for medical emergency costs, losing your job and being unable to pay rent and utilities will give you peace of mind... which is "like" being happy but unconsciously since you are less likely (or at best, no longer have) to worry about those things. Money (in varying amounts) can basically solve MOST problems. Problems that either make you unhappy AND/OR barriers/obstacles to being "more" happy.
Before connecting money and happiness, it is necessary to untangle the connections between human life and society. Happiness is a characterization of the life of an individual, as generated by evolution. Money is a virtualized mean of exchange used in our society, which allows anyone to appropriate someone else work. Finding a common index between the two, like pricing happiness, is logically incongruous...
Money buys you time to do the things you love and spend time with your loved ones. With enough money you don't have to work for anyone else. So yes, money by proxy buys happiness.
If you want to know what human happiness (eudaimonia) is just read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Money can buy happiness to a certain extent. Suppose the thought experiment that I require a vehicle and by having a car will give one happiness. A second or third car would likely bring happiness too. But when you approach 50 or x+1 number of vehicles. Happiness will diminish. Therefore money can buy happiness but only up to a certain extent. This means that human happiness has other more significant component. As to not spoil the book that is for you to discover. Happy reading!
Having survived 4 master's statistics courses... The first study tried logi(s)t(ical) probability regression, whilst the latter went for a linear one. With such narrow variables the former is actually OK, but no need denying you can expand the response range from 2 to 3, 5, 7, 9 or 10 (but then you bongle up interpretations). You can also try to split up the happiness scale to regress each state, how probable is it to happen... How miserable life is after you learned about OLS 😢
One problem with these studies is they don't generate a marginal conversion rate of Utilons to $. I think a much more interesting study would be how much you have to pay someone to stop doing their normal life and sit awake in a sensory deprivation chamber for X hours a day. This measures the monetary value they put on their own experience. A different question is how much of a pay raise or pay cut would they need to stop doing their normal job and "work" at the sensory deprivation chamber. This measures the monetary value they assign to the utility of being at work relative to the sensory deprivation chamber. Finally, we can create an environment which is worse than the deprivation chamber to measure a constant utility gap. For example, we can determine the difference in money they would need to earn to sit in the sensory deprivation chamber vs some kind of mild torture task.
So we at this point know the monetary value they assign to two fixed reference points as well as their normal job and their normal leasure activities. We can divide the money they assign to work and leisure more than density deprivation (average over the amount of time they do each) by the value they assign to sensory deprivation over mild torture. The $ cancels out and we are left with true internal subjective utility relative to fixed reference points.
For anyone not heavily trained in meditation, sensory deprivation with nothing to do _is_ a kind of torture. I don't know what to count as 0 utilons; perhaps an extremely simple task such as counting objects on a conveyor belt would make more sense. I know a number of people whose jobs actively produce negative utilons for them, in that if they didn't have to socially debase themselves in the name of "the customer is always right", or unnecessarily dangerous work conditions, they would be significantly happier. One would _think_ that these jobs would benefit greatly from being automated, but many of them report that, if they were paid enough to make a living and their managers didn't force them to cut corners and take the fall for everything, they would actually be entirely happy with their positions. The _potential_ for the satisfaction of honing one's skill as a barista or packing a shipping truck to perfectly maximize use of space is _right there,_ and the only reason the jobs are brutal is because the people involved are not being treated in a basic humane manner.
This still only sounds like correlation. The people who earn lots of money probably have some character traits to a higher degree than the rest of us, on average. They probably have jobs that require more education, on average. They probably have a bunch of other inputs, that aren't isolated away in the studies. If there were doctors who earn $35k a year, while working as much as other doctors do, would they really be as unhappy as a more menial worker, earning the same? My intuition says "no".
Idk how much but it certainly can and will literally buy hapiness. Are you happier eating form a garbage can or eating a big and tasty meal? Are you happier living in a cardboard box or in a good, spacious, well lit house? The answer is obvious.
I still go back to a quote from Crash Course Economics: Money can't buy you happiness, but it prevents a lot of sadness.
That's always been my take. The old adage that money can't buy happiness is just something rich people say to stop poor people from speaking out about their problems.
"Money can't happiness,but poverty can't buy anything"- someone, probably.
@@ethansloan i think i heard somewhere that the saying "money can't buy happiness" was invented by poor people invented to get rich people to give them more money
Sun Tzu would be jealous of that one
@@ethansloan While that's probably not untrue, I suspect there's more to it. Specifically, rich people tend to be wholly focused on money. Especially self-made rich people. How many stories do you hear about how the world's richest people all wake up before the roosters, work 16 hour days where they're horrible to their employees and do it all again tomorrow 6 or even 7 days a week?
Like.. that might be satisfying in some ways, but I don't know that it could ever make a person "happy." Maybe some addiction-style dopamine bursts but not real happiness. No time for leisure, not room for friends, if they manage to get a family its likely the family either has much the same set of values or just kind of dissociate with each other outside of social events. You can't have much of a connection when you're only together for 8 hours a day and most of that is sleeping.
I would guess that older rich people get happier - after they've run their course of tryharding in the "grind" and actually allow themselves to relax and enjoy their wealth. Not sure if any of these surveys have bothered differentiating by age cohort but they probably should if they haven't.
The best way to think of it is, "Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy off misery," meaning you can go to the doctor, run the air conditioning, buy food that doesn't suck, and replace your shoes when the cushioning wears out.
Only if your baseline is being very poor. Even lower-middle-class people have the things you meantioned already.
thats not that false, but dont forget how powerful the hedonistic treadmill is
@@halfsourlizard9319 Well, no. Those people wouldn't mind being rich. It'd definitely make them happpier. They don't have to worry about making money ever again, go on extravagant trips and relax, sitting around and sipping a bottle of whatever rich people drink.
Money might not bring happiness, but it sure as hell brings peace of mind.
have been poor (food stamps and all) cuz 2008 happend and poof, now im back and earn very very well, let me tell you i prefer it to being poor 1000 times more
And too much tends to bring a corrupt mind...
🗿
@@tomb5372 then the question is how much is too much (I’m not disagreeing with u in the slightest)
Money doesn't buy happiness, money purchases options depending on it's value.
Happiness is a state of mind and lifestyle.
Elon Musk can't comprehend my life in the same way I can't comprehend his.
I’ll gladly test out how happy I’d be with millions of dollars.
Part 2 of that experiment will be for you to then be put on 1 million in debt after part 1 is complete. Deal?!?
Now you are broke,
Now work hard and be rich, then tell how much more happy you are
We be waiting 😉
@@niharikamenon-iz8xu what are you even saying?? Working hard doesn’t make you rich lol capitalism taught your that and it’s very inaccurate
@@linkydubs it does...
A lot of factor help in being rich,
And if you think no hard work is needed, then you are just a socialist my friend
As some dude i forgot name to said 'success is when hardwork meet opposite'
You need, hardwork, luck, know-how, courage and lil bit psyopathic behaviour to be rich
@@niharikamenon-iz8xu are you implying socialism is bad?
"Happiness is not eggs"
How to basic proved me otherwise
What, you egg?
I love that at 3:56 the onscreen line matches up perfectly with the actual bar. Amazing attention to detail.
Money might not be able to buy you happiness, but money can buy you antidepressants.
And dogs
@@osheridan to eat😋
And therapy
And drugs
Antidepressants don't make you happy.
The real happy drugs are mu agonist opioids, such as oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl, etc..
Opioids flood your brain with dopamine and things like breakups barely even matter to you.
+ MDMA and some others.
Even if money don't necessarily buy happiness, but it can sure prevent unhappiness associated with being hungry, thirsty, exposed to the environment etc.
A marriage being worth an extra 8k a year (700 bucks more per month) is actually really funny
What?
its not? he said 105k
@@nashh600 105,000 - 97,00 = 8000...
@@MC_Grenada why -97000
@@MC_Grenada if you assume the value of marriage($105k) is calculated the same as the value of friendship ( + $97.265/yr), it should be added on top of their salary and the monetary value of friendship, if the person in question is both married and sees his friends at least once a month. Otherwise Sam would've said that the monetary value of marriage is only $8k/yr. This can't be true because at 0:18 ''marriages are worth a
little more about 105 000 dollars'', with more referring to the value of friendship.
That “time left on video” animation was smooth haha props to you guys for not forgetting to do it at the end
I'm unhappy that this episode didn't include a segment of Amy wasting pogressively larger amounts of Sam's money trying to purchase happiness.
Hey Sam, love the new direction of the channel! I’ve noticed the change over the last couple of videos and I’m really enjoying it, thank you!
Making money is not the same as keeping it there is a reason why investments aren't well taught in schools, the examples you gave are well stationed, the market crisis gave me my first millions, people shy away from hard times, I embrace them.. well at least my advisor does.
This is superb! Information, as a noob it gets quite difficult to handle all of this and staying informed is a major cause, how do you go about this are you a pro investor?
@@edward.abraham Not at all, having monitored edge my portfolio performance which has made a jaw dropping $473k from just the past two quarters alone, I have learned why experienced traders make enormous returns from the seemingly unknown market. I must say it's the boldest decision I've taken since recently.
@@hunter-bourke21 I've been thinking of going that route, been holding on to a bunch of stocks that keeps tanking and I don't know if to keep holding or just dump them, think your Fin-coach could guide me with portfolio-restructuring. Who guides you on the process of it all?
@@Believer292 I won't pretend to know everything, though. Her name is "Julia Ann Finnicum" say anything more. Most likely, you can find her basic information online; you are welcome to do further study.
@@hunter-bourke21 Thanks, I just Googled her name and her website came up right away. It looks interesting so far. I'm going to book a call with her and let you know how it goes.
If you're unhappy because of money problems then yes, money can definitely buy happiness (to a certain point). The point is knowing when to recognize if your unhappiness is because of the lack of money or having too much money. People have won millions in the lottery and remained unhappy because of what that kind of money did to them and their social life. Constantly not knowing if people are your friends because of your money can't make for a very happy person at times.
Bruh if they have shitty money management skills that's on them, I've seen plenty of people winning lottery and being smart with and generally being very happy with the money they got
@@cybersentient4758 It’s not about their “money management skills” that I’m talking about. It’s about everybody coming out of the woodwork and always wanting something from them. That has to effect some people negatively in the happiness department.
Make enough money to not be unhappy due to money problems and then hide the money from your friends and family so you can keep your money, stay happy, and have real friends.
Money can buy bricks, and bricks make us happy
if you mean lego lol
Another Brick brother, well said.
Only when thrown through the windows of the richest.
@@MinerBat No, bricks.
"if you want a good GPA, you're gonna have to stop doing ethnic cleansing" might be the most absurd, funny, and surprising twist on a video for me in a while. And also, good advice.
Can't complain if you are dead
"Evading taxes or whatever it is rich people do for fun"😂 Technically, money does buy happiness by providing a means to attain those things which make life easier, more convienient or more fun, thus relieving stress, which, in turn makes you happier
Yes but also creates more new variables of stress like money management and extreme levels of paranoid
I have been with ton of millionaires in my life, never really felt they were happier than me, but they did have excellent levels of prosperity
Money does give you power, which does provide satisfaction. While money isn't technically limited, unfortunately power is a zero-sum game because by definition it's your relative advantage over someone else.
Looked at another way, how much money would it take to get you to leave your current job, house, city, friends, family, etc. and move somewhere far away? (Yes, if it was enough money you could probably bring the friends & family with you)
a mil? just enough to buy a house over there that i like and to live off of it to not have to have a job for the rest of my life
I did just that (though I did keep my job) last year and I didn't gain any money. Though if someone offered me money I would definitely take it.
@@MrA6060 if you have 50 years to live a mil is 20k per year
@@Maxawa0851 thats a lot, I live in a EU country where people make 500$ per month and everything is more expensive then in the US where people make 10 times more...
@@Maxawa0851 that’s why ya gotta invest it or put it in a high return savings and live off the interest. A credit union I used to bank with increased the interest rate of your savings based off how much you had in there. A million dollars net you a 10% interest rate or 100,000 a year. Or when the stock market isn’t totally screwed and you’re invested evenly in all sectors you can typically see a 9% return historically. And that’s just what grows without dividends. Essentially the more money you have the easier it is for that money to make you money.
I read about the $75k study years ago when it came out and then made it my goal out of college to reach that number. It was true to a point. Once I started making $75k, I no longer worried about how I would pay for things, I just was bother that I had to pay for these things. Like if I got a flat tire, a traffic ticket, or some medical bill. I then moved my way up to peaking at $130k a year and nothing improved. I was able to save more and improve my quality of life (buy a better car and rent a nicer apartment) but it didn't solve any issues with relationships, or life in general. In fact I actually got depressed because it felt like there was nothing to strive for as I quickly realized that instead of removing any problems from my life, it just let me arrive at those problems in style.
"Monday doesn't buy happiness" made a lot more sense at a time when the average to below average financially individual could still afford life's basic necessities and a tad more. Today, the average person struggles mightily to keep up with the increasing number of necessities required to live in the modern world and while those things also become relatively more expensive. I agree that to a certain point more money isn't going to do much for you. But most people are so far below that point that money absolutely contributes to an individual's happiness.
Monday doesn't buy happiness... it represents all the sorrows and grievances in the world! 🤣
That "We still have this much to go" edit was sick! Kudos to the editor!
As I've always said, money doesn't buy happiness, but financial security buys peace of mind
well watch the video and stop saying that
Exactly. Money doesn't buy happiness, it buys the freedom to feel however you want to feel. Which is also very important.
@@EvilGav did you watch the video?
@@trinityy-7 I did and the dollar amount they put on "happiness" lines up real well with what 99% of people would consider financially secure
@@james2042 I actually think money can buy happiness.
Money can buy bricks, and bricks make us happy
Money can get a person past the first two levels of "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" (physical needs and safety). Beyond that money only provides time and opportunity to move up the hierarchy, but doesn't guarantee it to the same extent as it does the first two.
agreed. Money is really good for taking away some stresses and insecurities in life up to a point. If I punture a tyre, I can just buy another one without the need to stop going to restaurants for a month or to buying less groceries. I can live away from a crime infested neighborhood, take a vacation once in a while, pay heating or air conditioning, farmaceuticals if I'm sick, so on. Past a point, you just get better stuff. An expensive tyre for a nice car, better restaurants, gourmet bread in a grocery store, a very nice home, more expensive vacations, top hospitals and educatoin so on and so forth.
This is one of those "necessary" & "sufficient" conditions. I.e. Money can get you a whole lot of what is necessary for happiness, or removing obstacles to happiness, but it isn't sufficient for happiness.
"If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it!" - Weird Al
There is also a kind of "would you rather" method where you say "would you rather have a committed spouse or $X?" And you vary X until it's about equal
It's pretty obvious the effect of money on happiness is non-linear (the less you have, the more getting a little more improves your life), but awfully hard to pin down a specific curve.
It was interesting to hear that people seem to have different 'ceilings' in how much of their problems can be improved by money, in hindsight that makes a lot of sense. People have many different stresses, not all of which can be helped much by more money.
If I could give a definitive answer based on my understanding, I’d say it would go something like this. Yes, money can buy a certain kind of happiness. It’s called material happiness. The kind of happiness you get when you live without having to worry about residence, your next meal or clothing. The kind of happiness most who are earning money are after. (I think in some ways, it is less about happiness and more about assurance even.) This is a very transient feeling, and over time people realize that there is even stress and unhappiness associated with the possibility that this sense of security will be taken away someday.
Yes, true bliss and happiness exists, but they cannot be attained by materialistic means. Those who have attained that state live much much much more blissfully and peacefully than our wildest materialistic imaginations; they have attained that which truly matters in life. But to even begin to move in their direction, it has to be through our own choice. You cannot tell someone who desperately desires materialistic security that they would be better off without it. It would simply agitate them further. A good example would be rich people saying that minimalism is the pinnacle of life, while they make a joke out of it.
It is not evil or sinful to want materialistic security, you simply need to know how to let go of your attachment with it once you have attained it. Through righteous means, of course.
(This is just my opinion. If you don’t agree, feel free to scroll past it. Do not waste precious energy typing out a hateful response that you’ll feel embarrassed upon when you look back at it.)
"The answer is... well, a little complicated." - Classic HAI.
I don’t know, having $50 million might not make me happy, but it means I wouldn’t have to work (my job makes me unhappy), I could take better care of my health (chronic pain and illness make me unhappy), and I could afford to go on long, amazing vacations to sunny places, and Vitamin D makes me happy.
Also, as Daniel Tosh pointed out, money can buy a jet ski, and I’ve never seen anyone frown while riding a jet ski.
Something important to add to this: this wildly varies depending on country. For example the minimum amount to avoid unhappiness in the US is far higher compared to the average in Europe, however the ceiling for max happiness is same between both regions. Moreover, a huge international exception to this is Latin/South and Central America where the minimum and ceiling amounts are far lower than anywhere else on earth. It's currently unknown why this is and it's theorized that culture can have a huge effect on happiness regardless of income.
Any hard numbers to back this up? Without the original study, all I can wager is this is just average income/cost of living in each area. USA has higher income than much of Europe and Latin America is lower than both Europe and US.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 I sadly can't post the link due to youtube filters, but the study is called: Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world
$75k in 2010 was actually a great salary. Very different world we live in today.
Its still a pretty good salary. I think the US average is somewhere around $45k? Of course one can ask how useful it is to average the salaries of Silicon Valley tech workers and West Virginia oxy addicts, so I guess it depends on how demographically diverse their sample set was when they came up with that $75k number.
It depends on cost of living. A person in central LA has very different expenses to someone who lives in Buttfucknowhere, Midwest.
No. Median U.S. income is ~$70k.
Per capita is closer to $40k; perhaps that's what you were thining of?
@@halfsourlizard9319 That's household income. Individual income median is much lower.
Edit: Err yes, I guess that would indeed be the per capita median which is the more important number for this discussion.
Money definitely does not buy happiness. I am old, and I have been wealthy and poor at various times in my life. My level of happiness was never, and could never be influenced by my financial situation.
People are the key to happiness. Your family, your friends, and even casual community members. . . . The quantity and quality of these people in your life is what will be the largest influence on your happiness. The rest is up to you. - "No man is happy, who does not think himself so"
That's the problem! You were never truly rich. If you were ever truly rich, you would never become poor or have to work again.
Gentlemen, finally we arrived to the point where the topic is at least three halves as interesting.
The thumbnail was just perfect to intrigue economists into clicking.
To me, it cannot be quantified but it doesnt really has a set limit either... is not really about the money but rather what you can do with it (duh). The first level to me would be covering needs (including quality. This is food, clothing, vacations, doctors... comfort and care), the second level would be "wants" (want to have, want to do. This is not something that I feel adds a lot of happiness with the "have" but not having it brings dissapointment, and having it, specially the opportunities, the "want to do", can lead to a lot of experiences. This also includes vacations, but im talking more about hobbies and such) and the last and fuzzier level would be "legacy" (helping your descendants, funding reserach and tech, people in need, etc. This has no roof and you could spend billions here and not be done)
2:38 - That's about like rating pain on a 1-10 scale. How do you know what a pain level of 10 is unless you've suffered 3rd degree burns over a significant part of your body? How would anyone know what a life enjoyment of 10 is unless they could have infinite pleasure without developing an addiction and harming others? People can barely handle thinking objectively about a three point rating system (Better, Same, Worse).
Money doesnt bring happiness, but it lets you be miserable in comfort
It sure brought me happiness because when I didnt have money for food or gas or housing I was miserable
Bro, you are everywhere!
Money might not be able to give happiness. But not having money gives you depression.
So I told my wife that our house is worth more than twice as much as our marriage and it did not go down well. Somehow I feel these economists are off.
before i watch the video im going to say it really depends on the person because some people might value materialistic things and experiences that money can buy while others do not
Money may not buy happiness, but we sure won’t find happiness in poverty. Like that song I heard on the radio a little while ago says, “Whoever said money can’t solve all your problems must have not had enough money to solve them.” On that occasion I would agree with the singer, despite observing things from a different standpoint than her. Think about what the problem is. Let’s say you go to drive to work one morning and, no matter how many times you turn the key, your car doesn’t start. You call a mechanic and you get told it’s because a solenoid went bad. It’ll cost money to get you back on the road as that mechanic ain’t gonna fit that new solenoid for free. Kapeesh?
"Jeff Bezos is full of glee and devoid of hair like a scary muscular Kirby" is a truly amazing sentence
You don't *need* money to be happy. You don't need running shoes to run a marathon, either, but they bloody well help!
Money doesn’t buy happiness, it solves problems, which can inhibit happiness. Of course, in the words of the Bard, more money, more problems.
Actually a great video. Basically $75,000-$110,000 prevents financial stressors on average. Then people who have greater stability can continue to utilite money to get happier above that, but many don't have the capacity.
Man, I hope I got to watch this video 5 years ago when I was in my school debate with the topic "Does Money buy Happiness?"!
One thing I will say about this: none of these dollar amounts should be constant. The true currency here is not dollars but utility units. If we define 1 utility unit as the value of being content for 1 hour, and 0 as not existing (but not suffering or being bored either), we can determine that clearly most people are willing to trade a Utilon for something in the $10s range, NOT because $ has any innate value in Utilons but because they rationally expect to achieve greater utility by spending that money on products and services than by not having that money. Working instead of playing, then, is an investment. Utilons lost now with the expectation that more will be gained later.
Note when I say you lose Utilons at work, I don't mean relative to being content or not existing. I meant relative to what you would do otherwise. Maybe you love your job at 2.9 Utilons an hour, but you'd probably love doing something else slightly more at 3.2 Utilons an hour.
One thing worth mentioning, diminishing marginal utility applies to almost everything EXCEPT utility itself. 5 Utilons is 5 Utilons and equally important to you whether you're extremely depressed or extremely happy. This is NOT the case for money. The expected value in Utilons of $1 is not the same if you have different amounts of happiness or different amounts of money or just different life circumstances.
I think Chelsea Fagan from The Financial Diet did the best video on money buying happiness I've ever seen. Basically, you can't be happy or content if you're constantly worried if you'll have enough food to feed your family tomorrow or if you need to put that money towards rent and but then you might be behind on car payments, which you need in order to drive to work. So yes, money 100% buys happiness, or at least the baseline contentless that is absolutely necessary for happiness.
Ben cried and asked to just go on another season of Jet Lag so he could do another “get Ben drunk” challenge.
Sad Ben didn't do part of the voiceover when you introduced him and his research
I like how there is a little happy face at 5:23
It's important to note that the "seeking" parts of the brain (the pathways that make you want and crave things) aren't perfectly linked to the happiness parts. Ie, confirming conventional wisdom, getting something that you want doesn't always make you happy
Money can't make you happy, but it can put you in the right neighborhood.
0:18 It would take me significantly less money to be happier than I am.
Money won't buy happiness but no money will drive it away
Money can buy you lots of cats and we all know that happiness increases at least linearly, if not exponentially, with cats.
Q U A D R A T I C A L L Y
Now this is the quality content I subscribed for right here 3:58.
nice to hear that ben still gets tortured by sam when they're not filming jet lag
money can buy happiness to a point. If a person is making enough to take care of his family, buy what they want within reason, handle financial and medical emergencies without going into debt and breaking the bank, and can buy things for the people they care about...they can be generally happy. In the US it's someone making between 90k and 110k (exactly what you said in the video. though I feel that making anything between 75k and 90k will do it too)
Money does buy happiness. Anyone who says otherwise has plenty of money.
I'm starting to see these stock footage models as old friend at this out
Money can buy happiness, but it can also lead to more problems. For example: Elon Musk is so wealthy that he could afford to spend $44 billion on Twitter, but even though he now owns it (on top of Tesla & SpaceX) that didn't automatically make him happier. Meanwhile, if I could make $44,000 a year I would be more financially stable than I currently am, which would provide me with more opportunities to enjoy life.
Money might not automatically bring happiness, but it opens the doors to "happy" opportunities, including stability (financial, food, clothing, shelter, medical, etc), the ability to make MORE money, and, for better or worse, a richer group of friends/acquaintances/company of people to interact with.
Maybe obtaining 10 million bucks won't make EVERYONE happy, BUT having a safety net for medical emergency costs, losing your job and being unable to pay rent and utilities will give you peace of mind... which is "like" being happy but unconsciously since you are less likely (or at best, no longer have) to worry about those things.
Money (in varying amounts) can basically solve MOST problems. Problems that either make you unhappy AND/OR barriers/obstacles to being "more" happy.
0:19 Losing the emotional equivalent of 308k, then losing the literal amount in court fees.
Lots of money would almost immediately fix most of my issues rn, so very happy.
Assuming the source of said money wouldn't be bad in some way.
Before connecting money and happiness, it is necessary to untangle the connections between human life and society.
Happiness is a characterization of the life of an individual, as generated by evolution. Money is a virtualized mean of exchange used in our society, which allows anyone to appropriate someone else work. Finding a common index between the two, like pricing happiness, is logically incongruous...
I read about this survey a few years ago and it reported the same threshold of $75000
i imagine ben writing this video the same way he did the math minute on jet lag
3:57
Fun Fact: In Nebula, this progress bar is blue, and that led me to wonder if it’s the same in RUclips, and it’s not!
Money buys you time to do the things you love and spend time with your loved ones. With enough money you don't have to work for anyone else. So yes, money by proxy buys happiness.
This video felt like it stopped really abruptly before it could finish explaining the topic.
Bro ended on the dead dog line 💀 that’s a power move
You can't buy happiness but you can rent it for weeks or even months at a time.
Hi Sam!
These videos make me happy. You owe me money now!
If you want to know what human happiness (eudaimonia) is just read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Money can buy happiness to a certain extent. Suppose the thought experiment that I require a vehicle and by having a car will give one happiness. A second or third car would likely bring happiness too. But when you approach 50 or x+1 number of vehicles. Happiness will diminish. Therefore money can buy happiness but only up to a certain extent. This means that human happiness has other more significant component. As to not spoil the book that is for you to discover. Happy reading!
While I'm not sure about happiness, I heard they're selling love for 298 yen
You didn't address the main question posed in the beginning about how to quantify in money how much a friend is worth or how much a mirage is worth.
I like the slower pace of this video.
"If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."
- 'Weird Al' Yankovic
"If money can't buy happiness then I guess I'll have to rent it!" - Weird Al Yankovic, "This is the Life (Theme from Johnny Dangerously)"
Having survived 4 master's statistics courses... The first study tried logi(s)t(ical) probability regression, whilst the latter went for a linear one. With such narrow variables the former is actually OK, but no need denying you can expand the response range from 2 to 3, 5, 7, 9 or 10 (but then you bongle up interpretations).
You can also try to split up the happiness scale to regress each state, how probable is it to happen... How miserable life is after you learned about OLS 😢
Now its a Full Ass Interesting video
Money can't buy you happiness, it does however make it a hell of a lot easier
Finally the video we all needed
One problem with these studies is they don't generate a marginal conversion rate of Utilons to $. I think a much more interesting study would be how much you have to pay someone to stop doing their normal life and sit awake in a sensory deprivation chamber for X hours a day. This measures the monetary value they put on their own experience. A different question is how much of a pay raise or pay cut would they need to stop doing their normal job and "work" at the sensory deprivation chamber. This measures the monetary value they assign to the utility of being at work relative to the sensory deprivation chamber.
Finally, we can create an environment which is worse than the deprivation chamber to measure a constant utility gap. For example, we can determine the difference in money they would need to earn to sit in the sensory deprivation chamber vs some kind of mild torture task.
So we at this point know the monetary value they assign to two fixed reference points as well as their normal job and their normal leasure activities. We can divide the money they assign to work and leisure more than density deprivation (average over the amount of time they do each) by the value they assign to sensory deprivation over mild torture.
The $ cancels out and we are left with true internal subjective utility relative to fixed reference points.
For anyone not heavily trained in meditation, sensory deprivation with nothing to do _is_ a kind of torture. I don't know what to count as 0 utilons; perhaps an extremely simple task such as counting objects on a conveyor belt would make more sense.
I know a number of people whose jobs actively produce negative utilons for them, in that if they didn't have to socially debase themselves in the name of "the customer is always right", or unnecessarily dangerous work conditions, they would be significantly happier. One would _think_ that these jobs would benefit greatly from being automated, but many of them report that, if they were paid enough to make a living and their managers didn't force them to cut corners and take the fall for everything, they would actually be entirely happy with their positions. The _potential_ for the satisfaction of honing one's skill as a barista or packing a shipping truck to perfectly maximize use of space is _right there,_ and the only reason the jobs are brutal is because the people involved are not being treated in a basic humane manner.
“If you want to get a good GPA you have to stop doing Ethnic Cleansings.”
Sad, can’t play Stellaris anymore 😢
Money does buy happiness because I am happy when I don't have to worry about money and can do whatever I want.
The true happiness is from watching an HAI video
Money may not bring happiness but lack of it does cause unhappiness
3:04 sounds like how I research new topics.
This video helps explain why Ben gets drunk every season of Jet Lagged...
This still only sounds like correlation. The people who earn lots of money probably have some character traits to a higher degree than the rest of us, on average. They probably have jobs that require more education, on average. They probably have a bunch of other inputs, that aren't isolated away in the studies. If there were doctors who earn $35k a year, while working as much as other doctors do, would they really be as unhappy as a more menial worker, earning the same? My intuition says "no".
"crying and sweating a lot" over a linear equation...
Those who think money can’t buy happiness don’t know where to shop! It’s getting the money that’s hard.
"This is a vector"
Proceeds to show a matrix.
Obviously money buys happiness, at least if you don't require to survive the thing that made you temporarily happy
"You say that money, isn't everything
But I'd like to see you live without it."
I'm a simple man. I see a panel data econometric model in the thumbnail, I click and watch.
Idk how much but it certainly can and will literally buy hapiness. Are you happier eating form a garbage can or eating a big and tasty meal? Are you happier living in a cardboard box or in a good, spacious, well lit house? The answer is obvious.