The Price of Happiness (2024)(happiness-science.org) |
The Price of Happiness (2024)(happiness-science.org) |
If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right
by Elizabeth Dunn, Daniel Gilbert, & Timothy D. Wilson
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10577...
Includes explicit recommendations (even in the short abstract)!
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803098-happy-money
I'd also recommend Morgan Housel's various writings:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231148075-the-art-of-spe...
He had an interesting observation: the popular saying "don't spend money on things, but on experiences" only goes so far. Spending on things can bring about experiences: the big house/cabin/cottage per se may not bring you happiness, but if it's a place that you can gather family and friends, that can bring happiness/meaning. His first car didn't bring him happiness because it was a car (and not even fancy), but because of all the road trips he did with his friends in it.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study
and their findings lean towards good relationships with family and friends are highly correlation with happiness, health, and many aspects of financial success. The released a book summarizing many results a few years ago:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61273746-the-good-life
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...
The daily reminder about the pains of autism and depression :/
This is prime time. This is what I'm currently on earth to solve. I'm going to enjoy the process of trying to defeat it. Amor fati.
Of course, you don't have to think that way. But you're going to have one problem or another, either way, and that mindset shift just makes everything feel less hopeless and more in control, even if the problem persists for now.
"When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death."
I imagine people who are making more money are probably a better fit for their career, feel more needed, and so forth and so on. I do imagine there's some relationship with income and accumulating more money per se, but I wonder how strong that relationship is once you remove the effects of career satisfaction independent of monetary gain, if such a thing is even possible.
I guess it's hard for me to interpret these effects because there's so much going on in the background in terms of meeting life goals, feeling welcome where you're at and feeling like you're able to contribute what you're best at, and so forth and so on.
The other thing is the ordinate axis is hard for me to make sense of. Like, in Figure 1, life satisfaction goes from say, 2.7 to 3.2 on a scale of 1 to 4? That seems like a relatively narrow range to me, even if it is statistically significant, and my guess is those dots are hiding a lot of variability.
So maybe that's what people mean by diminishing returns? Not that there's no actual continuing increase, but that the increase is incredibly small on some absolute scale of happiness? It's hard to know what to make of the happiness numbers — if, say, consequential changes in some measure of happiness occur far below anything on that ordinate axis, none of these increases with income are of any practical significance.
1. money != income.
2. Zip codes.
3. Age.
4. Social class.
a) 65 year old professor living in Woodside, CA, with a net worth of $250,000K
b) 35 year old HVAC business owner living in Fresno, CA, with a net worth of $2,000,000
First is poor, second is rich, but the study conflates both into the same bucket if they both make, say, $400K/yr
That said all the findings that these studies seem to gravitate towards like close relationships also align with my experiences as being powerful effectors.