Money can't buy you happiness, but it can give you the foundation and support to look for it.

but it surely helps a lot, i mean i dont ask to be a billionaire, just enough for place to living, and i dont have to worry about food. and maybe with a pc gaming :) and i hope i dont need to go to hospital because sickness. just die while im asleep.. just burn my body or give it to some lion. i dont care

pardon my english

I do have terrible crushing problems money can't solve.

but I would be a hell of a lot happier with lowish 6 figures a year.

The thing is, it's true that money can't buy you happiness. I can guarantee you that I would still be depressed after a salary increase. I actually think the majority of wealthy people are fucking miserable.

However, money can buy you a lot of other helpful shit and its importance should not be downplayed.

But I have always interpreted "Money can't buy happiness" to mean that accumulating wealth beyond what you need to survive and be comfortable won't actually make your life meaningfully better. And that's true. Happiness levels off after a certain level of wealth.

"Money can't buy happiness" is a warning only intended for people who already have enough money to meet their basic needs. It's bad faith to say it to people who are struggling financially. It's kind of like saying, "Food won't bring you happiness." It has a different meaning depending on whether you are saying it to an emotional overeater or someone who is starving and malnourished.

Money isn't sufficient for happiness, but it's usually necessary.

Money can't solve all your problems but it can solve most of them.

I'm very close to paying off all my student debt. You'd think I'd be happier with the extra 250 a month now going to me, but.... it's really not a life changing amount. I can afford better groceries, and can save a bit for a rainy day. Other than that, nothing much really.

Financial independence would be life changing. Not seeing a large portion of my income going to rent, but to a property that I own and can happily invest time and effort into. That would be amazing

*pay increase above actual inflation/bill increases.

My pay has gone up every year, but each year I end up poorer as my bills eat the extra, plus some more!

Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton at Princeton University published a study in 2010 showing that money buys happiness only up to about $75k per year (in 2010 dollars, for Americans), at which point happiness plateaus and more money doesn't meaningfully buy more happiness.

Years later, Matthew Killingsworth at the University of Pennsylvania published a study showing that happiness didn't really plateau with money, but kept increasing at $75k and beyond.

They got together to see if they could reconcile their different findings from pretty similar methodologies.

As it turns out, Killingsworth's data did show the same plateau, at pretty much the same place, if you focus only on the least happy 20%. In a sense, the Kahneman data was focused on only measuring unhappiness, and didn't properly distinguish between people who were kinda happy, people who were moderately happy, and people who were really happy.

So now the most widely accepted analysis is that there are people who are deeply unhappy, for whom giving them more money might not make them emotionally better off, at least past $75k in 2010 dollars. But for the rest of us, the majority of people will continue getting happier with more money, well up to the $500k income.

Here's a write up of the collaboration

The problems of poverty might be easier to deal with. Not discounting that. But a salary increase under capitalism does not solve the fundamental depression you feel from alienation.

Not to say I don't have it better. I do. But the emptiness is not solved by a higher wage. It only has allowed me to have the time to become more reflective and depressed by the alienation of my labor.

To have more time and freedom to reflect on the suffering of these systems that I benefit from more than others do.

"Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable."

~~Clare Boothe Luce

Yes. Financial independence would give ample time for me to escape abuse but alas, I'm trapped under family's false insights and paranoia.

The money can't buy you happiness people are rich.