^ I’m not a big boating fan. At least one of my US homes would likely be on the ocean or a large lake though, so I guess I should have something for guests to use when they visit.
+3
I’m in the same boat but with a third on the way. Someone said on a different thread that he considered 100k being financially successful. It really doesn’t go very far these days.
At whatever I am making at the moment. I just decide to be happy… No money or people can make you happy - it has to come from within…
It’s clear to me that many of the posters in this thread, due to my triangulation calculations and brilliant powers of deduction, have yet to break the mythical $200K/year barrier.
Might I suggest, as a more purified, truer filter than the whole 3/3 CFA, Top 1 MBA, etc., etc., that the real filter be some universally agreed upon annual salary barrier (i.e., say, 200 large per annum), where all those who fall below it, I suggest taking the most tetanus-teeming, jagged-edged, horror-movie-looking hacksaw and divorce thee family stones from thy body at once. Big-balled MF salary > Top 1 MBA + unemployment check.
And I don’t want to hear some bullsh!t about geographic differences between NYC and Podunk, AK. 200 large is a universal number of troof.
Happiness comes from the inside, no material person, place or thing will make me happy. My happiness is derived from the way I feel about myself and my relationships with others. I am happy at my current income and I have been happy when I made relatively nothing.
i think the feeling you are describing is satisfied. I have come to accept that I will never be satisifed with how much I earn because I could always make more. I think 700-800k a year would be a decent start though.
Precisely!!!
Mid-career I’d like to be @ $125k. With the company I’m at, it’s possible as long as I work hard and impress. Fingers crossed.
LOL. Now a days I’d be surprised to see people at the same company for more than 5 years, especially since I assume you’re a younger guy in his 20s.
You ask many wealthy people when they were happiest in their lives, and it often turns out that it was when they were younger and poorer, even if they are still relatively healthy. That doesn’t mean that they are currently unhappy, BTW, it just means that there’s a lot that goes into happiness other than money.
If you don’t have the ability to appreciate the world around you, and simply hunger incessantly for more, no amount of money is going to make you happy. No one is happy when they are hungry. People are happy when they are in the moment and doing or experiencing something they value.
The company’s quite great, though. Almost consistently rated in the top 50 places to work. Fantastic benefits (health care, pension, 401k, etc…) and salary is pretty competitive. Plus, you rotate within the finance department into a new position every 2-3 years, depending on how quickly you master a role. If you’ve mastered a role, they rotate you to keep you on your toes. With every rotation comes a salary increase. Plus there’s a an annual incentive of 4% salary for my first role, then 8% for my second role and onward, until manager (25%). I have a lot of reasons to stay here, so unless it sucks pretty bad I don’t think I’ll be leaving unless a way more fantastic opportunity presents itself later. I know the norm is to change companies every so often, but if I can get the positions within the company that I want, I think I will be here for a long while.
Bchad,
Have you come across with the “minimalist” concept? What is your view on it?
A severe lack of money may make you unhappy. Lack of food or health treatment are extreme issues that money often could solve… Worrying about missing the house or getting bankrupt can also be stressfull (although this often has more to do with spending habits than with compensation).
But excess money can’t bring happiness. As some pointed out, it comes from the inside, and a Ferrari, Netflix or a great sandwich won’t really affect your long term happiness.
People were doing fine 20 years ago without Google, smartphones and XBox.
The problem is that there is no fixed definition of “happiness” or “satisfaction”. Hence, the original question is quite poorly posed. Even if someone is happy, there are still ways where you can increase their happiness - for instance, offer them $1000 or give them a medicine that increases their life span. No matter what circumstances you are in, I guarantee that there is something that can be done to make you marginally more happy.
Now, if you keep doing these marginal things, does that mean that you can increase their happiness to unlimited levels? If you take someone who describes themselves as “happy” and if happiness is measurable, the theory says you can probably double their happiness. If you are only 50% as happy as you could be, can you still be described as happy?
Perhaps the more relevant question is - are you optimizing your own happiness given your life contraints? For instance, if you can change your income by putting in more work hours, are you optimizing this balance?
I am never happier than when I’m swimming in my vault of golden coins and jewels.
I do think there is a limit to how happy you can be, and at that level you are probably “contented”. There is a decreasing marginal return to experience. How good was it the first time you ate your favorite food? If you ate the same thing now, would the experience make you as happy? How fun was partying when you are 18-23? Is it as fun now? I would say probably not (unless you’re a late bloomer), and the reason is that your mind adapts to all experiences as the new normal. Much like your body’s adaptation to excersise, your emotional response to things that make you happy adjusts until you return to a normal level. Drugs are great at the begining, and then it becomes a daily chore to maintain the feeling. Eventually, your mind adapts and the feeling becomes your reality. Same with money. So you always want more, but it (whatever “it” is) becomes less satisfying. This is also a big reason for the loss aversion heuristic.
Basically, that is why Bhodi is ultimately correct. And, I like to call that “contented”: a feeling of general well being that things are as they should be.
I agree that no money can make you happy, but no money will definitely make you unhappy. Anybody who says otherwise has never been really poor.
Trust me–I come from a truly poverty-stricken childhood. Our house seemed like it was about to fall apart, and my parents sometimes had to scrounge pennies just to buy enough food and toiletries. My mom used to buy a bottle of shampoo, pour half of it into an empty bottle, then fill them both up with water–just so the kids thought we had enough shampoo.
These kinds of troubles start to weigh on you, and it starts to consume you. Kinda like when Level 3 of CFA was only two weeks away–you couldn’t ever really relax, because the exam was on your mind all the time. Except this isn’t a test about arcane financial philosophy–this is feeding your kids and keeping your heat on.
Sorry to get on my soap box, but anybody who says, “It must come from within” has probably never done without.
I beg to differ. A Ferrari would significantly increase my long-term happiness. I’m not saying I’m unhappy not having a Ferrari, but if you park a 2013 F12berlinetta in my garage, I’m going to be a whole lot happier than if you park a Dodge Dart there instead. I’m also pretty certain that 10 years from now if I’m having a crappy day, jumping in my 10 year old Ferrari and breaking some laws on the local back roads will make that day a bit less crappy.
I suggest that all the “happiness comes from the inside folks” fly from non-stop from Newark to Singapore in business class, fly back in coach, and let me know on which trip they were happier.
If you only ever flew coach then you would just be happy to be going on an exciting trip to Singapore. If you flew business, then your standards would be elevated and coach would seem like sh!t to you.
Source: flew from NYC to Shanghai coach and have flown many places business/first since then.
If you never knew Ferarri existed for you to covet, would you be more or less happy?
I agree with this… for me, I’ve travelled quite extensively for somebody my age and every way imaginable, from turbo prop puddle jumpers to a learjet and everything in between, so while for some people going on a trip somewhere overseas might be exciting by itself, my thought might be “damn it, I have to fly coach?”
Once you’ve experienced the nicer ways of doing things, its not as enjoyable to go backward. Same thing with cars. I grew up with my parent’s SUVs and luxury cars. My first car was a Lexus. Now for me buying something like a Corolla or Civic like a normal 20 something might do has zero appeal to me because I’m used to nicer cars.