Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Ask your investment, budget, and other money related questions here
User avatar
unemployable
Posts: 1007
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: Homeless

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by unemployable »

Henry wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 9:14 am
In order to survive, the Hasidic community were required to take the pretend you don't have money route and has for the most part continued doing so to this day. A basic uniform and a beater minivan.
To the point where the places they live show up on a lot of demographic high-score tables (or low-score tables). Such as this place. Note the beater cars in the synagogue parking lot.

Jin+Guice
Posts: 1280
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2018 8:15 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Jin+Guice »

Henry wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:20 am
So the answer is a basic fuck yeah. I am not navel gazing out of it. I could carry out some of my more anti-social tendencies knowing that my reputation doesn't mean anything and I can hire a team of legal monkeys to get me out of a bind. 20M moves me from farting into Walmart PA systems into buying homes next to my enemies and making their lives miserable by blasting the movie soundtrack of Fiddler on The Roof 24/7.
Come on dawg. This is ERE, you don't need money to do this, just creativity and maybe some homemade soap.



I'd take the money for the optionality, but I doubt I'd use it or change much.

I also worry about the mo' money mo' problems.

I once stage teched a show that Mase played and the dude did not seem particularly happy.

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Dave »

Having $20M would barely change my hapiness at all in what it could do for me.

It would open some doors, but those doors are deep into diminishing returns territory.

The only thing it would be is a signifier that I am achieiving success in an activity (investing) that I enjoy. Probably similar to going from a 4 pack to a 6 pack. Sure, it is "better". But it's not like you're going to have different outcomes in the dating market from that improvement. Still, you'd feel some degree of satisfication if your goal was in fact to get leaner/a 6 pack.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Somebody knocking at my door right now with a box of donuts would radically increase my happiness in the moment :lol:

If I re-envision 20M as maybe 500,000 barrels of oil, I don't know whether I would trust myself with the responsibility of figuring out how it should best be burned. Some weeks I can barely manage to get the recycling out to the curb.

My friend who was worth north of 100M once told me "You can help one person. Maybe you can help two people, but that's it." IOW, the fact that he believed that even that much money did not provide an entirely adequate oxygen mask for more than a few humans is not unrelated to the fact that he managed to accumulate over 100M in his lifetime. OTOH, he was a pretty happy guy in the sense of not at all depressive and always going, going, going. IOW, he was a person who was very engaged in life, but only within a VERY narrow lane.

ffj
Posts: 376
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:57 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by ffj »

Monetarily? No. I'm already financially rich.

But, it would be a very interesting challenge to remain anonymous and do good in the world. Sounds like a movie, doesn't it? But the instant you are found out to be a multi-millionaire the game would be over, and the amount of problems you would inherit would be a nightmare for an introvert such as myself. Not least of which would be the incentive to ever try at anything again, because the end result wouldn't really matter, with the exception of your health. You would just exist at that point. Plus are you aware of the amount of people that would fuck you up for $1000? Seriously.

And your children would lose their incentives also as they just have to wait you out until you are dead. Lisa Marie Presley comes to recent mind, look how that turned out.

Better to look like you are poor, and live well stealthily.

User avatar
unemployable
Posts: 1007
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: Homeless

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by unemployable »

ffj wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 11:45 am
But, it would be a very interesting challenge to remain anonymous and do good in the world. Sounds like a movie, doesn't it?
It was! As I recall Richard Pryor's character had to keep his motivation secret, but others could know he had the money.

IlliniDave
Posts: 3845
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by IlliniDave »

Regarding the subject line question, no, I do not believe it would radically increase my happiness. It would allow me to do a few things that are out of reach now. I'd estimate maybe a 20% increase in overall satisfaction, simply because I'd have somewhat more margin and flexibility.

Bonde
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 31, 2021 5:21 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Bonde »

20M would be nice but not sure my life would be much different.

Kahneman's research:
Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant. Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness, separately for these two aspects of well-being.
We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization.
We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000.
Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone.
We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Cited more than 3,500 times on Google Scholar.

Humanofearth
Posts: 188
Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:32 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Humanofearth »

Insightful thread, thank you for all the replies. My main take away is several iterations of the negative qol returns.

@Jacob
Did you experience the negative qol mentioned in several posts?

There's also a lack of incentive to develop such skills, especially for independent folk. Hypothetically, 1M already did the trick both socially and economically, even 2M is luxury consumption that allows for experimenting for health but not in a meaningful way beyond 1M. 20M seems pointless the longer I think about it. Your book and forum radically changed my life, I remember first opening the book and the lights clicking. Lead to a long path of learning and finding what works for me. Your investment advice in particular annoyed me at the time and yet, I deeply respect the independence it attempted to invoke.

@xmj
I know many millionaires. They say it would increase security for their family after passing on or allow them to retire. Considering how much I doubt the latter as most of them would likely go crazy after a few months of decompressing, it didn't seem to have much impact. The line I notice outside of extreme high col areas is ~1-3M for a household.

@ertyu
Those goals seem more simply achieved with online income and geographic arbitrage. Quality therapy can be very cheap outside certain countries.

@Hristo Botev
I think this is true beyond the 50-100x, as Ego mentioned, negative qol returns.

@Henry
I hadn't considered this yet but isn't it the "only for money" that is damaging rather than money as a single filter among many filters? Maybe, money is what most people desire in whom they associate with, it's the human symbol for ambition and success, the ability to direct more resources because of productive use in the past so it seems a proxy impossible to overcome for the eccentrics and romantics who'd rather be loved for who they are or shared interests/world views. ie- men want to be around successful men whom they can grow with together, women need resources to care for a large family that was historically needed when child mortality rates were high and allows for stay at home parents in the modern day. So isn't there some truth in that money helps to determine who can offer this? Obviously, some look at only money which is equally foolish compared to filtering for a healthy family, lifestyle, and 20M is far beyond what's needed to achieve this.

@unemployable
I think some would get the furniture, many would not until another event came in. Your other thoughts echo what I think as well, once you're ERE, as many here are, it doesn't change much.

@Seppia
That could work but as Jacob notes, it burns fast in an organization. So the economic motivation dies off at 2M and work is purely for the stimulation, I agree strongly. But then we may have to work to get 2M in several economic entities in case some get zeroed out.ie-2M in US stocks, 2M in Asian real estate, 2M in xyz.

@Jin+Juice
Mase also has celebrity status, something money could buy but that is hard to take and while many aspire to it, I think the lifelong value is often negative when privacy is something we often want so we can practice some stealth wealth.

@Dave
Off topic but some people cannot get 6 packs no matter how lean due to connective tissue being the reason that some get a 4 pack while others get a 10 pack in the 5-10%bf range. The extreme leanness does have some impact but it may come from the increased self trust in having been able to achieve it.

@7Wannabe5
I think family could replace people, but they adapt to change quickly and would need more help not too long later as life has recurring expenses that increase/decrease at various levels. His happiness was likely independent of his wealth beyond a certain level but it's nice to see it didn't bring more problems.

@ffj
I think due to our extreme tightness relative to the average Western citizen, we envision 20M to be capable of more than we think in situations involving many people.


@IlliniDave
I notice it's still a percieved increase for you. I'm now leaning towards a decrease in qol, so why on earth is it still a goal for me?

@Bonde
Adjusted for inflation, 2M would probably be enough to secure the income for these expenses. Seems the answer is no but again, they aren't accounting for a possible negative return on further money.

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Dave »

@Humanofearth

Haha off topic but still of interest to me!

Yeah, I recall hearing that - the structure of the stomach region dictates how many "packs" you can have. I suppose my point was that for people with a potential for a 6 pack currently sitting with 4, they need to cut off a little more fat to reveal lower abs, and that going from fairly wealthy to even more wealthy is similarly subject to diminishing returns on a lot of effort.

Re. abs though, this transition is where I'm at, and I'm not sure how many packs my genetics are wired for, lol. Anyways.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by white belt »

Bonde wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:09 pm
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Cited more than 3,500 times on Google Scholar.
That research has been discussed on here before. That $75k mark conveniently was also slightly better than median income at the time of the research, which likely means that as @Jacob alluded to, people associate happiness with being 10-20% better off than their peers. I strongly doubt those people would feel as satisfied if their peers were all living in mansions and making 6 figures a year. $75k a year income feels very different in Duluth compared to Denver compared to Dubai.

Also see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183 ... n-the-u-s/

ffj
Posts: 376
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:57 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by ffj »

@unemployable

Ha!

I'll have to check it out. Never heard of it before and it makes me wonder what I was doing in 1985 to miss it?

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by ertyu »

white belt wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:36 pm
That $75k mark conveniently was also slightly better than median income at the time of the research, which likely means that as @Jacob alluded to, people associate happiness with being 10-20% better off than their peers
I'm not sure if it's a matter of "better than their peers" or a matter of, most prices in the economy are more or less targeted at the median income so an income of 10-15% above that would mean that you can meet any car repairs, slight rent increases/household maintenance tasks that arise, minor health expenses, etc without this causing a crisis in your life. With that income, you can also be debt-free if you so desire. That's simply the level of income at which most stressors of poverty are no longer in play, so happiness becomes a matter of emotional self-regulation.

Henry
Posts: 499
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 1:32 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Henry »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:14 am
Come on dawg. This is ERE, you don't need money to do this, just creativity and maybe some homemade soap.
Well, contextualizing it within the framework of the ERE1 vs. ERE2 debate, I place myself around ERE-38. So I need the cash.

User avatar
unemployable
Posts: 1007
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: Homeless

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by unemployable »

Henry wrote:
Fri Jan 27, 2023 9:06 am
Well, contextualizing it within the framework of the ERE1 vs. ERE2 debate, I place myself around ERE-38. So I need the cash.
Yeah but have you strategically decentralized it? And what person perspective are you looking at it from?

Henry
Posts: 499
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 1:32 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Henry »

I guess that's the 20MM question.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I found myself wondering if in some future world this question will seem as irrelevant as "Would 20,000 more warriors under your command increase your happiness?" Of course, there is also the possibility of future world in which the warrior option will once again be most relevant.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:40 am
I found myself wondering if in some future world this question will seem as irrelevant as "Would 20,000 more warriors under your command increase your happiness?" Of course, there is also the possibility of future world in which the warrior option will once again be most relevant.
The very definition of happiness has changed over time as has its importance as a goal. Even today with the Scandinavian countries raking at the top in terms "happiness", they also rank very high in terms of suicide rates, so "happiness" means something different to Scandinavian culture compared to American culture.

chenda
Posts: 3289
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:17 pm
Location: Nether Wallop

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by chenda »

jacob wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:52 am
they also rank very high in terms of suicide rates,
I thought that was a myth ?

Frita
Posts: 942
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:43 pm

Re: Would 20M Radically Increase Your Happiness?

Post by Frita »

jacob wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:52 am
The very definition of happiness has changed over time as has its importance as a goal. Even today with the Scandinavian countries raking at the top in terms "happiness", they also rank very high in terms of suicide rates, so "happiness" means something different to Scandinavian culture compared to American culture.
I am often content but not happy, which I perceive as being judged unAmerican. (And I feel joy more that happiness which is typically prompted by being in nature and appreciation/awe.)

For me, this is true:
Happiness is a bit different from a feeling. Rather, it is an experience, usually hallmarked by positive thinking, joy, pride and even laughter. Contentment, on the other hand, is a long lasting feeling accompanied by peacefulness, gratitude and satisfaction. In other words, happiness is a temporary feeling whereas contentment possesses the ability to last indefinitely.
https://www.examiner-enterprise.com/sto ... 190719001/

Regarding suicide, I view it as more of acceptance of life as it is and choosing peace. Many Americans seem death-phobic to me. Do you notice a difference?

Sidenote: I was raised by a Swed. The joke is a happy Swed is a drinking Swed; otherwise, it’s all :|.

Post Reply