Money does indeed buy happiness, and it increases with a bigger paycheque more than economists previously believed, a recent analysis has found.

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    Well, obviously - up to a certain degree at least.

    If something breaks and needs to be replaced, having enough money to replace it without needing to then cut back on money used to buy food or whatever is great. Imagine for example your car broke down and you’d have to save months to be able to afford a repair.

    But beyond being able to afford basic needs, good food and the likes (and also go out every now and then), I’d say having more money/income has diminishing returns.

    I’m by no means rich, but I realized after a few paycheck raises when I was at a level where it didn’t bother me much when things needed to be replaced or where a small price increase for items at the supermarket didn’t concern me anymore, that then adding more money to that doesn’t really boost my emotional well-being by a lot anymore.

    One area where I realize that from time to time is my computer. I upgrade some part of it at least once or twice a year. But I rarely upgrade/change anything about my computer because I’m unhappy about something, it’s mostly me falling for marketing and hype I suppose. I got a 3080 at launch day (for a relatively normal price of 799,-€ back then), and of course I thought it was a great card, but when I tested out some used GPUs I organized for family/friends during the pandemic I didn’t really mind. I checked out a GTX 1060 for a few days and I honestly didn’t even think about having downgraded to a 1060 from a 3080 after an hour or two. I obviously had to lower the graphics settings of most games, but they ran well enough and I enjoyed gaming as much as ever.

    That being said, if my GPU was a 1060 today, I’d probably be a lot less happy compared to 2021, because quite a few modern titles are borderline unplayable with a 1060. But even today, I don’t think I’d enjoy gaming less with say a Radeon 6600 XT.

    So, there’s a certain threshold that also depends a lot on what your hobbies actually are. Gaming is relatively cheap compared to I don’t know … racing cars on a race track. So if that’s one of your hobbies, your threshold might be higher than mine, if it’s drawing it might be lower etc.