The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call “diminishing marginal returns” sets in. If your family makes seventy-five thousand and your neighbor makes a hundred thousand, that extra twenty-five thousand a year means that your neighbor can drive a nicer car and go out to eat slightly more often. But it doesn’t make your neighbor happier than you, or better equipped to do the thousands of small and large things

The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call “diminishing marginal returns” sets in. If your family makes seventy-five thousand and your neighbor makes a hundred thousand, that extra twenty-five thousand a year means that your neighbor can drive a nicer car and go out to eat slightly more often. But it doesn’t make your neighbor happier than you, or better equipped to do the thousands of small and large things that make for being a good parent.

Aside from the equation it draws between making money and being good, the modern ideal of a successful life posits a further linkage between making money and being happy. This latter association rests on … assumptions. First, it is presumed that identifying what will make us happy is not an inordinately difficult task. Just as our bodies typically know what they need in order to be healthy… so, too, the theory goes, can our minds to be relied upon to understand what we should aim for so as to flourish as whole human beings. … Second, it is taken for granted that the enormous range of … consumer goods available to modern civilization is not merely a gaudy, enervating show responsible for stoking desires bearing little relevance to our welfare, but is, rather, a helpful array of potentialities and products, capable of satisfying some of our most important needs.

On average, millionaires invest 20 percent of their household income each year.

What would you drive? Where would you live and take vacations? What passions — art, writing, charity — would you pursue? What schools would your children attend? Would debt be a noose around your neck? How fast would you become a millionaire? Four months or forty years? Would you be cursing Sunday night and rejoicing Friday afternoon? Would grabbing a $6 coffee at Starbucks be an issue?

Not every billionaire is happy

The sociologist Michael Hout reports that “the affluent were about as happy in 2012 as they were in the 1970s, but the poor were much less happy. Consequently, the gross income gap [in happiness] was about 30 percent bigger in 2012 than it was in the 1970s.”37

Three core insights summarize the body of research on the topic of money and happiness: Money improves overall happiness at lower levels of income by reducing fundamental burdens and stress. At these lower levels, money can buy happiness. If you have an income above these levels and are unhappy, more money is unlikely to change that. If you have an income above this baseline and are happy, more money is unlikely to drive increasing happiness.

The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.

The Boston Consulting Group recently released a study showing that
there were 5.2 million households in America that could be classified
as millionaires.1 I would love to see a candidate for national office,
especially president, come out and announce that his platform was
squarely oriented toward creating wealth, that in 8 to 10 years we
would have 50 million millionaires in America.

You do not need to be a millionaire to feel successful or be successful. Financial wealth is only one of many possible indicators of success. However, to achieve your dreams and life goals you’re going to need money. And making it requires financial planning and goalsetting. I do not know of any successful person who has been able to simply ignore their finances.

I'm not a millionaire but I'm very comfortable doing what I do, and I'm more productive now than I was in my mid-20s. It's all down to functionality eventually. If you're functional it doesn't matter if you're mad.

I’m rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?

I'm rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?