Most people say they'd need a significant pay raise and considerable wealth to achieve contentment, a new poll shows.

Does happiness have a price? For a majority of Americans, the answer is yes — but it doesn’t come cheap.

About 6 in 10 of Americans believe money can buy happiness, according to a new poll from financial services firm Empower. Yet to achieve happiness through financial means, most people say they’d need a significant raise, as well as a big chunk of money in the bank.

Median household income in the U.S. stands at about $74,000 annually, but respondents told Empower that they’d need to earn roughly $284,000 each year to achieve happiness.

And as for wealth, Americans said they’d need even more in the bank to feel content: $1.2 million, to be exact, the poll found. Many people are wealthier than they were a few years ago, thanks to the rise in real estate and stock market values, yet the median net worth of U.S. households stood at $192,900 in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    32·
    8 months ago

    I don’t know if paying my electricity bill counts as buying something that makes me happy…

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      8 months ago

      ever been without electricity? Some homes, no power means no heat, no cooking, no internet. it’s just a shell that’s nominally warmer than the outside. Stressing about simply surviving is going to pretty much make anybody unhappy. so not having to worry about paying those bills… perhaps it’s best to say, buying relief from unhappiness?

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        71·
        8 months ago

        Yeah. Relief from unhappiness is a much better way to put it. Happy is not the same as not-sad.

        Finding happiness in life usually goes beyond “having the bare minimum of my basic needs met”.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      8·
      8 months ago

      When you have repeatedly had to choose between having power or water for a given month, not having to do that makes you very happy.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        31·
        8 months ago

        I think the removal of a negative stimulus is a different kind of emotion than the addition of a positive stimulus.

        I get where y’all are coming from. I really do.

        I still think it’s a misrepresentation of what “Money doesn’t buy happiness” means.

        And yes, studies do show that money does buy (read: positively correlate with) happiness. Not just what this study seems to be reporting by asking people what they want, but by actually examining for correlations. It does seem to max out at a number far lower than a lot of politicians and C-suite execs are making though.

        I’m not saying “Money doesn’t buy happiness”. I’m just saying that “Buying things that make you happy” is different from “Meeting basic human needs in the modern world”.