How Much Money Do You Need To Be Happy?

There's an additional dimension to money not discussed in the article. Sometimes more important than how much money you have is what kind of money it is. There have been a few articles posted on HN about the different kinds of money. I suspect that if you love your career and make little money doing it, you can be happier than you would with a high-paying career that you hate.

I'm sure that the basic trend would be the same, that happiness or life satisfaction would generally increase with wealth, but if you were to look at people who were happy with their careers, that plateau at $75,000 might vanish.

"They found that life satisfaction rises significantly with household income."

I tend to believe income is really just an indirect indicator of general competence/underlying well-being rather than somehow causative. My observation is that serious, unresolvable life problems (such as chronic illness or special needs kids) tends to significantly curtail earning capacity. For me, resolving underlying problems has gradually improved my financial situation. I strongly believe that financial problems are essentially indicators of underlying real-world problems. So it makes sense to me that, conversely, financial well-being would grow out general well-being -- which fits with the detail that 2/3 of lottery winners are bankrupt within 5 years. Having money dumped in your lap doesn't magically resolve any underlying personal problems and, therefore, doesn't really fix your financial problems all by itself.