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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Fantastic read!

Always remember that "money doesn't buy happiness" is the shibboleth for people who always had money. Bring that up next time someone says it. Fun reaction guaranteed.

I like to follow it up with my favorite slavic saying: "Sure money won't make you happy, but crying in a Ferrari is much nicer than on the bus"

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Easily the worst time of my life was during a 1 year eviction. I even dated a girl for a brief period who told me the ' you can always have a good attitude' thing.

Years later when a met someone else struggling to find safe housing, I told them 'always stay positive, attitude' is bullshit. Allow yourself to be upset.

Money buys security. Security means one less thing to worry about.

I'm very grateful for the career I have now. Started with trying to copy Unity scripts from youtube videos and I'm a senior level dev now. Paying my rent early gives me an endorphin rush

The “good attitude” line is a form of toxic positivity, actually. Getting evicted sucks and it’s perfectly rational to be upset about it. What matters is how you move on from it, and you did and it sounds like your life is much better now.

If I recall correctly she started her speech with ' I've probably never been though what you have'.

I make sure to never repeat this crap to other people.

In hindsight the eviction did get me out of a very bad home life, still was a solid year of hell

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is also a good teaching tool in these situations. Yes, money won’t buy you all the way up the hierarchy to self-actualization (which is probably what these folks vaguely mean by “happiness”). But it will surely get you up the lower levels and perhaps some way further than that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_need...

Today I learnt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth

While I agree that "money doesn't buy happiness" is over simplistic. The opposite - "money buys happiness" - also is. An expat in Angola recently told me that what surprised him the most was how happy poor people were. People without nothing (material) not even the certainty of having a dinner everyday.

A less simplistic (but still simplistic) take on this is: "Comparison is the thief of joy".

When I hear "Money doesn't buy happiness" my internal response is always

"but poverty can ensure misery"

Another one: "Money doesn't buy happiness - but it solves 99% of the problems that make you unhappy." - GSElevator on Twitter

Another one: "If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it." - Weird Al.

That is so true. And money does bring happiness for people who just got some of it when they previously had none. Rich people I believe are not very happy. But they would be very unhappy if they lost their money. Money is desperately needed by people who don't have it.

Poverty does not in fact ensure misery. Victor Frankel wrote about surviving the most hideous depredations imaginable in World War II concentration camps. It was obvious from the first that a defeatist attitude killed you, and that determination to survive was essential. Knowing this helped me through many years of misery.

I recall a study that indicated the perceived disparity in wealth has a greater effect on how poverty is experienced than the absolute condition, therefore (the study argued) somebody living in poverty in a very wealthy society is likely to be more miserable than if they were living in a society where the majority were also in poverty. I'm not saying this applies to your example, I just thought it was an interesting factor to consider.

Determination is orthogonal to happiness. Survivor guilt over what may have been done to survive, demonstrates this.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but lack of money is catastrophe. I think the focus should be on that. That’s the problem that we should and could actually fix with money.

Going from no money to some money is everything. From some money to a lot of money does not help anyone.

I always thought people who take issue with this saying never had a lot of money.

I agree It's such a crazy statement. If going to the supermarket and buying whatever you want doesn't seem like a crazy luxury, you've got a 1% station only perspective.

I believe the threshold for the top 1% is around $10 million in net worth excluding primary residence.

Being able to buy whatever you want at the super market is probably a top 25% of the US perspective if not more.

> The top 1% earned an average of $515,371 while the annual income for the average taxpayer was $41,740.

> The minimum net worth of the top 1% was roughly $10.4 million, according to Forbes. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million.

[https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...]

The discrepancy between $10.4 million net worth and $515k income (which I assume includes gains) confused me for a moment, until I realized that the $10.4 million figure likely includes at least one large non-income-producing piece of real-estate.

Most of these estimates exclude primary residence or the primary residence isn't a huge portion anyway.

The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things, and I’m pretty sure the linked source is only talking about the net worth group (though it’s not exactly clear). Net worth is not necessarily linked to your income in any given year, so I don’t think it’s especially surprising that the income for that group averages out to around 5% of their net worth.

> The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things,

Obviously. But if the figure is exclusive of their primary residence their return on investments isn't especially impressive-- e.g. it's sub index fund rates even assuming they have no other income than gains. :)

I would presume this is taxable income, which would be different from gross return on investment in any given year (depending on how you plan your taxable events). The other thing to consider is that index funds are essentially the best performing strategy over any significant period of time. For people who derive a significant portion of their income from investment returns, you’d expect some of them would have their income to trending closer towards the risk free rate than average market returns. Index fund returns would be the upper bound for a lot of people in this group.

For example, I think it contradicts the narrative implied by many complaints about the rules around accredited investors and eligible contract participants and such that "the rich" benefit from important investment opportunities that are denied to less wealthy. It makes a case that joe-everyman can toss money into an index fund and out perform the wealthy.

I wouldn't expect 'given' year effects to be relevant, as it's averaging over a large number of people. Taxable is a better argument, since as you reach the highest marginal tax rates there is a lot of reasons to find ways to indefinitely defer paying taxes (e.g. die with it and pass it with stepped up cost basis).

These numbers loosely correspond with the 4% rule for gains.

Maybe. As a rough estimate I'd place it closer to the top 10% of the US. The 1% threshold is around $500k, whereas the 10% threshold is around $100k, which is pretty luxurious most places in the US (confounded by the fact that higher CoL areas have higher incomes).

On the other end of the spectrum, 50-70% of US families were living paycheck to paycheck even before covid, so I'd be moderately surprised if the top 25% could afford whatever they wanted at the supermarket.

I don’t mean in the US

Not sure about that ferrari. Crying while someone else is driving you is much more comfortable.

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