The problem with happiness is, the bar for what will make you happy shifts all the time. Remember when you were a baby and all it took to make you laugh was someone hiding their face behind their hands and then saying Boo? Okay, an extreme example, but it happens on a day-to-day basis, as well. When your circumstances change for better or worse, you rapidly shift your happiness threshold to accomodate the change.

You’ve oft noted that I am, on the whole, happier than you. This is in spite of the fact that you are materially better off than I am and likely ever will be. I can only draw from this conclusion that money doesn’t buy happiness. You just reset your bar to whatever new level of luxury it affords you.

Most jobs will range from mildly unpleasant to downright painful. This is why they’re called jobs, and why people will compensate you for doing them, because they’re not out-and-out fun.

So my conclusion is: Take the highest paying job, because you’re going to be unhappy anyway, but if you manage to reach the financial heights of Chris Evans, you might get to shag someone like Billie Piper.

This is why I am a highly paid male prostitute.

And there’s my problem. Happiness is an emotional state. Bank managers are rarely emotional.

Frankly I’d rather have ANY other job at the moment, but whether I’m happy in it or not is beside the point.

ANYWAY this isn’t about me, is it!

Being happy is very important, I’d be willing to make some sacrifices but I’d wager that ski-ing trip would make you happy as well.

Cut out the material things, and make sure you can afford ‘experiences’. Then you might start to put a price on it.

BTW how much ARE you paid? A £2k pay cut would leave me MINUS money each month!!

What about being in a career that you love, but working for a company that you hate? I’m personally torn. There is not a hugh market for what I do. I’m torn between holding out for a better company, or switching careers (which obviously would involve some schooling, which I cannot afford).

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I’m tempted to go back to my old company, but in a different role, which might not pay as much (and would be commission-based). I know there would be frustrations in that job, but at least I wouldn’t wake up every morning knowing that I have to go out in the cold, travel for 45 minutes, spend the day in an overheated office surrounded by people who don’t get my sense of humour. I was a lot happier in the last job, and I really feel the difference.

I agree. I loved my last company, but there was too much nonsense going on (Boss hired his brother-in-law, gave him a higher position then anyone, with NO experience), but the people there were great. Here, it’s dry, too much gossip, and doing dead-end work.

I don’t know where the line is, but I personally think that work MUST be enjoyable. My take on it is…..

Over your 40+ year professional working life you will actually work (or prepare for and commute to work) about 20 years of real time (50% of total woken hours during the whole week, and about 75% of your weekdays). I don’t consider it an option to spend 50% of my life being miserable.

I LOVE my work. Love it.

I get paid fuck all.

I am happy.

Fin.

I don’t think there’s a magic formula for anyone, because, as Dan says, it changes depending on circumstances.

It’s true that money can’t buy you happiness, but it can allow you to be miserable in comfort and happy in small doses.

But with everything, there’s levels.

What motivates you? What makes you happy?

What’s your absolute baseline standard of living? 2 holidays a year? Sky subscription? Money to go eat out/drinking etc.?

How much money do you need to attain that standard?

How much do you get paid?

Is it more than you need?

How happy/unhappy does your job make you?

If unhappy, can you find something which will make you happier but cover your needs?

It’s a hard thing to grapple with. For me, my main motivation isn’t money. Yes, money is a very nice thing to have, but I think I’d rather have a job where I feel valued, and feel like I have career progression and can make a difference. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never been paid lots of money to do a job I didn’t like (I’ve never been paid lots of money, period.), but I can’t imagine a situation where the lots of money bit would keep me going as long as feeling good about what I’m doing would.

I think about this in a reverse way - how big a lottery win would totally change my life, making it a delight rather than a chore.

The answer for me is actually a pretty small figure in terms of lottery win - if we could pay off the mortgage debt we owe, we’d currently be about £1200 a month better off as a household - without having to work any harder. That’s a whole lot of holidays and pocket money.

So a cash figure on a much much lower-stress life would only be about £190,000. Offers, anyone? ;-)

Personally I have to agree with pix there. Career progression is a huge motivational factor in my life. So the question may be then, how much should a person be willing to give up in one role in order to achieve progression in another. Perhaps giving up one option means that you progress faster somewhere else and even make back what you gave up (I for one am holding onto that belief with both hands, very tightly, as I start with the new company in January). Feeling valued is important both in your private and professional life.

Having said that, I never knew anyone that aspired to be a pauper.

If money can’t buy happiness, what can poverty buy?

It’s a never-ending cycle: the more money you have, the more money you think you can spend and thus will likely forever be in debt = unhappiness. Hence, no matter how much your job brings in, the money related unhappiness will probably always be there.

So now you just have to decide what level of poverty or wealth you want to be unhappy at. And then try find a job that you enjoy doing that will allow you to live at your acceptable level of unhappiness.

It’s a zen thing. Or an anti-zen thing.

Tol makes a good point - if I could clear my debts and have the majority of my income available for whatever I wanted (bar bills - no not BAR bills, I mean “other than” bills) what would that price be?

I’m at a stage, work wise, where it is very much a job these days, not a career. So I work 9-5 (8.30-6?) and turn off as soon as I leave the building. Extra disposable income to go out every night, away every weekend or so would make a HUGE difference.

So if anyone has £100k or knocking around…

I had a job not so long ago that I hated. It made me so miserable that I couldn’t enjoy myself even when I wasn’t working. So however many ski trips I could afford, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them. No job and no money would have been preferrable. Now I have an alright-but-not-superb job. This one allows me to live in a great place, travel a bit, and enjoy my leisure time. I definitely need a job that is at least neutral in terms of like/dislike and at least enough money to support myself in the short term. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

If money can’t buy happiness, what can poverty buy?

Point, but if you talk to homeless people (which I have) you discover their happiness bar gets reset at a very low level -if I give them £10 (which I have), it can feed them for a week. If someone gives me £10, I buy some sushi. I’m not saying there isn’t such a thing as abject misery in which it is impossible to be happy, but even people in WWII concentration camps told stories of how they found joy in the smallest of things. And people who have, materially, everything, often kill themselves or live lives in utter depression. So: Money clearly ain’t everything.

As for having a job in which you do something you love with nice people in a nice environment with no commute, yeah that’s cool and all, but so’s dating a supermodel who loves giving head, know what I mean?

‘As for having a job in which you do something you love with nice people in a nice environment with no commute, yeah that’s cool and all, but so’s dating a supermodel who loves giving head, know what I mean?’

As I said, I’m happy. And it IS cool. :-)

Happiness stems from neither work nor money for me. I’d say that material happiness for me is achieved when I have enough money to lead a comfortable lifestyle and do all the things I want to do. That’s very vague, I know, and it will vary from person to person. What’s more, as people’s means increase then so do their desires and as a consequence ther outgoings. I’ve been working four years since uni, and my salary now is double what i started on. But, at the end of each month I still have the same amount of money left as I did four years ago.

You ask what we would be prepared to give up for the job of our dreams, probably everything. All i’d ask for is board and lodgings and perhaps a creature comfort such as access to books/music.

I would give up my earnings for the next thirty years if it meant I could change today’s events such that my girlfriend and I hadn’t actually split up.

I would give up my earnings for the next thirty years if it meant I could change today’s events such that my girlfriend and I hadn’t actually split up.

Yeah, but think of the fights thast would lead to:

“Honey, could you take out the trash?”

“I gave up my earnings for THIRTY YEARS for this relationship, and you want me to take out the trash?!?”

“Oh, not this again! Every day, it’s thirty years this, thirty years that. Why don’t you just chop off your freakin’ ear already?”

“You just WAIT until 2035! As soon as I start earning again, I am SOOO getting my own place.”

As for having a job in which you do something you love with nice people in a nice environment with no commute, yeah that’s cool and all, but so’s dating a supermodel who loves giving head, know what I mean?

My point is that, once you’ve had it, it kind of sets a standard, helps you get things into perspective. You can have that, so why settle for less?

I’m a firm believer that if you really enjoyed your job, you’d get good at it. I follows that, in an ideal world, if you’re good at your job, you get paid lots (within your industry). On that basis, you’re both happy and rich.

From all the angst out there, this is clearly not the case… so why doesn’t this model translate into the real world?

A coupla paragraphs I happened to read while this page was up on screen (weird):

“If countries of differing wealth are assessed for happiness, a pattern emerges that suggests that wealth is subject to a law of diminishing happiness returns. The improvement in living conditions between those in the very poorest countries and those in countries that are slightly more prosperous is indeed associated with dramatic increases in happiness. However… the higher the Gross National Product, the lower the asssociation between individual happiness and relative income. … How to explain why improvements in living conditions do not lead to improved happiness once certain basic nutritional requirements are satisfied? It seems that in fact once we get past this threshold, happiness is largely unrelated to objective conditions of life. Instead, changes for the better tend to raise expectations, and thus do not result in greater happiness.…

So the theory most psychologists subscribe to now is that happiness results from the perception of being relatively well off rather than the actual quality of living conditions. The important implication of this theory is that happiness depends on mental constructs, or the way we think about our situation, rather than on the realities of life. Therefore people can be unhappy in almost perfect conditions because they want more, and be happy in tough circumstances because they resign themselves and aquiesce to their situation”

Apologies for the long post. The emphases are mine. From Chapter 1 (How to be happy) of Dr Raj Persaud’s book, “Staying Sane”