GimmeUrWallet said:happytommy said:
Maybe insane amount of money can buy you a lot of gold digging sluts, beauty contest winners, playboy pets, yachts, private jets, small islands,


that would be enough to make me happy... heck just the sluts would make me happy

Yeah...I'm pretty sure I could learn to cope with that, too.

"Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money." - Johnny Cash

*Bump* to keep a good thread alive.

wearetheborg said:myf16 said:
Frank's article does, however, make an important point about the cost of congested commutes. He unwitting makes a great case for widening roads and for the sale and development of extensive public landholdings in suburban areas. Parks are great, but they give less happiness than congested commutes take away.

Funny that Frank blames the free market for making the wrong decision, when the lack of adequate road capacity is strictly a function of government. Oh well, we all have our ideological blind spots.


Or perhaps he makes a case for improving public transport.

I'm surprised nobody here has expressed a desire for public transport. Cars have been mentioned, but no public transport.
Last year there was some ballot in election which had some proposition for some tax to fund local buses. The advertising slogan was "help seniors and people with disability keep their independence". The prevalent opinion seems to be there must be something wrong with people who use public transport.

I'm no green loving hippie, commuting to work by public transport has its advantages - no stress as mentioned in the article, plus you get time on bus/metro to read a book, listen to music on the ipod or just have a nap. But nooooooo people here view that as a loss of independence, something to be ashamed about.
I was in europe recently, dear god, what a fantastic transport system.

Of course not all areas here are like that. BART is heavily utilised in bay area

I live in the bay area and hardly ever use BART or any other public transit. Public transit take about twice as long as driving, is nearly as expensive, and full of drunks with poopy pants and throw-up on their clothes. At least that what we have in San Jose.

The money-and-happiness correlation
Tuesday August 22, 6:00 am ET
Jay MacDonald

Wise men from Aristotle to The Beatles have observed that money can't buy happiness, but what inquiring minds really want to know is: Why not?
After all, we're constantly bombarded with evidence to the contrary, some of which must surely be true. The rich and famous seem to be fabulously happy as they scamper the globe in their private jets, acquiring real estate and adopting orphans, while we mere mortals simmer in rush-hour traffic just to keep food on the table.

Heck, money and happiness even seem to go together better than love and marriage, which, statistically at least, continues to have the same success rate as a coin toss.

But appearances can be deceiving.

According to a June 2006 study spearheaded by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, once you reach a certain income level, more money does not contribute significantly to well-being and may actually result in more stress and less bliss.

"The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory," according to the study. "People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities."

The study found a weaker-than-expected correlation between income and moment-to-moment happiness in two surveys: a 2004 survey of 909 employed women in Texas and a 2005 survey of 810 women in Ohio. The researchers also looked at a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey on how folks at various points of the income spectrum spend their time. They discovered that women who make over $100,000 a year spend 19.6 percent of their time on passive leisure (i.e., fun), compared to women who make less than $20,000, who spend 33.5 percent of their time kicking back or socializing. The findings suggest a "focusing illusion" that leads people to work for more money even when happier pursuits would ultimately do them more good.

"Despite the weak relationship between income and global life satisfaction or experienced happiness, many people are highly motivated to increase their income," according to the study. "In some cases, this focusing illusion may lead to a misallocation of time, from accepting lengthy commutes (which are among the worst moments of the day) to sacrificing time spent socializing (which are among the best moments of the day)."

While we like to think we're just a lotto combination away from solving all of life's problems, experts agree that money itself has very little to do with living happily ever after.

The Jones factor
Remember the Joneses down the street? Daniel Gilbert says they actually might have more influence on your happiness than all the zeros in your savings account.

The Harvard psychology professor recently condensed 15 years of thinking about the elusive concept of happiness into his new book, "Stumbling on Happiness." He says that beyond a certain point, money has very little to do with happiness.

"The basic idea that 'If I could make more money I would be happier' is true if you're living in a cardboard box under a bridge; it's probably not true if you're making $190,000 a year," he says. "Money does make a difference when it moves you from abject poverty into the middle class, but it stops making a large difference at about that point. In terms of happiness, the difference between making $5,000 a year and $50,000 a year is dramatic, but the difference between making $100,000 and $100 million is negligible, almost nonexistent."

Nevertheless, an asset shortfall can dampen your bliss when it comes to keeping up with the Joneses.


"A lot of the happiness we get from money we don't get from money, per se -- we get it from our money divided by our neighbor's money. So much of our satisfaction with our income is relative, not absolute; it's not based on the number of dollars we make, it's the number of dollars we make relative to the number of dollars that other people around us are making. When people say, 'Gosh, if I could just earn a little more I'd be happier,' well, if you're the poorest guy in the neighborhood, that might be true, even if you're the poorest guy in Greenwich, Conn. But if you're the richest guy in the neighborhood, even if you're the richest guy in the Bronx, it probably isn't true."

Gilbert says one way to free ourselves from the "money-go-round" is to recognize when enough is enough.

"People would be wise to earn money up to the point of inflection, to the point where more money isn't going to make much of a difference," he says. "One of the things that people have to think about when they talk about money and happiness is where they are in their reference group. If you're in the middle or high end of your reference group, more money isn't going to make it better. If you're in the low end, it actually might make a difference."

'Chicken-and-egg-stasy'
Paul Taylor says Americans have always stalked life's pleasures, so studying the causes seems prudent.

"The pursuit of happiness has had a particular resonance in our own national history; it's embedded right there in our founding document. But it has a pride of place in the whole of human history; human beings want to be happy. So understanding what the track record has been and what elements contribute to that pursuit is important," he says.

As executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, Taylor headed up a February 2006 survey -- "a snapshot," he calls it -- of how that pursuit is going early into the new millennium.

February 2006 survey -- a snapshot

Among its findings:


Republicans are happier than Democrats.

Married people are happier than unmarried.

Churchgoers are happier than nonchurchgoers.

Sunbelt residents are happier than those living elsewhere.

Contrary to expectations, however:


Retirees are no happier than workers.

Pet owners are no happier than those without pets.

Where income is concerned, the Pew survey found that happiness does indeed increase with income; those who said they were "very happy" increased consistently with income, from 24 percent in the under-$30,000 income category to 49 percent in the $100,000-plus category.

But Taylor is quick to point out that there's a chicken-and-egg element to these findings that might lead to misinterpretation: "Perhaps money leads to happiness. Perhaps happiness leads to money. Or perhaps both are influenced by some other, more powerful factor."

Whatever the case, Taylor says the findings indicate that while money might not make you happy, not having money certainly contributes to unhappiness.

"The linear relationship that 'the more income you have, the happier you are' has been around a long time, despite the persistence of the old adage, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.' Well, the one may not buy the other, but they do seem to hang out together in ways that suggest there is a relationship between the two," he says.


The Pew researchers intentionally left it to the 3,014 respondents to define what happiness means for them.

"That's going to mean different things to different people, but if you take a big enough sample, you'll at least get some broad gauge of people's self-assessment," he says.

The happiness paradox
Bruce Weinstein, "The Ethics Guy" and author of "Life Principles: Feeling Good by Doing Good," says those who confuse the accumulation of quantifiable things like money, power or fame with happiness are doomed to miss the love train.

"Aristotle says that happiness is the only thing that is coveted for its own sake rather than for the sake of something else. It's the ultimate end, the ultimate good. Money is only of instrumental value, only good for what it gets us. So what we find is that people who value money never have enough. If you ask anyone whose primary purpose in life is to acquire wealth if they have enough now, they will say no, I don't. The same with power or fame -- it's never enough.

"Beyond a certain point, more money does not equate with more happiness. If it did, you would expect to find the wealthiest or most famous people to be the happiest, and that simply is not the case. Once our basic needs are met, it turns out that it's friendship and being loved and having someone to love that makes life worth living," he says.

Want to find true happiness? Weinstein has a suggestion:

"I think the solution to happiness lies in the little things. When you're on the bus, instead of whipping out the BlackBerry, maybe actually strike up a conversation with the stranger next to you. Or do nothing; stare out the window or be quiet. I suspect that either or both of those things, practiced regularly, would bring a bigger sense of well-being."

Gilbert maintains that the whole concept of somehow accumulating happiness is both foolhardy and even a little scary.

"It's important to recognize that you're not meant to be happy all the time," he says. "That's not what your brain is generating emotions for. Emotions are a very primitive guidance system. It's your brain's way of telling you when you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing. That's why you get a positive emotional reaction when you approach a naked woman but not a bear. Imagine that you somehow found a medication or a surgery or a deodorant or whatever that made you permanently happy all the time. Well, now you're smiling when you approach the bear, and that's a problem.

"At least, luckily, we could say you won't have children to pass this problem along to.

"Your emotional system is guiding you through life, so it has to respond positively and negatively. A compass that's stuck on north all the time is useless, and that's what a person who is stuck on happy would be."

Zero savings, 'dream jobs' and nest eggs

Millionaires are dreamers, but not about cushy retirements!
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last Update: 4:55 AM ET Oct 3, 2006


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "If you are creative enough to select the ideal vocation, you can win, win big-time," says Thomas Stanley in "The Millionaire Mind." "The really brilliant multimillionaires are those who selected a vocation they love."

Guess what, the rest of us got it all wrong. Our obsession with regular savings may be totally off-base, distracting and misleading. Why? Because the relentless drumbeat about savings may be just a broker's self-interested sales pitch to generate more fees. So maybe you should stop being so obsessive about savings. Maybe there's something more important in life than working at a job you don't like in order to save up a nest egg for a cushy retirement 20 to 30 years from now.

Warning: Our brains have a bad habit of focusing on bogus targets, then tenaciously staying the course, no matter what. We give up today's dreams for fantasies that may never come true. We waste what's really important, hoping to be relieved from life's burdens when we retire. But what if that distant fantasy isn't "there" when we get "there?" What if you sacrifice your dreams, only to discover (when it's too late), that the dream you gave up wasn't worth the little nest egg you saved?

A year ago I was in one of Starbucks' 11,000 shops and it struck me that Americans were wasting their future retirement security by indulging in the instant gratification of their daily habit that's made coffee America's second biggest import, driving an $11 billion business. The math is simple: five bucks a day per latte and muffin compounds to $200,000 in 30 years, which is larger than the nest eggs of most Americans at retirement.

That's right: The average American has less than $50,000 in savings at retirement (exclusive of home equity). Two out of three aren't saving enough. No wonder our nation's savings rate is in negative territory. Worse yet, as meager as Social Security is, half of our population over 65 would live in poverty without it.

Last year I reviewed 10 reasons why 65% of Americans were not saving "enough." Ten reasons, all negative: Too busy, distrustful, too complicated, hate math, uninterested, naïve, etc.

This year, let's look a some positive reasons why people don't saving "enough," why people are choosing to live for today rather than save for a fuzzy, unpredictable tomorrow.

Forget Starbucks, go for a 'Dream Job!'

This shift in perspective -- looking at the positive rather than negative explanations for America's subzero savings rate -- hit me suddenly while reading the October Men's Journal. Check it out, there really is a radically new way to look at the problem.

Maybe Americans aren't wasting their future. Maybe we're actually "giving it away," getting out of ourselves, helping others, serving a larger purpose, fulfilling our unique mission in life. Maybe all the saving and getting rich hype really isn't as important as Wall Street wants us to believe.

Men's Journal's feature on "Dream Jobs" was loaded with inspiring stories. For example, Dr. David Jenkins, a physician, goes on a luxury charter cruise surfing off Indonesian. Suddenly he's "surrounded by 100 desperate people ... One woman was literally brought to me in a wheelbarrow. Later she died. She had pneumonia, very treatable, but it was just too late. Malaria, anemia, tuberculosis. The chief of the village asked me to run a clinic. It was then I knew I was going to do something."

Do "something?" You bet. He "founded SurfAid which assists regions connected to the surf community." Then he said something about savings that inspired me: "Working to end suffering became more important than saving my money to buy BMWs or whatever."

"Dream Jobs" tells us: "Work defines who we are." Work consumes most of our daily lives, what we learn and contribute to life, and "to an arguably unhealthy degree, whether we're happy. That's why it's so important to find a job you love." So Men's Journal asked eight inspiring guys "what they do right that the wannabes do wrong" in the pursuit of that elusive dream job. They came up with eight "guiding principles" that create dream jobs:

1. Find your passion and follow it

Nobody will kid you that it's easy, or the money comes fast, or ever comes. But when I was doing career counseling back in the 1980s, this was rule No. 1 from every expert in the field, and millionaires next door say it still is.

2. You can't be too obsessive

Mark Cuban is hyper-obsessive. But it made him a billionaire during the dot-com mania. Enough to buy the Dallas Mavericks. Obsessions start early: "When I was 16, buying and selling stamps, I learned that most people don't do their homework." Obsession gives you a competitive edge in knowledge.

3. A little narcissism goes a long way

Men's Journal's readers' poll found 83% are deskbound, like X-Games champ, Will Gadd. Then "I quit my office job a decade ago to do adventure sports full-time." His first competition was ice-climbing. Netted him $13,000 in 1998. Red Bull is now his sponsor. "If you get good enough at anything in the world, somebody will pay you to do it."

4. Accept risk with confidence

As commander of the space shuttle Discovery, astronaut Steve Lindsey knows risk. He trains hard: "It can't ever be completely safe, but within limits there's an acceptable level of risk." You compete with confidence, ready for the inevitable curveballs.

5. Don't be too cautious

Phil Simms knows how to push the envelope and win. Proof? His Super Bowl ring from days as New York Giants quarterback: "You've got to be free enough in your mind to the point where your body is right on the edge of going out of control, but not quite."

6. Always set new goals

Born in Ethiopia, raised by a Swedish engineer, Marcus Samuelsson fell in love with cooking, and got scholarships in Switzerland and France. He keeps raising the bar: Executive chef, part owner, now of several restaurants. Michelangelo once said: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

7. Choose your allies wisely

Chris Carmichael started training with Lance Armstrong as a teen. Gifted people often "float along on there extraordinariness," never really push themselves, never reach full potential. Mentors, coaches, teachers, you need allies that drive you to achieve.

8. Know when you have a duty

Remember Dr. Dave Jenkins, surfing on a luxury cruise? The dying woman in a wheel barrow. The tribal chief who needed a clinic. A wake-up call to "do something." He knew he had to a duty, and created SurfAid: "My personal belief is that, for all of us, the best way to deal with our own problems in life is to help someone else."

Burn these eight "guiding principles" into your brain: They are "as useful for staying at the top of your game as for launching a second career or catching your first break." Bottom line: Never, never, never put saving for some distant, elusive retirement fantasy ahead of "investing" in your "dream job" today!