Benjamin Todd

And here's the graph the text was referring to.

It has a positive affect line superimposed on it, this time with fraction of people on the y-axis.

And we notice that this flattens off even earlier than life satisfaction.

The picture is similar if we look at the fraction who reported being not blue or stress-free yesterday.

And here's a third graph, this time it has not blue and stress-free lines superimposed on it.

And we notice that those level off very quickly.

These lines are completely flat by $75,000, so beyond this point, income had no relationship with our happy, sad, or stressed people felt.

We think there's a good chance this result is an error, and day-to-day happiness does continue to increase with income, at least a little bit.

A more recent study found exactly this, though it found that day-to-day happiness increases more slowly than life satisfaction.

Everything we've covered above is only about the correlation between income and happiness, but the relationship might be caused by a third factor.

For example, being healthy could both make you happier and allow you to earn more.

If this is true, then the effect of earning extra money will be even weaker than the correlations above suggest.

Finally, $75,000 of household income is equivalent to an individual income of only $40,000 if you don't have kids.

To customize these levels for yourself, make the following adjustments, all pre-tax.

The $40,000 figure was for 2009.

Due to inflation, it's more like $55,000 in 2023.

Add $25,000 per dependent who does not work that you fully support.

Add $50,000 if you live in an expensive city, for example New York or San Francisco, or subtract 30% if you live somewhere cheap, for example rural Tennessee.

Add more if you're especially motivated by money, or subtract some if you have frugal tastes.

And add 15% in order to be able to save for retirement, or however much you personally need to save in order to maintain the standard of living you want.