Chris Budd

Now, 100,000 a year income is a very nice income, don't get me wrong, but it's not 100 million, it's not a billion.

Once you get over a certain figure, so this survey said, more money doesn't make you more happy.

Then a few years later, somebody did a second survey and they found the opposite.

They found that more money will make you more happy no matter how much you've got.

And what I love about this story is the two sets of academics, rather than saying, I'm right, you're wrong, I'm right, you're wrong, which we might all do, they said, well, this means that we need to get together and do a third study to find out why there's a difference.

And in simplistic terms, it comes down to those two different types of wellbeing.

which comes to the point I was making earlier on about the step two, step three.

It's short term.

Let's call it short term and long term.

If you give Elon Musk 100 quid for a moment, he'll probably feel a little bit happy because Elon Musk likes to have money, I'm guessing.

Whereas it might not make a great deal of difference to his long term well-being because he's already got plenty of money.

So the phrase I use to describe this is more money will make you more happy if you need money to be happy.

So above a certain amount, I don't need any more.

As long as I can keep my records and I've got food on the table, et cetera, I'm happy.

I don't need lots more because I'm not motivated by that.

When you then factor in the internal and external self-worth bit, I would suggest that there is a limit to which more money will really give you long-term well-being.

Yeah.

Are you aware of the Five Regrets of the Dying book?

I've heard of it.

Oh, amazing book.