Americans Think They Need To Make $284k To Be Happy. They’re Wrong—And So Is The Research.

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK

How much more money would you need to make you “happy”? That’s the question financial services firm Empower put to Americans in a recent survey which revealed:

• Financial happiness means different things to different people. Two-thirds of respondents associated on-time bill payment and being debt-free with financial happiness. Half said happiness was being able to afford everyday luxuries without worry, while others said it’s found in spending on experiences with those they cherish and in optimism for what’s next.
• More money=less problems. Seven in 10 respondents said that having more money would solve most of their problems. A third said that $15,000 would have a “meaningful” impact in their lives, and boost their feeling of financial happiness for six months. For 42% of Americans, $25,000 would be needed to have an impact, but for 17%, all they would need is $5,000.
• Americans need a lot of money to be happy. Overall, Americans said they’d need an annual income of $284,000 to be happy—about four times today’s median salary of $74k. Men need more than twice as much—$381k vs. $183k as women do (clearly, my wife and 3 daughters weren’t surveyed). Millennials put their number at a whopping $525k per year, with Gen Zers, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers expressing a need for $125k to $130k annually.
• There’s a magic net worth that produces happiness. The generations also diverged on their perspectives on what net worth would be required to produce happiness. Half a million would make Gen Zers happy, Baby Boomers want twice that, and it would take $1.7 million to make Millennials happy. My, how things have changed. A 2019 study from Department26 found that “Millennials don’t believe in money, they believe in themselves.”

Other findings from the study included these nonsensical results: