Anyway, I am 27 and make twice what I did at my first post collage job and I still spend most of what I make. Back in collage a friend of mine went to school full time made ~10$ /hour and supported his wife and kid on that. I think he was happier then than I am now because he was going to make it to a better place. It's easy to assume you need have some life style to be happy but I think a reason for living is far more important than your income or your wealth.
But anyways, my main problem with your original article was that whenever someone tells people that you can't buy happiness, it seems that person is always well off. Maybe thats because they're the only people who would know for sure, but it seems a bit like me going to some third world country and saying, 'You know, living in America and not working in a factory for 14 hours a day really isn't all its cracked up to be.'
I imagine answers to this question vary wildly, but tend to cluster around 3 points: $0, something like my rough calculation, and some large-ish percentage of the GDP.
Mainly
- Spend more time with my wife (including doing some of the rest of these things together), when she's not working to achieve her goals
- Hack on several ideas that I have, work with/invest in interesting startups (what I would normally save or put into less risky investments)
Also
- Help my friends out of the rut
- Read more math, physics, sci-fi
- Learn to fly planes
- Keep my thumb on what's going on in the tech world via the web
- Build cool stuff: electronics, etc.
- Buy cool gadgets and hack on them
- Maybe some political stuff, EFF or atheist issues
- I like the OLPC project, I think they should work with American kids too.
- Pick up the piano and violin again, maybe travel a bit
- Say what I think more often
- Some normal leisure stuff now and then
Of course, this would be after 2 weeks of sitting around in awe that I had arrived at what I dreamed of as a teenager.
I can do many of these things in some capacity right now, but I can't really dig in to most of them. I do my current job in hopes of freeing up a half-of-my-waking-life time slice so I can, but that is definitely a gamble. Self-determination is an enticing thing.
I imagine that, even though I've done a fair share of it, there is some introspection to do when you arrive. I wish I had more time to think about this question. What's the view like from there?
[Just quoted - to upmod it individually.]
I guess its not just money but the security that it brings.
