Time Or Money? Happy People Answer
If we were made to choose between a salary increase or a reduction in working hours, what would we choose? Our happiness largely depends on the answer. A study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science reveals that happy people tend to opt for time rather than money.
According to a study conducted by Princeton University, money well used and up to a maximum of 58,000 euros per year can affect our level of subjective happiness. Above this figure, can we be happy or do we need more time to enjoy money with the people we love? Let’s deepen the topic.
The relationship between happiness and money has a limit
Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, and Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015, analyzed more than 450,000 responses and found that the evaluation of life increases steadily in relation to economic income.
Nonetheless, the opinion on the quality of everyday emotional experiences stabilizes after a certain level of gain. This means that there is a time when, while earning more, we will no longer be happy, which is to say that the relationship between money and happiness freezes starting at $75,000 per year (around € 58,000 per year).
With these results we can say that money can buy happiness, but that this is not always possible, because there is a limit and, once exceeded, the satisfaction levels do not increase, they could even decrease.
Does money make us happy?
Several studies suggest that money does not make us happy, but that it makes us feel brief moments of euphoria. In psychology this is explained thanks to the concept of habituation. If at first earning a lot is pleasant to us, in the long run this feeling is reduced, because we get used to and experience the same happiness we felt at the beginning.
As you can see, global happiness depends not only on what we do, but also on how we interpret it and, ultimately, on our understanding of this concept.
On the other hand, success is associated with having more in every aspect: more things, more awards, more money… And this makes sense: we have already analyzed how money can help us to be happy, but time? The stereotype of a successful person usually goes hand in hand with that of a busy worker who barely finds time to enjoy his passions, friends and family.
What good is it to be successful, money or recognition, if we can’t enjoy it? If the goal of this life is to be happy, why don’t we spend more time on what really makes us feel alive? The answer is that perhaps we don’t know, or that we have never thought about it …
Do we know how to use our time to be happy people?
In a study recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, nearly 4,500 people were asked whether they cared more about money or time to achieve happiness. 64% of participants said they preferred money, however, the study found that those who valued time most were happier. A 25% of the participants who chose the money, after a few years from the study, changed their mind and opted for time.
The results of the research showed that if there were two people in the same circumstances, the one who would choose time rather than money would be happier than the second. But this is certainly not the only study on the subject.
Research from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Canada) has shown that valuing time more than money is associated with higher levels of happiness, especially when long working days are required to get that money.
As age increases, time becomes more and more important in people’s priority scale. This has its own logic, since every moment that passes is an extra good.
Currently young people seem to have learned from veterans how to be happy, especially the generation of millennials, born between 1980 and 1995. According to a study carried out in 2013 by the international network PriceWaterhouseCoopers, this generation prefers to have more free time and to be able to reconcile the working and personal life with a high salary.
As you can see, based on this research, money helps to make us happy people up to a certain point, that is, there is a limit. Knowing how to use time is important, especially for our well-being. In addition to money, therefore, let’s not forget to enjoy our time.
