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Originally Posted by Saul Good
Southern Johnson County Kansas. It's nice for a second income, but she'll never make what I do, and she won't ever come close to earning what my mom did at her peak (neither will I, for that matter).
Then again, she makes double what her mom made while raising 4 kids without the help of her deadbeat dad, so it's all relative. The studies I've seen indicate that you need roughly 75k a year to reach optimum happiness. After that, you pretty much have to double your income in order to have it make a significant impact. I think that seems awfully low, but I have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns. An extra $50k a year wouldn't change my day to day life any. I might stay at nicer hotels when I take vacations, and I would certainly retire a little earlier, but it wouldn't have near the impact on my life today that $10k would have had ten or fifteen years ago.
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Yeah, we've hit that point as well. Spoiled first world problems for sure, but my wife just wrapped up her masters and doubled her income. My firm is doing nicely as well - all told we got about a $50K income boost over where we were 2 years ago....no change in lifestyle to speak of. Now we've been able to throw a fair amount of money into savings and we're considering a fairly substantial upgrade in homes, but even that makes me wonder if it's worth the trouble. Do I really need to spend another $250K to add an extra garage and have an open floor plan? I friggen love my 2.75% 15 yr note - do I really feel like swapping that out for 30 yrs at 4.25%? And suddenly my monthly nut would nearly triple and I'd be a lot less free in what I can do. Is that worth the headache? I have a pretty nice home with a good yard in a fine neighborhood...what am I really gaining?
Then again...I can't take it with me either. Like you said, there's a middle ground there where you have a lot more freely spendable money...but not quite enough to make a 'leap' without it really hurting so you don't really want to do it.
It's the snootiest of snooty bullshit. It's just an odd spot to find yourself in. You work hard for promotions, raises, etc... but like you said, once you hit a point, the money doesn't actually make any difference in your lifestyle.