Unfortunately in much of California, it does take more than $60,000 to do all of the above. I think a couple of years ago the number for a family of 4 to do all these things was $149,000 a year. That seems about right in SoCal, but probably not enough in San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. Still, the principle of changing one’s perspective on what makes us “rich” is a good one!
Anthropologists like David Graeber and Michael Sahlins argue --and I'm being reductive-- that with increasing means comes increasing desires, so that Stone Age people were no less satisfied with life than we are, and in fact may have been more so. This seems like a great puzzle: how to increase standard of living without disproportionately increasing our *expectation* for standard of living.
Great article; thank you. Sending this on to my teen niece; we were together this past week and she told me she wants to be 'rich'- 500K a year. I said that comfortable happens *way* before that number, even in California, and that much more than comfortable becomes risky for your mental well being and your integrity. Will see if she listens...
Unfortunately in much of California, it does take more than $60,000 to do all of the above. I think a couple of years ago the number for a family of 4 to do all these things was $149,000 a year. That seems about right in SoCal, but probably not enough in San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. Still, the principle of changing one’s perspective on what makes us “rich” is a good one!
Anthropologists like David Graeber and Michael Sahlins argue --and I'm being reductive-- that with increasing means comes increasing desires, so that Stone Age people were no less satisfied with life than we are, and in fact may have been more so. This seems like a great puzzle: how to increase standard of living without disproportionately increasing our *expectation* for standard of living.
Perhaps this is a gauche self-plug, but I wrote about this idea last year! https://www.quiantenos.com/p/working-hard-or-hardly-working
Great article; thank you. Sending this on to my teen niece; we were together this past week and she told me she wants to be 'rich'- 500K a year. I said that comfortable happens *way* before that number, even in California, and that much more than comfortable becomes risky for your mental well being and your integrity. Will see if she listens...