Petrucio, thanks for the numbers. I am aware of the math and am working at it. Thankfully I am on the upward slope of the hole I was in.

It's not all that hard to make those 6 figures like it seems. If you set aside an amount of about $500 for about 3 decades, you will end up with something close to $1.000.000 (duo to compound interests), which in turn will usually generate 6 figures a year.

I've made a program to calculate all that for me and I'm planning on retiring with that (BTW, with my income, I'm considered below poverty line for US standards). So it's not so much about what yor earn, but what you do with it.

The numbers will surelly be different for the US economy tho, so study a little about investments, and do the math yourself. Good luck getting rich!

--- PS:
Googles I'm feeling lucky on "Compound Interest" took me to an interesting calculator:
http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm
The numbers I've put on my comment were just guesses, put putting it there with a 10% interest rate was just perfect dead on! Not sure how easy it is to achieve a 10% interest rate on the US tho.

See how easy it is to get rich? It just takes a little patience (like 30 years). Now go ahead and start getting rich!

In this sense (not the new-age "Secret" kind of sense) peoples modes of thinking can effect their lives, because they either enable or prevent them from taking effective action.

Comment by: BlackSun
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It sounds a lot like "Reverend Ike" talking but the point is true never the less. You cannot and will not have money if you despise those that do.

It's easy to sit back and make a sweeping armchair psychologist statement that anyone who complains about being poor just disparages the rich and does so to make themselves feel better. I suspect that someone makes such a statement is speaking from personal experience since they can't know everyone that is posting.

luvtaberich: Huh? I thought I made myself clear, but apparently not. I'm not rich, and I don't disparage the rich. I'd like to be rich someday, and from your choice of handle, I'd assume you agree. So what's your point?

I'd posit that someone who is poor and disparages the rich guarantees that they have absolutely no chance of ever becoming rich. By despising the status and behaviors of the wealthy, the poor or the struggling just lock themselves even more irrevocably into their plight.

In this sense (not the new-age "Secret" kind of sense) peoples modes of thinking can effect their lives, because they either enable or prevent them from taking effective action.

I can go into more detail if anyone wants

I won't claim that I'm the best at defending my position on something as nuanced as this subject, and I'll admit that my position is something that many people would be uncomfortable with - perhaps calling it shallow, whether it is or isn't. So I'll admit I had it coming to be called shallow and offensive. But the crux of it is that the basic merits of studies measuring happiness can be questioned.

There's been thousands of scientific studies done on happiness and no one in their right mind would even try to compare the findings. The closest anyone has come to creating a non-subjective study of happiness that even had a shot at being comparable among 2 individuals? This is it: On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you with your life? That's it. That's the best way we have of measuring happiness. Then we try to correlate it to some readily available metrics such as income and see if there's a correlation. And even if there is some correlation, there certainly isn't any grounds for causation in either direction.

All else being equal - well, there is absolutely nothing equal about illiterate tribesmen living in the African grasslands/jungles and a Silicon Valley engineer. Self reported levels of happiness are virtually impossible to compare even among individuals sitting in the same room, let alone among different social groups. So you can't claim that all else being equal, money doesn't matter. You do not know this any better than I do, therefore my opinion is just as valid as yours.

According to what I've heard about the collective studies, money isn't the only thing that seems to have no relevance. If you throw in socioeconomic status, marital status, religious involvement, family income - altogether they seem to account for maybe 3% of the measured variation in self reported happiness. And as for the other 97% of the measurement - maybe you can toss that off to brain chemistry. So call it shallow if you will - but things like love and respect haven't been shown to matter any more than money or anything else.

Shallow or not, at least money actually has been shown to be the overriding factor of happiness on at least some levels of income - and nothing else has. If there's anything that has any basis for being the first place we look to figure out how to improve someone's happiness, money is as good as we got. Your own link for Forbes says that there is some correlation with happiness and more money later in life - the implication being that happiness makes you rich (which goes to show that the article had a bias). But it may be that the security that money provides - such as a good job in one's youth - can make one happy even before all of that money is saved up - but the happiness comes from knowing that the money WILL be there. Just another possibility that everyone is too quick to dismiss as shallow and untrue.

Moreover, I was not the one who pointed to a largely inconclusive group of studies and then switched over to anecdotal quotations to claim that rich people are unhappy because they're comparing themselves to richer people. No study on happiness has ever found that to be the case in an objective way. That's just an opinion and to me it has no more value than the opinion that atheists aren't happy because they're arrogant. There are plenty of other ways to explain these things that actually make some sense instead of denigrating the lifestyle of a group of people.

Who perpetuates the lie that money can't buy happiness more-so than religion? Who else more-so than the world's major religions bought into the anti-secular Platonic philosophies? Who else has the greatest conflict of interest in telling you how much money they think you really need to be happy? Who else tells you that you will be happiest if you just give it to them, as much as you have, give until it hurts and you have nothing left? And most Americans let these organizations teach them how to be happy?

I feel as though I should clarify my position here. Make no mistake, I deny the religious position that people should suffer and deny themselves in this life to be rewarded in the hereafter. I believe that people should take advantage of the good things this life offers, and that everyone deserves comfort, prosperity and security. Our chance to be happy is now, and to the extent that supplying material needs can contribute to that happiness, then we should make an effort to provide those needs.

Where I dissent is at the notion that, all else being equal, more material wealth is always better. As I said, and as studies have repeatedly shown, this is not true. Many well-off people believe that greater wealth would bring them still more happiness, but this belief is false. What it overlooks is that, while being wealthy gives you more options, it also brings a whole new raft of problems and dilemmas which less wealthy people do not face.

Chief among these is that important interpersonal relationships like friendship and love are far more difficult to sustain in the presence of money. And in the end, it's not things that bring us happiness; it's our relationships with our fellow human beings. Money cannot buy that. You think you'd be happy marrying that beautiful trophy spouse you mentioned, bbk, if you thought that their desire to be with you was premised only on your salary figures and not on who you are as a person?

Beyond that, more money buys higher levels of transportation, which gives people more options of where to live and where to work. In fact, most Americans would be much happier if they had more money.

As obvious as that seems, it is not supported by the facts. People may think they would be happier if they had more money, but surveys done on this question have consistently found that people's own self-reported levels of happiness have near zero correlation to their net worth or income. Once you have enough to provide for basic needs, people with more money are not significantly happier than people with less. I cited an article to this effect in the original post; here it is again.

Who perpetuates the lie that money can't buy happiness more-so than religion? Who else more-so than the world's major religions bought into the anti-secular Platonic philosophies? Who else has the greatest conflict of interest in telling you how much money they think you really need to be happy? Who else tells you that you will be happiest if you just give it to them, as much as you have, give until it hurts and you have nothing left? And most Americans let these organizations teach them how to be happy?

Money... if it buys education, then there's a chance it will lead to wisdom, and wisdom will lead to atheism. And atheism is a very hard-won kind of happiness that religious people will just never know. And if money can buy more atheism, then that's less money going to church coffers, where it would be used to spread more hate and discontent. And maybe that means that happiness will start to spread all around. Every dollar that an atheist doesn't put on a collection plate is a dollar that will be used for things that actually have a chance to bring about happiness for everyone.

It's interesting to compare a couple things side by side. Atheism, the rich, income disparity, and happiness.

The interesting thing to me is that atheism is very similarly positioned in that top 1% of society when it comes to the realm of culture and education. Even though it offers so much hope for finding happiness, true contentedness, measurable goals and real rewards... it's still damn hard for an atheist to be truly happy. It's hard, but only because the rest of society just isn't there yet. It takes a great deal of courage and integrity to be an atheist in a society that openly discriminates against them, casts them down as worthless and unaccomplished in their lives.

So, at least for allegorical purposes, there are plenty of similarities between atheists and the very wealthy. Atheists are denigrated for being arrogant know-it-alls, their lives made fun of as being without purpose or reward... Likewise, the rich are denigrated for supposedly looking towards the richer still, for being unable to find happiness with their all money and for supposedly working themselves to death out of simple greed.

But instead of being arrogant or greedy, maybe the problem is that the rest of society hasn't caught up... Maybe the reason some rich dork in Silicon Valley needs to compete against his richer neighbor is because there's only 1 eligible woman for either one of them to go on a date with, because no one else can afford to live there and the ones who do wouldn't date a dork just because he's rich. And maybe an atheist in any community has the same problem. And to the outsiders it may look like greed or arrogance, but the truth is very different. Money would make the rich happy if more poor people had it... and godlessness would make atheists happy if more theists gave up their ridiculous beliefs.

And who else benefits more than religion from both of the stereotypes? Give us all your money and put your blinders on, they say. We'll tell you what to do. God will provide everything you need after you give every last penny to our organization. My gut feeling is that's where all of this garbage comes from.

Here's the rub. Even if those rich are not satisfied and strive for more money and more success in their lives, guess what, they're still happier than you are. They'll still live longer lives than you will. They'll probably marry someone more beautiful, smarter, and more successful than who you met in the best dream you ever had. So who cares if they still feel the need to work hard? Are we talking about engineers, researchers, Silicon Valley? These people who work hard, they play a direct role in creating jobs for millions of other Americans. Before you denigrate them for working too hard, realize that many other Americans owe much of the happiness that they do have to these people. Realize that the work they do may just be more valuable, more rewarding, and a whole lot safer than working 60 hour weeks in a coal mine somewhere.