Comment by daeken

What I'm saying is that the metric of 'happiness' to determine whether a salary is enough or not is flawed. In most major cities, $75k is simple not enough to live well, save for major purchases, and put away enough money to retire. The reason that 'happiness' isn't good here is that most people don't understand how much they actually need to save for the short and long term, but rather look at their bills and extrapolate from there. In other words, it's happiness in the short term ("are my bills covered and am I able to go out to dinner occasionally?") at the expense of the long term big picture.