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I'm not really a happiness vs worries person. Some people have proper money and alzheimer's, kids with cancer, all sorts. Worth bearing in mind that there are also awful things happening to poor people.

Golf club sympathisers the lot of you

if you got an 1/3 of an acre of roof to fix on your country estate, a million in the bank won't make you happy

hopefully

Being poor is stressful. Prolonged stress makes you unhappy. Rich people can be stressed, but they’d be more stressed if they were poor too.

Social factors are more stressful than financial ones, so if you have to choose go for a loving family, a happy childhood, great friends, supportive colleagues, respect of your peers, a place you enjoy in a social hierarchy etc over being rich.

Easy. :(

a happy childhood

Where can I buy one of these?

They’d be ok.

Making a few assumptions you’d need about 23,000 slates for 1/3 acre of roof. If you can get away with Spanish that’s maybe £35k. If it’s listed you’ll need Welsh so can double that.

Laying 250 a day and assuming out of London you’ve probably got £25k labour.

Then there’s stripping, disposal, timber repairs, ridges, leadwork etc, but even with all that you’re well under £200k for a brand new roof.

So don’t worry.

We ( 1/70 share of freehold) spent £600k on a roof replacement that was slightly less than a third of an acre about 7 years ago.

*Conservation area and world heritage site restrictions though so ymmv

I forgot scaffold. Your guys must have spent £400k on scaffold.

Isn’t it like bikes? Up to a certain cutoff you do get a noticeable increase in performance (happiness) for your money, exceeding that it’s just fairly unnecessary refinements that get increasingly meaningless.

Also once you've got your nice fancy bike, you start becoming illogically concerned about all the ways in which you could spend £££ to save a gram or so, and focus on having a nicer bike than all the other £££-spenders you interact with

And you hate people with shit bikes and assume everyone wants to steal your bike.

And you get sores on your arse.

Of course it's a platitude designed to oppress the poor.

I've never taken it as that.

To me it's been part of keeping up with the Jones. I don't think I've ever heard it directed at people choosing between food and heat, because it's clearly obvious that enough money to do both will remove misery.

It's more like a friend who'd wistfully dream-talk about winning the NY lottery while being oblivious to their $6k p/m apartment and perpetual unemployment because of 'reasons'. If you're not happy now then you're not going to be any happier having a place in the Hamptons and no limit on your monthly allowance.

Yes, all the research says there is a direct correlation between income and happiness up until about $70k from memory, so around £58k (so around top 10% of earners in UK). After that increase's in happiness aren't correlated with increases in income, things like hobbies, family and social interactions, free time start to come in to play.

That sounds sensible.

Added to that, there's also the stress factor involved in highly paying jobs.

Earning £150k may mean you're not making difficult life choices, but working long hours for absolute cunts, in unstable employment, is not going to be great for your mental health.

That makes a lot of sense.

I suppose the question is whether that’s driven by achieving an absolute material living standard or whether being in the top 10% somehow satisfies the envious monkey brain.

I forgot scaffold. Your guys must have spent £400k on scaffold.

lol, nah. Loads more extra costs than just the scaffolding. Removal of huge 1920s lead water tanks, re-routing of piping, re routing of electrics, replacement cabling for antennas etc. Structural strengthening. Rot removal/treatment. New lead flashing, replacement of render band around the top. More I've forgotten about. Its an old and complicated building.

Would be nice to turn heating on when we need it, instead of trying to go without it.

Earning £15k may mean you're also making difficult life choices, but working long hours for absolute cunts, in unstable employment, is not going to be great for your mental health.

Ftfy.

Tell me about it. I still don't have mine on. I'm now on double thermals and a bobble hat at all times.

And the chimp jailbreak in Sweden

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/four-chimpanzees-loose-swedish-zoo-day-after-escape

also qualifies for WTF thread

It's not either or tho is it.

It would be nice if everyone could have a happy life.

Obviously not, just wanted to point out that more stressful work has very little to do with more pay.

My most stressful job was probably cook, which paid IIRC 12,500 per year.