Close menu

What price happiness?

Human beings have an in-built social sat nav that, unbeknown to us, leads us to other people. We want to be part of a tribe, clan, team or family. And this social pull is so strong that exclusion is a bad thing. In the olden days, being excluded from your tribe was effectively a death sentence. In the new world, being unfriended on Facebook hurts like hell too. So being part of something social plays an important part in your happiness.

But, moving on, researchers have begun to expand their horizons. Some have even attempted to put a monetary value on intangibles. According to an esteemed researcher at the University of London’s Institute of Education, here are some monetary values of happiness:

  • Seeing friends and relatives is equivalent to a pay rise of £64,000 a year.
  • Chatting to nice neighbours is worth £37,000 a year.
  • Getting married is worth £50,000 a year.
  • And the biggy? Excellent health is estimated to be worth £300,000 a year to you.

I sincerely hope you can tick some of the boxes above?

Of course, it’s easy to pick holes or make cheap jibes (the researcher has clearly never met my wife, etc). But the wider point about relationships and health is staggering. So here’s a very big point. We are ingratitude spotters, fixating on all the stuff that we haven’t yet got. We spend oodles of hard earned cash chasing trinkets.

Taking the argument to the extreme, I guess you could trade in your family, friends, neighbours and good health and collect £451,000?

And you’d be nearly half a million pounds richer, but so much poorer.

A x