John Csiszar
·4 min read
There’s an ongoing philosophical debate about whether or not money can buy you happiness, and according to the results of a recent poll by The Harris Group, the answer appears to be yes.
Pollsters asked members of Generation Z, millennials, Generation X and baby boomers how much they would need to earn and how large of a net worth it would take for them to be happy, and the results were surprising. Millennials said they had to earn roughly four times as much as the next-closest generation to consider themselves happy, a true statistical outlier.
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Here’s a look at how the generations compared in the survey, along with an analysis of how close each generation may be to achieving their financial goals.
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How Much Would It Take To Make Each Generation Happy?
On average, survey respondents said they would need $1.2 million in the bank and a salary of $284,167 per year to be happy. But averages can conceal major differences among respondent groups. Here are the actual results broken out by each generation:
Generation Z: Annual income of $128,000, net worth of $487,711
Millennials: Annual income of $525,000, net worth of $1,699,571
Generation X: Annual income of $130,000, net worth of $1,213,759
Boomers: Annual income of $124,000, net worth of $999,945
Gen Z, Gen X and boomers indicated they only needed a somewhat modest income of $124,000 – $130,000 to be happy, far below the “average” of $284,167 for the entire survey. But millennials greatly skewed the results, requiring a whopping $525,000 per year in income to be happy. If you took that generation out of the equation, the average required income would be less than half of what the overall survey reported.
Interesting to note is that boomers had the lowest required income in order to be happy, perhaps indicating a more scaled-down lifestyle than the up-and-coming generations.
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Why Are the Results for Millennials so Skewed?
There’s no blanket reason for why millennials in this particular survey responded the way they did. However, they are at the age — 28 to 43 — when they are likely getting hit on all sides by rising expenses.
Student loan payments, record-high home and auto prices, high inflation and interest rates are all burdensome to this age bracket, particularly those who are trying to raise a family. Thus, they may feel as if they need to earn a lot more money in order to satisfy their obligations and still have some left over to enjoy.
Of course, it’s also important to note that this particular survey only had 2,034 respondents, so it’s possible that the results gathered are not completely indicative of society at large. Also, the survey questions were open-ended, meaning respondents could answer anything they wanted to in terms of the amount of money they needed to earn to be happy.
In other words, if 10% of the respondents wrote down “$10 million,” the survey averages would of course be significantly impacted. Overall, however, the results suggest that millennials feel like they need more income to climb out of their financial holes.
How Are Millennials Actually Doing?
Statistics seem to back up this fear that many millennials are feeling about their finances. According to Morning Consult’s well-being index, millennials are going through a rough patch. From August 2022 to August 2023, the well-being index for millennials plummeted by 0.94 points, which was the biggest decline across all age groups. Boomers, for example, actually saw their well-being score rise by 4.04 points over the same time period.
Part of the reason for this fall might be due to rising debt levels. According to Morning Consult, 26% of millennials now hold student debt. Overall, millennials have the most debt of any age group, at a median level of $140,400. Meanwhile, almost half said they don’t think they’ll ever have what they want in life due to their money situation.
Bottom Line
While there were only 2,034 respondents to The Harris Group survey, the results do likely reflect the financial pinch that millennials across the country are feeling. Although averages can be misleading and many other factors — from the sex of the respondent to their location — can skew results, overall, it seems that other generations feel more confident in their current financial status than millennials.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Millennials Need $500K a Year To Be Happy? Here’s How Other Generations Compare
