I wonder if this is behind the greater happiness of people with incomes over 75K per year. They actually have enough money to pay for goods and services that save them time.
... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well. Once you're basically living comfortably and have the requisite free time, more money alone doesn't actually make you any happier.
(Too tired to look up the research references, but I'm pretty sure there are some pretty solid findings out there on e.g. lottery winners, wealthy people, etc.)
You have to distinguish between happiness as emotional well-being (i.e., do you have more happy or sad moments on an average day), vs happiness as life satisfaction (i.e., how happy are you with how your life is going in general).
There's some evidence that the former measure plateaus at some income level, but there's also significant evidence that the latter doesn't: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full
> ... but it should be noted that there's a leveling-off as well.
This is not really true. It's a bit of a logish function though.
Lottery winners are very happy, but not 10 times someone on $100,000. Just a reasonably bit more.
I think one does have to be careful of negatives to get the money though, an extra $10,000 for a 2 hour per day commute I think would not pay off. You can't hack the system and rely just on money for happiness.
This is not really true. It's just an artifact of the way happiness research is done. There's no cap on income, but typically happiness is rated from 1-10. Thus you see a "leveling off". If you use a log scale you actually see a continuous increase.
> They actually have enough money to pay for goods and services that save them time.
I think you are missing the point. There isn't a magical device the upper classes buy that saves then time (maybe this is the case for poorer people, e.g. having a washing machine is quicker than washing clothes by hand), but once you earn so much, get comfortable and achieve your own level of success, you start to value things other than money.
I assume the $75k refers to somewhere where you can afford the mortgage on a nice house, a car or two, eating out a few times a week, and saving for your children's college fund, etc (i.e. all the material things society says we need). Once you are able to afford all that maybe you start to value the time you spend with your children, so spending an extra hour communiting to get $10k more isn't worth it.
An additional point is that more money allows you to take more risk. At some income, when you buy a commuting car, you'll want something that can get you to work. You don't need to worry as much about how dependable the manufacturer/model is, because you have the resources to take it to a mechanic as soon as problems appear. You could just buy it with the help of regular advertising (mpg, features, etc) instead of doing further research into common issues with $MODEL (whether not doing this is responsible or not... that's another issue). Whereas someone with a much lower income might be scouring craigslist and forums for hours each night trying to find a beater to replace their car that's experiencing death by a thousand cuts.
It's not about being a device per se that provides most of the time saving. There are some devices sure, but the biggest time savings come from services.
As you increase your income you can buy services such as landscaping, housekeeping, painters, etc.
With goods, the biggest time savings can come from not having to shop around for the best value. It's not uncommon to have to shop between multiple grocery stores to get the most for your dollar.
$75k is approximately where money starts to have substantially diminishing marginal value. (Then add overhead when you consider that most people forget to plan for retirement and emergencies)
