this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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me_irl
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I remember a study saying roughly 50 000 eur or 70 000 dollars annually and after that the increase of happiness with money is negligible. But that was like 15 years ago at least so I'm thinking it's more like 80k eur and 120k USD or smth at the moment at least.
But yeah after that what's to worry about
50 000 eur a year here is still twice the median. It's enough that if you live alone, you can easily invest over half your income and eventually retire early. Or you can go on a nice holiday every year to get your mind off the fact that the 6 hours of sunlight all happen while you're working (if you're a 9 to 5 employee) while still having enough to live a pretty good life.
Twice the median where? Im from Ireland and here the median income is around ~€50k and people still can only barely afford somewhere to live.
Latest median data is 1792 EUR per month gross, mean is a bit over 2000.
Life's gotten more expensive over the last few years, but you can still easily live off 1700 EUR a month alone if you're sensible with your spending, especially since the tax burden on people earning more than 1200 EUR was reduced a little bit. This would net you a bit over 1400. Decent apartments for a single person that are neither huge nor tiny, start at 400-500 a month in the bigger cities, 200 in small towns. Honestly, it's the groceries that get you if you cook every day. Meal prepping or having multiple people eating brings the price per meal per person down.
Rents were higher than that in Germany when Iived there 30 years ago.
None of that applies in Ireland where average monthly rent can be €2000+ in cities.
€500 a month will get you a bed in a shared room (thats right, a shared room not a shared apartment) with about 4-6 other people in Dublin.
I'm not sure what the average was, something something EU something. I don't recall whether it was a specific country or an index of some sort.
But yeah I'd be fine with 50k. Idk if I'd be "have a house and a nice car" fine, necessarily, but yeah.
50k a year nets about 3200 EUR a month here in Estonia. Assuming no other loans when you take on the mortgage, one of the local banks says that's good for a limit of 266k. Gets you in a 300k home if you manage to put together 45k for a 15% down payment and you'll pay under 50% of your net income as a mortgage at current euribor rates or even with a mild increase. That's the upper limit, but it gets you in a nice house in or near the capital. Half of that sum still gets you a pretty nice apartment in most places, except for city center of any of the bigger cities, and you can either have a much shorter loan or a much smaller payment. Living accommodations for a single person are actually pretty cheap here for professionals who have been in their careers for a few years. I did say 300k gets you a house, but that's in the most expensive city, and not a small one. For your average person in their 20s, a 400-500€ a month rental apartment is big enough and in good enough shape usually.
Low-income job in a major city though? Good freaking luck :/ Grocery store wages in the capital are like 1000 take-home and that's actually more than minimum wage, which is even less.
For a single person 80k is more than enough. For a family I would say 130k or more depending on where you live. Some places the cost of living is very low and 100k for a family is more than enough