Will the more money you have, the happier you will be? According to a recent survey by Hana Bank’s Hana Financial Management Research Institute, the number of people who responded that the more money they had, the more satisfied they were with life, up to 5 billion won in total assets. However, in the category of 5 billion won or more, the number of people who responded that they were satisfied actually decreased. When total assets exceeded 7 billion won, the proportion of people who responded that they were highly satisfied increased significantly again. Based on this, the Hana Financial Management Research Institute explained in a report, “It is true that economic power is important for life satisfaction, but we confirmed that happiness does not increase infinitely with the amount of money.”
Hana Financial Research Institute announced the ‘2024 Hana Bank Wealth Report’ containing this content on the 25th. Since 2007, a report has been published every year on the financial status of the rich, and this year, the correlation between money and happiness was added as a special item. The report defined those with financial assets of more than 1 billion won as rich, and those with financial assets of less than 100 million won as the general public. This survey was conducted on a total of 2,613 people.
According to the report, when the general public and the rich were asked about their ‘overall life satisfaction’, the proportion of the rich (69.8%) who responded that they were satisfied with life was about twice as high as the general public (34.9%).
If total assets were less than 1 billion won, satisfaction was 42.4%, less than half. When total assets were around 3 billion won, satisfaction rose sharply to 65.8%, and when total assets were less than 5 billion won, the rate of increase slowed to 70.7%.
For amounts over 5 billion won, satisfaction actually decreased to about 67%. On the other hand, for those with total assets of over 7 billion won, life satisfaction increased significantly to around 80%.
The report analyzed that life satisfaction decreased and stagnated at 400 million won based on total income and 20 million won based on total consumption.
Even when asked about satisfaction with various elements of life, satisfaction with each element consistently increased depending on economic power. ‘Family relationships’ showed the highest satisfaction rate with more than 70% of the wealthy and 50% of the general public saying they were satisfied, and the difference in satisfaction rate according to economic power was the smallest. On the other hand, only about half of the rich responded that they were satisfied with ‘appearance (health)’, which was lower than other factors, but was 1.7 times higher than the general public (29.9%).
