At Mingl, as we design new product features, we are constantly asking what can we do to improve the experience of community living. To answer that, one of variables we analyzed was the co-relation between money and happiness.
According to researchers from Princeton University who surveyed around 500,000 households, there is a relationship between salary and happiness. They found that people who earn a good living are often happier than people who live in poverty. Having extra money certainly enhanced our lives by providing extra food, objects and creature comforts in our homes.
Ironically, the research also found that, earning additional income does not lead to extra happiness, once we have already attained a “comfortable standard” where we have what we need to function and be content. While the “comfortable standard” can vary based on location, in the US, the research found it to average around $75,000.
So, once we had this co-relation, our next question was What can mingl do about it?
The intuitive answer seemed to get everybody to earn $75,000 – realistically we could not do that.
So we looked at the problem statement differently…
Instead of asking how can we get members to earn $X to attain “comfortable standard”, we asked how can we get “comfortable standard” to our members irrespective of where they are with their earnings.
All our design thinking is based on a singular objective – redefine comfort from being a privilege attained at a price point to a right entitled without any price point.
More on it in our subsequent blog posts.
