This Saturday, it could be so far: Seven million euros are in the lottery jackpot. The chance of winning: 1: 140 million. What you could do with the money: hang up the job, buy a motorhome and travel around with it - or rather buy a villa. The euro jackpot was even equipped with 90 million euros on Friday, the maximum sum.
Money activates the reward system in the brain, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released. Unlike chocolate or drugs, according to some researchers, the happiness hormone is even released when an amount is only promised: one is happy, even though the money is not even held in the hand. The very thought of winning the lottery can make you happy.
And if you then clear the jackpot, then lives happier with many millions in the bag? Or is it enough to have a good salary that many people negotiate with their bosses over and over again, for their well-being?
How much money does a person need for their happiness? And how happy is someone who had a lot - and then loses everything?
Poverty is a suffering factor
969 euros - who has less monthly available, is considered in Germany as poor. The magic number is not an absolute value, it is calculated from the average income of Germans. Accordingly, "relatively poor" are people in which less than 60 percent of this average income ends up in the account month after month.
His basic needs can satisfy a relatively poor person though. "In this country, people do not starve to death on the street corner like in third or fourth world countries," says poverty researcher Christoph Butterwegge, who has written several books on the subject. Clothes, food, rent - everything in it. But happy? Are these people usually not.
According to Butterwegge, social exclusion due to poverty is the most burdensome. "If a teenager wears summer clothes in the winter because he can not afford anything else - then he suffers more from the laughter of his classmates than from the cold," says the poverty researcher. Poor people are more likely to suffer from depression and addictions such as alcohol addiction.
Once you are down, you rarely get up again. This is shown by studies that also prove that poverty is inherited even over generations. Money may not make everyone happy - but those who do not have one often suffer from it.
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It does not get happier
Researchers define happiness as subjective well-being: Emotional well-being deals with positive and negative feelings in everyday life, cognitive refers to long-term life satisfaction. Although a study on lottery winners shows that they are on average happier after many years than the lottery losers, but other studies also prove: happiness does not increase infinitely with higher income.
The results of psychologist Andrew T. Jebb of Purdue University, USA, for example, show that in a study he and other researchers compared the annual income of 1.7 million people from 164 countries and their life satisfaction and emotional well-being.
They found: Worldwide, the maximum life satisfaction is $ 95,000, in Western Europe at $ 100,000, about 90,000 euros - it will not be happier. Because above a certain income threshold, the daily requirements increase, free time for family or friends hardly remains.
For comparison, the average earnings in Germany is 45,000 gross - about half. Does this make the average person a more unhappy person?
Is luck measurable with money?
Karlheinz Ruckriegel, an economist with a focus on happiness research, does not think much of such numbers: "They state that we are largely in the grip of happiness and that it is not necessarily dependent on income - but on social relationships, commitment and health. " Personal growth, hobbies or a fulfilling job would make you more satisfied in the long run than a fancy car, beauty and popularity, says Ruckriegel.
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According to the scientist from the Nuremberg University of Technology, this is partly due to the fact that people like to compare themselves: "Even if we have a lot of money - our neighbor has more, gnaws at us the dissatisfaction." On the other hand, you get used to money fast - and that dulls off: Who gets, for example, a salary increase, which takes at the beginning of individual satisfaction according to Ruckriegel. And after a while? It feels like you never got one.
Yes, you need a certain minimum amount of money to cover basic needs and to participate in society, the lucky scientist is convinced. But the assumption that more money leads to more satisfaction in the end is deceptive and wrong.
How many millions make happy?
Sometimes, Lutz Trabalski observes, happiness settles on a small portion of goose liver pate instead of salami from the plastic wrap. For 15 years he has been advising lottery winners in Berlin, who have sold more than 500,000 euros. Are the people to whom he brings the good news happier with the money?
There was, for example, years ago the woman who wanted to go to the supermarket with her lottery win, just over a million deutschmarks. "She said that from now on she'll buy never-repackaged sausage - her idea of luxury," Trabalski says.
Blonde dyed hair, mid-40s, a woman of modest proportions, as the winning adviser describes the woman who had suffered a fate: her child had been killed while playing in the yard, buried by the plot wall - the mother had to watch everything helplessly ,
As she sat in front of him, Trabalski recalls that she was especially excited: "'This is the first time in my life that I'm really lucky,' she said, looking forward to it, like the million now change her life. " Whether it really came to that, he would not know, says the Lottoberater.
Money is seductive - and reckless
What he has taken from the observation of other winners: Travel experience once, then they are over again. A fast car might be exciting for a few weeks, then you get used to it. But integrating the sudden wealth into everyday life in order to be happy in the long term - that is the great art, says Trabalski.
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Insolvency administrator Christoph Niering has observed similar events. Having money and having the opportunity to get more - that's tempting, but it can also quickly make you reckless. Because no matter how big a house is, how fast a car drives, how expensive the hobby is: there are hardly any limits to the top.
Niering is chairman of the professional association of insolvency administrators in Germany. He has worked in the job for more than 20 years, since then he has over 2000 bankruptcy cases. He knows: who falls, he falls deeply. 1179 Euro, so much money is currently available to every person after the bankruptcy. No creditor may touch this so-called seizure exemption amount.
For example, there was the chief physician with an annual income of one million euros, who had guaranteed for his clinic with his own money. When the clinic went bankrupt, the chief physician said so too, says Niering. For someone so high up, he felt it was a deep fall.
Until an insolvency administrator is commissioned, debtors are usually stuck for years in financial difficulties, at home, the letters of lawyers and courts, as Niering says. Many conceal therefore the imbalance before the spouses, until it is no longer possible. Insolvency.
Making a petition for bankruptcy, says Niering, but could take a lot of pressure: "These are people who sat for years on a mountain of debt and now finally want to start again." Many would find that much easier in the course of bankruptcy proceedings.
"If you realize after the failure that friends and close family members have remained - that's where happiness can start again," says Niering. The insolvent head physician, who previously drove an expensive sports car, was in the end happy that his friend had made him a used car available. "Those who have lost a lot sooner or later begin to reflect on other values."
In the video: Nightmare Privatinsolvenz - debt mountain instead of home
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