What's your marriage worth?
Dr. John Helliwell is a professor of economics at University of British Columbia, and formerly with Harvard and Oxford. No slouch, in other words.Now the good doctor has been studying happiness and what leads to it. As part of his work, he has expressed the value of various factors as income equivalents. That is, he has been able to say how many dollars something is worth, based on how it contributes to your happiness.
Among his conclusions: married people everywhere in the world are happier than unmarried people. In fact, being married is equivalent to $100,000 in contributing to your happiness!
Holy Moly! A hundred thousand dollars!
Now, don't rush out and get married to the first person you see! Being separated or divorced are the equivalents of minus $70,000 and minus $50,000 each. If you are going to get married, do it once and do it right! The difference could be worth $170,000 of happiness (not to mention the actual costs of marriage, moving in, divorce and moving out).
We, of course, think you should protect your $170,000 investment with premarriage counselling or education. Or, if you don't want to visit a counsellor, you can try CouplesQuestions.com in about 3 weeks when it goes live (we are just in our penultimate round of user testing). If you want us to tell you when it does go live, just go to the site and leave your e-mail address.
Happy Couples, Happy Planet!
posted by Heather and Dan @ 6:42 AM
2 Comments :
Ooh, I'm excited. Any thoughts on pre-engagement counseling?
Pre-engagement couseling? We are all for it! We believe in doing things with eyes (and hearts) wide open. Are you and your partner thinking of getting engaged? As our site - CouplesQuestions.com - is about to be launched we'd love to have you and your partner test it for us and give us your thoughts. Interested? Just let me know with an e-mail and we'll set it up.
Cheers,
Heather
Heather@couplesquestions.com
Post a Comment
Links to this post :
Create a Link
<< Home