Mid-Feburary is the time of year when writers everywhere tie their subject matter to Valentine’s Day. Here’s how mine came about. I was reading 23 Science-Backed Ways to Feel Happier at Mental Floss. #8 was “Twist the Sheets” which included the claim:

One study even suggests that having sex once a week may make you feel as stoked as scoring an additional $50,000 in income.

Really? The link provided was rather vague, but the study referenced is Money, Sex, and Happiness: An Empirical Study by Blanchflower and Oswald (and hosted at the National Bureau of Economic Research, thank you very much).

Working from there, I found this NY Times article that covered the study in more depth (emphasis mine):

In their study, Mr. Oswald and Mr. Blanchflower analyzed the self-reported sexual activity and levels of happiness of more than 16,000 American adults who participated in a number of social surveys since the early 1990’s. (Happiness is notoriously difficult to define, and the surveys make no attempt to do so; the respondents simply record how happy they believe themselves to be on a sliding scale.) By factoring out the measurable effects of other life events, the study revealed, to no one’s surprise, that, ”The more sex, the happier the person.”

Furthermore, the economists compared the levels of happiness produced by a vigorous sex life with other activities whose economic values had been calculated in prior research, allowing them to impute, in dollars, how much happiness sex was worth. They also estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week provided as much happiness as putting $50,000 in the bank.

A lasting marriage, by comparison, offers about $100,000 worth of happiness a year — that is, on average, a single person would need to receive $100,000 annually to be as happy as a married person with the same education, job status and other characteristics. Divorce, on the other hand, imposes an emotional toll of about $66,000 a year, though there may be a short-term economic gain from the immediate relief provided by leaving your spouse.

As they say, correlation is not causation. The study doesn’t suggest whether more sex leads to more happiness, or happiness leads to more sex. Same with marriage.

In addition, a different set of studies analyzed in the academic journal Social Psychological and Personality Science supports the idea that once-a-week sex is the optimal frequency for maximizing feelings of “well-being” (i.e. happiness?). Taken from the abstract (emphasis mine):

In Study 1, the association between sexual frequency and well-being is only significant for people in relationships. In Studies 2 and 3, which included only people in relationships, sexual frequency had a curvilinear association with relationship satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction mediated the association between sexual frequency and well-being. For people in relationships, sexual frequency is no longer significantly associated with well-being at a frequency greater than once a week.

Or, as Men’s Health magazine puts it: The Happiest Couples Have Sex Once a Week (And No More). Via NPR:

The take-home message, Muise says, is that it’s “important to maintain a sexual connection with a romantic partner, but it is also important to have realistic expectations for one’s sex life (given that many couples are busy with work and family responsibilities.)”

The first study also found that making more money does not mean more sex. Others have found that making more money (past a certain point) does not mean more happiness. Tricky stuff, this happiness thing. In any case, I wish you all a happy long weekend!

Before we get into being all thankful for family and friends and caffeine and stuff, let’s complain about all the stuff you hate dealing with.

From a WSJ article on why we still hate the airline industry (shocker!), here is a list of what good and services Americans are least satisfied with. Based on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index survey.

Let’s see what I think about the top 5:

• Internet Service Providers: Well, they do charge a lot for very mediocre speed and the reliability has been spotty recently. Not to mention they keep fighting Net Neutrality. I wish I had Google Fiber.
• Internet Social Media: I’m not really sure what this means. I am not very active on Twitter nor Facebook. MMB commenters are all smart and good-looking, but reading the internet comments on major news sites like CNN does make me sad about humanity.
• Subscription Television Service: My inability to let go of live sports is certainly costing me a bundle, but cable TV hasn’t actively pissed me off… this year. Well, wait, my laggy DVR does appear designed in 1994 with a 386 processor.
• Airlines: I know that there are hardworking folks in the airline industry, but I just had an entire conversation with a Delta gate agent and they didn’t make eye contact even once. Why provide good service when everyone hates you anyways seems to be the attitude. The problem is that selling cheaper airfare with lots of gotcha add-ons is that it works and they are now making good money. Sigh. I can’t believe people haven’t revolted yet on how seat pitch keeps decreasing every freakin’ year.
• Wireless Telephone Service: I have no real complaints. There are many options now if you want to avoid full-price, full-service cellular carriers. Basic cell phone service can be pretty darn cheap these days. I guess I’m just still amazed by what my smartphone can do with a data plan while I’m in the middle of nowhere.

This highly scientific chart shows why many of us are so inefficient. I’m definitely guilty of this one.

Another insightful comic from XKCD, via Abnormal Returns.

Years ago I was contacted by an author named Gary Clayton who wanted permission to feature me in the next edition of his book. I said certainly, and pretty much forgot about it as it wasn’t published yet. The book was (is?) the bestselling high-school economics textbook in the country – Economics: Principles and Practices published by McGraw-Hill. Then a couple weeks ago a student named Cameron from South Adams High School in Berne, Indiana left a surprise comment on my blog:

So our economics class just read about your money blog in our book and we wanted to see if blog still existed. It does! You should definitely give a shoutout to our class in your next update!

Again, I said certainly, and asked for a scan or photo of the sidebar article as I’d never seen it before. Well, here is the blurb mentioning MyMoneyBlog.com and picture of Cameron’s Economics class!

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