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Look... I want to tell you about a Monday morning a few years into my career. New team. Better title. Higher salary. Everything I had been working toward. And within a few months — sitting in a meeting — I felt it again. That quiet uncomfortable thought: I am performing above my level. I should be earning more. It happened after every promotion. Every salary increase. Every new job. The happiness arrived, stayed about six months, then quietly disappeared.
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Not financial advice. For educational purposes only. This content discusses psychological concepts related to money and is not a substitute for professional mental health support.
Look... I want to tell you about a Monday morning a few years into my career. New team. Better title. Higher salary. Everything I had been working toward for two years. And within a few months — sitting in a meeting — I felt it again. That quiet, uncomfortable thought. I am performing above my level. I should be earning more.
It happened after every promotion. Every salary increase. Every new job. The happiness arrived. Stayed for around six months. Then quietly disappeared. I thought something was wrong with me. It took years to understand that nothing was wrong with me at all.
"What I was experiencing has a name. The hedonic treadmill. And it is the reason more money, more status, more possessions never feels like enough for long — not because you are greedy, but because you are human."
The hedonic treadmill — also called hedonic adaptation — is a well-documented psychological phenomenon where humans quickly return to a relatively stable baseline level of happiness despite major positive or negative changes in their life. A pay rise, a new car, a bigger apartment, a promotion — each one produces a temporary boost in satisfaction. Then, predictably, satisfaction returns to roughly where it was before.
The treadmill metaphor is precise. You are walking — or running — but your position relative to the horizon does not change. The faster you go, the faster the treadmill moves with you. Each upgrade simply becomes the new normal, and the search for the next upgrade begins.
Look... this is not a flaw in your character. It is a feature of how human perception works. Our brains are wired to notice change, not absolute levels. When something improves, we feel the improvement intensely at first — but our reference point quickly shifts to include the new circumstance as the baseline. What once felt like an exciting upgrade becomes simply "how things are."
This made evolutionary sense. A species that became permanently satisfied would stop striving, stop adapting, stop improving its circumstances. The treadmill kept our ancestors motivated to keep seeking better food, better shelter, better safety. But in a modern context, applied to salary, status and possessions, it creates a trap: the goalposts move every time you reach them, and you never notice them moving.
This phenomenon has been studied extensively in psychology and behavioural economics. Famous studies on lottery winners found that, after an initial period of elevated happiness, winners' overall life satisfaction often returned close to their pre-winning baseline within a year or two. Similarly, studies on salary increases consistently show that the satisfaction boost from a raise is temporary — typically fading within six months to a year, after which a new raise feels necessary to restore the previous feeling.
Look... this is where psychology meets personal finance directly. The hedonic treadmill is the engine behind lifestyle inflation. Every time income rises, the new income level quickly becomes the new baseline. The bigger apartment, the better car, the more frequent travel — none of these feel like luxuries after a few months. They feel like necessities. And the next raise gets absorbed the same way.
This is precisely why high earners can feel financially stuck despite impressive salaries — and why understanding the hedonic treadmill is just as important to wealth building as understanding compound interest.
Look... here is the reframe that helped me. If the satisfaction from an upgrade fades after roughly six months regardless of what the upgrade is, then the upgrade itself is not where lasting satisfaction comes from. That means the choice between spending an extra €500 per month on lifestyle upgrades versus investing it is not a choice between happiness and sacrifice. Both options produce roughly the same emotional outcome after six months — temporary novelty, then a new baseline.
But only one of those options also builds long-term financial freedom. Once you see that the "reward" of the lifestyle upgrade is temporary regardless, investing the difference stops feeling like deprivation. You are not giving up happiness — you are choosing between two paths that produce similar emotional outcomes, except one of them also compounds.
Research on wellbeing consistently points away from possessions and status and toward a few specific things: relationships, experiences (particularly novel ones), a sense of autonomy and purpose, and progress toward meaningful goals. Notably, financial freedom itself — the reduction of money-related stress and the increase in autonomy over your time — tends to produce more durable wellbeing improvements than the consumption that a higher income enables.
In other words: the goal is not to stop wanting things. The goal is to recognise that the treadmill exists, so you can choose deliberately rather than running on it automatically.
What is hedonic adaptation?
Hedonic adaptation is the psychological process by which humans quickly return to a stable baseline level of happiness after both positive and negative life changes. It explains why the happiness from a raise, a new purchase or an achievement fades over time, typically within months.
Can money buy happiness?
Research suggests money can meaningfully improve wellbeing up to the point where it covers basic needs and reduces financial stress. Beyond that point, additional income and possessions tend to produce only temporary increases in happiness due to hedonic adaptation. Financial freedom and reduced money-related stress appear to have more durable effects than additional consumption.
How do I get off the hedonic treadmill?
Awareness is the first step — recognising that the satisfaction from upgrades is temporary changes how you evaluate spending decisions. Beyond that, research points toward investing in experiences and relationships rather than possessions, practicing gratitude for what you already have, and directing some of the resources that would go toward lifestyle upgrades into long-term financial freedom instead.