Average Floridian Would Trade 5 Years of Life to Live Like a Millionaire

How many years of ordinary life — working your nerves raw and struggling to pay bills — would you trade in exchange for untold riches?

A year? A decade? Not a second at all?

That's the line of questions posed by the recently released "Price of Prosperity" survey, in which pop culture website Wealth of Geeks questioned 3,000 people nationwide, asking them just how much of their lives they would be willing to shave off in exchange for the "splendors of a millionaire's existence." The results include detailed stats and a state-by-state breakdown of where residents were most willing to sacrifice years for wealth.

It may come as a surprise that the Sunshine State did not land near the top of the list, considering its most populous region, South Florida, has an (underserved?) reputation for superficiality and materialistic tendencies. Indeed, a few days of witnessing social climbing in Miami or Palm Beach might convince an outsider that certain locals would trade the bulk of their being for a small taste of the millionaire lifestyle.

According to the survey, Florida wound up just outside the top ten states, with residents willing to "give up five years and two months of life to become a millionaire." That's slightly more than the U.S. average of four years and 11 months.

Further bucking stereotypes, New Hampshirites topped the list. Folks from the Granite State shed their crunchy granola reputation and said they were willing to trade almost eight years of life for a bank account overflowing with cash.

On the other hand, people in Idaho, Indiana, and North Dakota were content with the simple life and would sacrifice only about six months.

While the survey may come off as one of those whimsical publicity-driven exercises — if not a soul-selling proposition drafted by Beelzebub himself — Wealth of Geeks claims it designed "questions to carefully screen and authenticate respondents." The site says the survey team thoroughly reviewed responses and used geo-verification and plagiarism detection for open-ended answers. (They disclosed neither the average age of participants nor the sample size from each state, however, which leaves some questions lingering about the results' implications.)

The number one takeaway, in any event?

"The willingness to trade years of life for wealth highlights a strong societal allure towards financial freedom and luxury, potentially overshadowing the importance of longevity," Wealth of Geeks claims.

After years of post-pandemic, wallet-draining inflation, it's understandable that so many of the participants said they'd sacrifice a sizeable chunk of their lives for a chance to be financially carefree and break the cycle of crippling debt. There is a particular breed of misery associated with watching your paycheck evaporate on everyday living expenses.

Case in point: Miamians are going broke en masse just trying to get by.

A November 2023 report found the cost of living in Miami is among the highest in the nation, with a typical household paying nearly $2,700 a month on ten common expenses such as rent, insurance, and cable. Miami consistently ranks as one of the least affordable housing markets in the nation, and a new study by HelpAdvisor pegged it as the most expensive U.S. city for groceries, at an average weekly cost of $327.

Cost of living and personal debt have been ballooning nationwide, of course — Americans' credit card debt surpassed a trillion dollars for the first time last year.

Aside from giving up years of life for financial freedom, the survey found that 23 percent of respondents would sacrifice career goals, 16 percent would give up quality sleep, 15 percent would abandon their hobbies, and four percent of people would cut ties with their friends if it meant they could spend their days nestled in the bosom of tremendous riches.

Sure enough, the old "money-can't-buy-happiness" mantra has been refuted by recent research from Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist, and Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

The research found not only that higher income is associated with greater joy (surprise, surprise) but that a person's happiness continues to steadily increase beyond the $75,000 income threshold above which it was previously thought to plateau.

"The exception is people who are financially well-off but unhappy. For instance, if you're rich and miserable, more money won't help," Killingsworth said.