Rebecca Moore is heartened by research in to how much money you need to live well and dismayed by how some people spend it

You only require £22,000 per year to live well and to live happily. Whatever you earn over that amount will not – I repeat, will not – enhance your happiness, though it will probably increase the amount of shoes you own. It probably sounds like I’ve lost my mind but this idea is backed up by research and I’m going to run with it because – let’s face it – it’s nicer to think you can be happier with less than that you’ll always be miserable wanting more.

The research released at the end of last year found that our satisfaction with life peaks at earnings of around £22,000 – after that point, we may become richer, but the reported levels of happiness stay precisely the same.

Basically, beyond a certain level of economic growth, the study found that no increase enhanced our wellbeing. Then this week, the chap who created the mobile phone app Flappy Birds, seemed to support a very similar view. Vietnamese Dong Nguyen stopped producing the app because he just “couldn’t take it anymore”. “It” apparently being the £50,000 dollars the game earned him per day and the fame and stress this brought with it. I imagine I could find a way to cope, given the opportunity but now I don’t need to: I can finally stop trying. I can stop striving to earn more, to be better, and to have just that little bit more.

Now those researchers have said so, I can be happier, can’t I?

Seriously, think how liberating it is to know that you will probably be no happier earning £50,000 than you will be earning half of that.

Another crucial finding of the research was that there is often a dip in life satisfaction after earning a certain amount – a dip the researchers put down to the “keeping up with the Joneses” effect.

This certainly strikes a cord: two of my best friends happen to be a married couple who are surrounded by much wealthier couples. As a result, my two friends constantly strive for more: a larger TV, the entire IKEA catalogue, and those organic grocery boxes delivered to your door.

However, they are often filled with a sense of deep discontentment with their life together, despite the fact that they have a very sweet home, a loving and happy relationship and all the food, warmth and nice things you could wish for.

They tell me that they’re discontent largely because they continually compare their lives and their “stuff” to the lives of those around them: and of course, in the material regard, they always fall short.

Perhaps they need to take a leaf out of Flappy Bird man: just let go of what they think they want, what they think they need and then finally, perhaps, they’ll finally be free birds with no need for those whiter-than-white gadgets from Ikea.

Oh, who am I trying to kid? I’ll keep on trying, of course. I’ll keep on wanting more. I positively can’t stop myself. But I will of course feel smug satisfaction that the rich folk around me are actually (probably) far more miserable than me. So there.