LUCKILY the annual Australian Unity wellbeing index – the statistical smile tracker – was released this week, which helped shed some light on this consumerist conundrum.

The what-makes-us-happy report discovered that happiness starts to stall as household income passes $100,000.

According to the authors, once you crack six figures "money loses its ability to reliably raise wellbeing and does not increase in line with increasing income".

Which makes perfect sense. It's a fancy way of describing what I call the economics of enough.

This is when we reach a point where we have enough money to comfortably keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs.

After achieving this, much of our economic stress and angst is eliminated.

Each dollar thereafter is a sliding scale of diminishing returns, which no amount of stuff can fill.

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