Anonymous poll: Demographics of Fragrance Freaks: What's Your Income

LADIES WELCOME TO ANSWER TOO (too much of a pain to put up the same poll in the ladies' section because of all the poll options...)

I've always been curious about this, but never asked since I didn't know that we could do anonymous polls ...

Since it's such an expensive hobby, I'd guess most people here make significantly more than average (median income in the US is $25,200 for those over 18, and $32,140 above age 25). However, I'd guess there are a few marginal types out there who are not particularly well off but who manage to find crazy deals, or others who just plunge themselves into debt.

I'm also wondering just how well off are the well off who would post in public forums! Do the super-rich deign to participate in a free public forum, or do they have their own private fora with exclusive peasant-blocker membership fees?

Remember that income doesn't necessarily correlate with standard of living - someone making $40,000 US might be rich living in Thailand, and almost destitute in Manhattan.

If anyone can find statistics for *average* (as opposed to median) income in the USA - including investment income, *not* just salaried workers - I'm curious to see those figures. For some reason they seem very difficult to find.

Income numbers for this poll include investments, rent, dividents, profits, etc, not just salaries.

Let's see...

Ha - I'll tick you off at $10M plus then! Non-salary income is often left out in statistics - it's improtant, because the wealthiest people get the majority of their income from investments, rents, dividends, royalties etc, whereas their salaries might just be upper-middle, nominal or even nil!

Cool, thanks! That's what I expected more or less - that the average would be significantly higher than the median.

The poll results on Basenotes are quite interesting so far as well! When we get more data I'll mike some interpretations/guesses about what it means.

Indeed - that's one of the things I was wondering - do top bracket people participate in public forums. Looks like a few do at least, which is nice to see - some sense of community/equality in a stratified world.
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Oops! Scratch that - class war going on!

That's perfectly valid, but for the purpose of this poll, I'm just interested in how much money people on this site have, not how happy they are or fulfilled, as it's a very expensive hobby. Most people could never dream of having a fridge or cabinet full of Creeds, so it's interesting to know who's on here.

However relating to what you say there is some very interesting research that says that in the USA at least, income actually does correlate to happiness, up to a point. After a certain point, just having all the wealth becomes a burden in itself in terms of managing it, managing lots of properties, etc.

I think that's less true of other countries, and probably less true in certain areas in the US itself. I think money correlated with happiness more when you don't have a strong social safety net, and you don't have a strong family or social network, and access to housing is circumscribed, and therefore you basically need alot of money to have fundamental things like decent food, clothing, shelter, security, health, peace of mind etc.

In certain areas and countries however, you can have alot more security and free time because families are stronger, social networks are stronger, welfare state is stronger, and housing is less circumscribed - it all depends. There's waay more to standard of living than income. In the US I've noticed that many people whether rich or poor work incredibly long hours and have no leisure time, while in Montreal or Europe the pace is alot slower for many people rich or poor.

In any case, so far the results are pretty interesting for this site.

I'd definitely agree with that - but I'd add that leisure and social activities are a basic need, and that the more commercialized your society is, the more you need money to do anything social or leisurely. Also in alot of places people are really isolated like in super-suburbs where you're far away from any place where you can do activities, and shopping or going to the mall becomes the only leisure activity, and you need money for that. Or if you live somewhere like manhattan - there are a zillion great things to do 7 nights a week, but all of it costs money. Without money you're sitting at home staring at the ceiling.

The best situation is when your work *is* a social activity, when you work with friends, and you're working on something that is meaningful to you, not just as an employee whose main function is to make money for someone that you don't care about and who doesn't care about you.

I suspected there night be jokers at the top!