Elon Musk is the richest person alive. He says going from $1 billion to $10 billion “doesn’t make you 10 times happier.” He said it while describing a future where AI and robots can make almost anything anyone wants. “Money becomes irrelevant,” Musk said. Currency, he guessed, would be measured in “wattage and tonnage.” Then he added: “There’s a limit to what any single human can consume. You hit that saturation point pretty fast.” A historian on stage pushed back. In the 1890s, new technology created robber barons, and people picked up pitchforks. Musk didn’t move. Past a certain point, he said, a fortune stops being consumption. It becomes “resource allocation.” The research backs the first half. Kahneman and Deaton found emotional well-being leveled off around $75,000 a year. A 2023 follow-up found it keeps rising for most people, but on a curve. Each doubling of income buys about the same bump, so $50,000 to $100,000 feels like $100,000 to $200,000. Musk can talk about saturation because he passed it billions of dollars ago. Most people never notice where theirs is. Every raise goes into a bigger apartment and a newer car, and each upgrade costs more for the same small lift. The fix is to split your money the way Musk describes. Spend raises on what clearly makes daily life better, like time, health and less stress. Past that point, send the rest to savings and investments. A dollar beyond your saturation point does more as an asset than as stuff. At what income would another upgrade stop making you happier?