Can people compare their past and current subjective well-being? To investigate this question, we analyze answers from the British Household Panel Survey, where, for 12 years, over 27,000 people were asked if they were more, less or as satisfied as the previous year. We compare their perceived change with their yearly life satisfaction reports. Inconsistencies are widespread and cannot be solely explained by features of the satisfaction scale. We uncover instances of recall biases, which bring to distortions in intrapersonal comparisons: happy people tend to downplay past satisfaction, unhappy ones tend to magnify it.