How to spend your way to happiness
By Gordon Powers, Sympatico / MSN Finance
Even though it will likely extend the recession by a few weeks, my family is being very deliberate about what we purchase.
But, like most people these days, we haven’t stopped buying altogether.
Choosing between a new outfit and a pair of concert tickets? Go for the tickets, suggests a recent study on whether certain spending habits are likely to make us happier.
To see what works, University of Colorado professor Leaf Van Boven compared discretionary spending on material goods like jewellery or clothing up against experiential items like vacations or theatre tickets. Most of the people he talked to felt that getting out and doing something made them much happier than simply adding another item to their collections — even after accounting for differences in price.
Since we tend to concentrate more on the highlights, memories of our experiences actually improve with time, it seems — whereas a shoe is just a shoe. And this makes us easier to live with as well. People who brag about their possessions are a lot harder to take than those whose major crime is showing off their holiday DVDs.
Things are different, of course, if the clothes don’t really fit or the meal out is a complete bust, says Jeremy Dean, pointing to parallel research by a University of Texas team on his excellent PsyBlog. This may be because unhappy experiences live longer in the mind than purchases that turn out badly.
Whether it's experiences or possessions that count, having less money to work with still shouldn’t be much of a problem, he suggests — it just forces you to be more creative.
If anyone’s got any suggestions on how to do that, we’d love to hear them.
Posted by: Ann | Mar 9, 2022 12:43:58 AM
Here in Ottawa, we’re lucky to have a bunch of world class museums where admission is $10 or less. But even that’s the tourist rate. Anyone with a local library card can borrow a museum pass that’s good for free admission for a family of up to five people. And it’s good for several different venues.
Posted by: sally | Mar 9, 2022 10:38:42 AM
How does one post a comment on sympatico's pathetically one-sided daily poll? Some left-wing nutter must devise them.
Posted by: go sally go!! | Mar 9, 2022 4:24:43 PM
.....proof that one doesn't need a brain in order to post right-wing opinions...
Posted by: stonewall | Mar 9, 2022 8:48:13 PM
Looks like the left-wing nutter showed up.
Posted by: Bert | Mar 9, 2022 9:53:43 PM
The lefties allways have a lot to say; the righties ar the quite maney, we have to rember that the talkers get herd, and say more.
Posted by: Nate | Mar 9, 2022 11:12:33 PM
heer, heer!
prowed to be a quite maney also. others should stop always with them
Posted by: Matt | Mar 10, 2022 1:52:42 PM
Thanks for the excellent tips on personal finance. I have forwarded this link to all DesktopBudget.com customers. Keep it coming :)