How to Buy Happiness

With the NBA starting back up again last week after a four-month break, I feel like a missing piece of my life has been put back in place. I’m a big Utah Jazz fan. My wife secretly records me in my more embarrassingly passionate sports moments. So evidence of my often over-excessive fandom can be found in the link below.

Click to see the TikTok

It’s been a dream of mine to own Jazz season tickets. With the Jazz being the only major professional sports team in town and one of the most-attended teams in the league, tickets aren’t cheap. Undoubtedly, there are many who think that I must have a screw loose to want to spend thousands of dollars each year to watch other men play basketball. For those people it would be considered a waste of money, but for me, it’s a source of happiness. If you’ll hear me out on this, I’ll do my best to understand why people spend $40 on lightsabers at Disneyland.

Via Giphy

Studies have found that money can indeed increase happiness if it is spent the “right way.” The key is to align your spending with what’s most important to you. Of those surveyed, the people whose purchases matched their personality and values report higher levels of life satisfaction. Value-aligned spending was a stronger indicator of happiness than an individual’s total income or total spending.

This may seem obvious, but I don’t think it’s commonly practiced. A powerful exercise is to actually sit down and make a list of your priorities, values, and favorite activities. Then compare that list with your purchases. You might be surprised at how many dollars you’re spending on things in the middle and bottom of your list.

Determine what is most important to you and allocate your money accordingly. For example, you may feel guilty about going out to lunch with friends and coworkers more frequently than you feel is appropriate for your budget. However, after sitting down and making a list of what is most important to you, you might find that you really enjoy those lunches — they bring a lot of joy to your life. So cutting your movie-going budget, a lesser priority, and allocating more money to your lunches might be the better choice.

Although the correlation between how you spend and happiness is highly dependent on individual personalities and preferences, studies have also shown that spending in the following general areas can lead to greater well-being:

Paying for experiences rather than material goods

“Things” bring us happiness when we use them, but experiences bring happiness when we merely think about them. The anticipation, the actual experience, and the reflection on the experience create a sense of lasting happiness. Whereas with things we quickly adapt and our once prized possession becomes ordinary.

“After devoting days to selecting the perfect hardwood floor to install in a new condo, homebuyers find their once beloved Brazilian cherry floors quickly become nothing more than the unnoticed ground beneath their feet. In contrast, their memory of seeing a baby cheetah at dawn on an African safari continues to provide delight.” - Harvard Scholars Research Paper

Buying for others as opposed to ourselves

Buy stuff for other people. This seems counterintuitive and is really hard to do, but donating to charity and spending money on others brings a sense of purpose and fulfillment. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money. One study found that those who spent as little as $5 on someone else throughout the course of their day were happier at the end of the day than those who spent the money on themselves.

Obtaining many small pleasures as opposed to a few large ones

It’s often the newness of something that makes it enjoyable — and the newness of infrequent large purchases actually wears off quickly. Interestingly, it seems like we’re more willing to splurge big purchases but skimp on small daily ones. Happiness is more strongly associated with the frequency of good experiences rather than the intensity of them.

Money provides an opportunity for happiness, but people routinely waste it because what they think will make them happy doesn’t. Money can make you happier if you know how to spend it. For me, buying Jazz season tickets is a great way to spend my money. It’s a purchase that is broken down into many small experiences that I can share with my friends and family. To my wife who’s reading this, I rest my case. 

Thanks for reading!