Money can’t buy happiness. Or can it? The TierneyLab blog from The New York Times recently conducted an informal survey. Based on Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, a new book from Dr. Geoffrey Miller, readers were invited to:
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
Yesterday’s TierneyLab column examined the responses. The results are fascinating. Things appearing much more often on ‘expensive’ lists than ‘happy’ lists include:
- children
- marriage ceremonies
- divorces
- taxes
- most cars
- boats
Items that were on far more ‘happy’ lists than ‘expensive’ lists included:
- meals with friends
- alcohol
- bicycles
- pets
- hobbies
- adult education
- church and charity
- books, music, artwork
- quality beds
And, finally, there was some overlap where things were both expensive and fulfilling. These include:
- houses
- higher education
- travel
- electronics
- certain vehicles
Obviously, these results are not scientific in any way. But they’re interesting.
For myself, I was hard pressed to list ten items on each side. I just listed six or seven. Believe it or not, my Mini Cooper makes both lists. So does our current home. (If I had paid for college, that would have definitely made both lists; I was fortunate to attend on scholarship.) Other than that, though, there’s not a clear relationship between money spent and happiness received.
Dr. Miller offered a brief analysis of the survey results, noting a handful of trends, including:
- For many, there is an overlap between expensive purchases and happiness.
- Many people — including myself — find that paying for experiences is more likely to bring happiness than buying physical Stuff.
- Many commenters emphasized the value of thrift in daily life so they could afford to spend on the things that mattered.
- Some people noted that the act of saving money for the future brings them happiness.
If you find this topic as interesting as I do, I recommend you read the full post, which contains a lot of additional information and a fuller analysis. Also, the comments on the article are quite good.
[TierneyLab at The New York Times: When money buys happiness, via e-mail from Robin B.]
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My boats would certainly be on both lists. I suppose the status of boats overall is probably related to the large number of people who buy them and then don’t actually use them as much as they had planned to.
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“Paying for experiences is more likely to bring happiness than buying physical Stuff.”
That was a foundational belief my parents had when I was growing up. We lived in a simple home, had hand-me-down clothes. My parents drove old, beat-up cars.
But we went on a whole bunch of neat vacations.
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How sad that children are only on the expensive list!
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One of my favorite sayings:
“Money won’t buy you happiness, but it will buy your favorite misery.”
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I agree with the experiential emphasis, one just has to be careful how one catagorizes expenses though. Often the experience is what one buys physical things for such as something beautiful to look at and show.
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This basically proves what I am realizing more and more as the husband and I dig ourselves out of debt. The best things in life are free or cheap. We are realizing that we have far more fun hanging out at home with friends than we did blowing a wad of cash going out.
Granted, there are a few things on the expensive we will do including have at least one child but for the most part frugal living will continue to reign.
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I never realised that my children were things. I thought they were people. I stand corrected.
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Books have given me more happiness per dollar than anything else. If there were a place to go to buy time to read more of them, I would be set.
Rob
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I will echo over and over again the value of experiences over material possessions. If you don’t count the accumulation of rent, the most expensive thing I’ve ever “bought” was a 2 month vacation to Europe last year with my girlfriend. We did it frugally, but it was certainly no cheap adventure. We met great people, ate great food, and saw amazing sights.
I honestly cannot think of any one thing that I have bought that has brought me nearly as much happiness. 1 year later I still look back on that experience and smile. I expect I’ll do the same for many years to come.
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I thought it was illegal to buy children in the U.S.?
There’s a difference between spending money on a person and actually buying that person — a distinction many respondents failed to make. Technically, kids are free unless you adopt or need medical assistance. It’s all the stuff you have to buy for kids that’s expensive (including healthcare to bring them into the world).
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While I think college was really valuable, my experience was somewhat tainted because I never got to study what I wanted. I do work hard at the job I have, but I only spend money on things/experiences that make me truly happy. I’m very big on education of any kind, so I found what makes me the happiest is taking a class or two at a community college. They’re cheap, the teachers are good, and you can learn about almost anything. I’m not necessarily big on items, just experiences.
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it makes perfect sense why your mini cooper would be on both lists – from all i have read this car was much more than just a “thing”; the car represents your hard work and your commitment to not going into debt to own it. it is a testament to experience purchases and happiness.
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ObliviousInvestor (#2) & Tyler (#9)–I’m with the two of you that experience brings more happiness than stuff. Life is what we do, not what we have.
I can’t imagine being on my death bed wishing I had more stuff during my life–heck NONE of it will save me anyhow. I can however imagine savoring all of the wonderful experiences.
Amanda (#3)–You’re so right! What does it say about our culture that children appear at the top of the “expensive” list, but are totally absent from the “happiness” list?
Meanwhile houses and higher education top the list of “happy and expensive”. That is disturbing at some very deep level! Though it certainly helps to explain the cultural bias toward personal advancement and acquisition.
But taking the glass half-full view of the situation, we can also say that this is why we have personal finance blogs like this one…to help people deal with the fallout of this kind of thinking.
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Money may not be able to directly buy happiness, but it certainly makes obtaining it easier.
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Very difficult now to create an unbiased list of my own, having read all this. However my dogs would likely make both lists. Their vet care has been expensive, though not unreasonably so, the last few years; however, they bring us immense joy.
College would probably also make both lists – I’m on my 3rd degree program now – not because of the “experience”, though it’s been generally good, but because of the value. Higher education has provided me social training, opportunity, fun, challenge, and soon the chance to make decent money doing something I enjoy. That’s pretty cool.
I would put international travel on the happy list – not the expensive list because I did most of it as a child or teen and did not pay for it myself. Again, the experience was mixed but the value of that experience has been immeasurable in my life. However I think travel generally would go on both lists, given the fun had visiting friends in London, seeing family in Houston and DC, and participating in sporting events up and down the coast. Expensive, but what a blast.
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Buying some things can definitely increase happiness!
We just bought our first house, and I can’t explain how happy I am! We’re finally able to not deal with noisy neighbors, and not worry about being noisy ourselves.
We finally have room for a piano. We can paint the walls! We can nail holes in the wall without worrying about our security deposit. we can till the yard and plant a garden. We even have a garage now!
So many little things that just improve our quality of living…
Even with the financial weight of a mortgage, it still makes us very happy.
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Count me in the experiences camp. Yes, a nice house is definitely on the list too, but that’s not a common purchase.
I’d much rather have a week with friends on vacation than a new plasma TV or a painting…
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Wow… so children are expensive, but dont make you happy…. That has to be one very shallow population they sampled
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Money will buy fun. Fun looks like hapiness, but it is a little different.
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Wearsunscreen–that’s an outstanding point, but it’s kind of like taking that next drink; you know there might be a hang over on the other side, but in the meantime it still feels good.
It’s often hard to tell the difference between happiness and fun, especially for kids, teens and young adults. Probably takes some perspective to figure it out. Happiness is that lower volume, longer term version of fun in a way, but absent happiness it’s easy to settle for fun and call it the same thing.
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I would count rent as the most expensive thing I “buy” and it does not make me happy. But not living anywhere would make me unhappy.
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“What does it say about our culture that children appear at the top of the “expensive” list, but are totally absent from the “happiness” list?”
I was thinking more along the lines of, What does it say about children?
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^— Haha, win.
I take this as further reaffirmation of my decision not to have any.
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Along with E, I think this might not be as accurate as it sounds. The question asks about what you spent a lot of money on, then what has been your most fulfilling purchases. The mind can’t help but make connections through that questioning – it’s like ‘anchoring’, where the first part puts an anchor that the second half is a response to.
I imagine most people, depending on how contrary they are, either built off the first list to get the second or went out of their way to find things that weren’t on the first list to make the second.
There’s a famous college experiment where the students in a class were asked if a mug cost more or less than $8, then asked what they thought it was worth. All of the answers were pretty close to $8, while another class without the first half were much more varied.
And there’s a lot more on that topic in Predictably Irrational.
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@ Jeremy M: Spot on. The poll was leading, which makes it more or less useless. I’d suspect for many people (including myself), there would have been an inclination to make both lists either as disparate as possible, or as similar as possible. Not exactly conducive for accurate responses, even at an individual level (never mind at a global, “what does this teach us?” level).
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I find it hilarious that alcohol was on most “happy” lists. Happy Hour!
A good handful of commentators are taking the results of this survey way too seriously. As J.D. clearly emphasized, this survey was both “informal” and “not scientific”. In other words, the only thing we can reasonably conclude from this survey is the general PERCEPTION of the survey participants, NOT PROVEN FACT. So these results should be taken with a grain of salt.
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A few thoughts:
* Jeremy has an excellent point, but I think it’s pretty clear that this is an informal survey. This isn’t scientific in any way. It’s just fodder for discussion!
* The children thing *is* interesting, but it doesn’t surprise me. I know it’s frowned upon to mention, but studies demonstrate that children *decrease* a person’s happiness. Now, there’s some excellent discussion to be made here regarding “relative happiness” and so on (maybe people without children don’t know how high the happiness scale can go so their “6″ is really just a “4″ or whatever), but it’s what the studies show.
* I like Wearsunscreen’s differentiation between happiness and fun. Great point.
As I say, this is all interesting. And while it can be useful to think about this stuff, take the survey with a grain of salt.
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Money can’t buy happiness, it’s true. But it CAN buy your way out of misery, and that’s just as good. Poor neighborhoods, unsafe schools, poor medical attention…these are all things that will make you UNhappy. Money can buy your way out of those things. The “happy” part is up to you.
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I believe you may be referring to Daniel Gilbert’s work:
http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/blog/200606heres_to_tofu_baseball_heroin8.html
However my common sense (and personal observation) tells me that it depends on what you want. People who truly want children are happier when they have them, and people who don’t want children are happier when they don’t. The trick is to know what you want, stand by it, and make it happen.
(Got my tubes tied five years ago and for $1,000 would call that moderate on the expensive side and very high on the happiness side.)
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Having posted the above, however, I do agree with one of Kevin’s main points:
“Meanwhile houses and higher education top the list of “happy and expensive”. That is disturbing at some very deep level! Though it certainly helps to explain the cultural bias toward personal advancement and acquisition.”
I have been enjoying this blog because of posts like the one further down, that highlights the benefits of de-accumulating “stuff.” LOVE the George Carlin bit!
It is oversimplifying too much to say that people are EITHER into 1) children, hearth and home, and apple pie or 2) advancement and acquisition. Like those are the only two things that could possibly matter to anyone. I am not interested in either one.
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The “quality bed” thing is really drawing my attention (and of course regular sex was high on the list in your last happiness survey post, so there’s twice the reason!). For years I’ve been promising myself a sheraton sweet sleeper mattress – maybe I should go ahead and get one!
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Jojo–I remember George Carlin, but how do my comments resemble anything from him?
If there’s any connection then I need to clean up my act!
(Thanks for your comment though.)
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Jay (#28)–You raise a good point that we can’t lose sight of. Ascribing more to money than it really deserves is something to avoid, but not having any at all would…kind of suck…
Maybe it’s best to say we need enough to sustain, plus some extra for the pocket and the bank account, and anything more than that is–in the words of Forrest Gumps mama–”just for showing off”.
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I want to differ on the ‘Children” thing. I had a ‘perfect’ life with no debt, money and I could travel any place I wanted to go. But I have a son now and believe me he is in the happy list. It makes life worth living for and brings a whole new meaning to life. I bet people with children will agree with me. Those without children I prefer if they didnt make comments on children since they dont understand the ‘richness’ that comes with children. I used to be closed minded to when it came to children but once I had one myself as I said at the beginning, life is worth much more and my happiness went UP! Much better!
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Maya–I’m totally with you on children (I have two). But it IS possible that people with children may express misgivings in an anonymous survey. If we are oriented culturally toward personal advancement and acquisition, there probably are a fair number of parents out there who see their kids as a burden. I think this tends to be supported by the high divorce rate.
How many couples stay together “for the sake of the children” anymore? It’s almost a quaint concept that isn’t even supported by psychologists and self help guru’s who advance finding personal happiness as a life’s priorty. That’s a hollow directive when you have young lives depending on you.
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Maya, what makes you think that people with children are the only ones who appreciate them? I’ve spent a good portion of my life working with children, so even though I don’t have kids yet myself I understand the richness (and stress!) of having children in your life. Please don’t assume that because you were close-minded that the rest of are too. Some of us aren’t childless by choice, we just aren’t as lucky as you.
I’ve also seen what happens to children whose parents see them as a burden (or worse) rather than a gift. I wish more people felt the same way you do and no child would be unwanted or abused.
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Can’t buy me loooovveee!
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maya @34, I take exception to your comment “Those without children I prefer if they didnt make comments on children since they dont understand the ‘richness’ that comes with children”. As Beth @36 says you are making assumptions about people without children. Not everyone without children hates them or is childless by choice. You are veering awfully close to the trite “You’ll understand when you have children, it’s different when they’re your own,” that is uttered so often. NOT everyone is cut out to be a parent, and recognising that about yourself is very wise.
Can I point out that the people who didn’t put children on the happiness scale ARE PARENTS? Not childless people? And also, by making that comment, you are showing you are STILL as closeminded as you were, albeit about the other side now.
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As others have noted, Maya simply went from being closeminded about not having children to being closeminded about having them. There are plenty of folks (myself included) who work regularly with children precisely because we do care about them. Having kids doesn’t make you appreciate them any more than not having kids keeps you from appreciating them. I’d easily wager the overwhelming majority of people who go into child-related professions (teaching, psychology, social work, etc) do so before or without having children of their own.
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As others have noted, Maya simply went from being closeminded about not having children to being closeminded about having them. There are plenty of folks (myself included) who work regularly with children precisely because we do care about them. Having kids doesn’t make you appreciate them any more than not having kids keeps you from appreciating them. I’d easily wager the overwhelming majority of people who go into child-related professions (teaching, psychology, social work, etc) do so before or without having children of their own.
BTW I love your blog!
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$6000 this year bought me a wonderful 2 week vacation to Europe. The memories and experiences we had were fantastic.
I also spent $6,500 on a rare Rolex Milgauss Green Crystal Saphire. I wear it almost everyday and am very happy to see it. If i made less than $85,000/yr, I’d probably not feel happy b/c 6.5k is a big chunk of my income, but b/c I make 5X that amount, I only feel happiness.
So, with regards to things, it’s about buying things you can easily afford. It’s when people buy things, and have tremendous guilt and burden, that starts making people unhappy.
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I find the discussion surrounding the “children” aspect of this survey fascinating. I perceive an obvious dichotomy regarding the blanket acceptance of the idea that there’s a media and cultural bias in favour of “materialism and acquisition,” yet an outright rejection of the suggestion that there’s an equally powerful bias against declaring one’s regret in having children.
There’s an unspoken rule that a parent can NEVER publicly admit they wish they’d never had children. You can see it permeating the comments, yet it’s undeniably manifest in the anonymous comfort of the survey.
As a child-free married man (by choice), I find this widely-ignored dissonance fascinating.
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I should expound a little bit. There are numerous perfectly valid reasons society discourages unhappy parents from being honest and forthright. If word got out that children DON’T universally make you happier, and can in fact exasperate UNhappiness, there could be far-reaching and disasterous consequences, affecting everything from the labour force, to Social Security, to humanity itself. Obviously, mankind relies heavily on the fact that SOME of us will choose to reproduce. If you’re a member of a niche ideology (which could include virtually the entire population of the planet, albeit there are thousands of different ideologies), then it is to your benefit to try and INCREASE the population of your subgroup. Thus, you end up with virtually everyone parroting propaganda encouraging having children, even if their motives lie in the more nefarious justification of expanding the group of people who “look and think like me.”
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@Maya
“I bet people with children will agree with me. Those without children I prefer if they didnt make comments”
Wow, so you presume to speak on behalf of all parents (in direct contradiction to the survey in question), and refuse to listen to anything that non-parents say? If this is your idea of open-minded, I’d HATE to see what you were like when you regarded yourself as close-minded. I only hope you aren’t raising your children to share your biases.
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“If you’re a member of a niche ideology (which could include virtually the entire population of the planet, albeit there are thousands of different ideologies), then it is to your benefit to try and INCREASE the population of your subgroup.”
Yet it is also to the benefit of a niche to have some members *not* reproduce. Those members provide benefits to the offspring of others, since they are not distracted with providing for offspring of their own. The childless sibling can help his niece or nephew with college costs. The childless entrepreneur can build a business which creates jobs for the grown children of other people. The childless taxpayer helps pay for schools, but doesn’t fill a seat in the classroom with his own child.
I think it’s really more important, for a culture to survive, that all its members be self-sufficient and productive. A thriving, productive culture will also attract those from outside itself who want to assimilate and be a part of it. Simply adding to your own numbers doesn’t do much good if you’re adding deadbeats.
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“Jojo–I remember George Carlin, but how do my comments resemble anything from him?”
I was referring to his funny riff about people and their accumulation of stuff – how they get a bunch of stuff, and then have to go out and buy bigger houses so they have more room for their stuff. Yeah he was a bit of a pottymouth but he sure had a way of shining light on things.
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I laughed when I read these lists — *so* obviously New York Times readers! Of course “children” are on the “expensive” list — you try paying to raise kids in Manhattan and see whether your life is still worth living. And in fact if you read the original post, you’ll see that the unhappy expense of children is broken out as “childcare, school fees, child support, fertility treatments”. In those particular circumstances, I don’t think it’s surprising it’s hard to be happy with what you’re paying for.
JD, I’m not sure you should have left out the part of the original post where its author related that the most “distinctive” expensive purchases were drugs, psychotherapy, a week in a mental hospital, and repeatedly filling and emptying a wine cellar. Though those also seem very NYC, to be sure.
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The (anonymous) results highlight the difference between the romanticized vision of parenting and the hard-hitting reality.
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I find it interesting that the “expensive” list lists many things that we are made to believe we need in order to be happy (having a big wedding, having a car, having children…)
I think that although these things can make you happy, the problem probably is that a lot of people get them because they think they have to.
Think about it. If you have kids only because you think perfect family have to have kids, of course you’re not going to be completely fulfilled. If you have kids because you want kids, now, that’s a completely different story.
It’s all about ads all around us. My wedding was the happiest day of my life so far, but I barely spent anything on it. I didn’t invite the extended family I’ve never met just because it was “the proper thing to do”. I invited my close family and friends (and my husband’s) and we went bowling, pooling, and played arcade games. It was wonderful.
A big, traditional wedding would have been more stressful (and, let’s face it, boring) for me, so I didn’t do it. Some people look at my wedding pictures and it feels like they pity us not to have had a grand wedding. But we didn’t have a wedding for the pictures, and if I had to go back I wouldn’t change a thing.
I think it’s important to do things we know will make us happy and fulfill them. I know families with lots of kids who are extremely happy. I know families with no kids who are extremely happy, too. They wouldn’t trade with each other, and they shouldn’t. We’re all unique, we don’t have to follow the “perfect family” model if it’s not meant for us.
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I wonder if that Mini will be on there in a couple more years? When I first bought my Acura (it was my first real car and I’d always wanted an Acura since I was in my early 20s) it brought me a lot of happiness. Now I just see it as a nice means of transportation. In fact I will probably not buy another Acura if I had to buy something today. Its also the reason I won’t buy a Mercedes – I want one really bad and frankly I know it won’t live up to my expectations. It’s just a car – its hard to realize that when you first buy it cause you REALLY want it and it brings joy for a year or two, but over time you realize…it’s just a car.
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