Below is a write up of a sharing that I prepared for a class next week.
A Simple Sharing: Money & Happiness
A very good evening to my dear brothers and sisters, today I am going to share about the relationship between money and happiness. As the saying goes, “money can’t buy us happiness”, we may or may not agree with this notion. Today in contrary to the saying, I am going to share a little bit on the utilization of money to well, in a mundane sense, buy us happiness.
Michael Norton, an associate professor of business at Harvard once said, “If you think money can't buy happiness, you're not spending it right.” So now the next question is how do we spend our money right to get happiness? Research had shown that when we spend money on two types of ‘expenditure’, we experience higher level of happiness as opposed to purchasing material desires. What exactly are the two types of ‘expenditure’? They are (a) experiential and (b) pro-social purchases.
The first type of expenditure is experiential purchases; the level of happiness experienced is much higher in comparison to material purchases (Carter & Gilovich, 2010; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003; Van Boven L. , 2005). What do I mean by experiential purchases? Imagine spending money on a beach resort stay with your loved ones in the Maldives. And imagine spending the same amount of money on a branded bag. Which purchase will make you feel happier? Of course some of you may disagree with me and prefer the bag to the resort stay but it is ok as long as you are happy.
The second type of expenditure is pro-social purchases; the level of happiness experienced when we spent money on others is much higher in comparison to spending money on oneself (Dunn, Aknin & Norton, 2008). Imagine spending money to buy a present for your parents, your boyfriend, girlfriend. And imagine spending the same amount of money on an expensive dinner for yourself alone. Which purchase will make you feel happier? Imagine again, spending money on donations to the disadvantaged, to purchase a few packs of tissues from an elderly and compare it with spending the same amount of money to purchase a pair of shoes for oneself. What is your choice?
Happiness, lies not, in how much we earn but how we spend what we earn. Again, happiness is a very subjective concept and not all of us may agree on the same conceptualization. It is ok, as long as you are happy. At the end of the day, I want to leave everyone with this quote from Simple Bear, “happiness is an experience, not a possession.”
Thank you everyone for your time and attention. And have a great evening.
References
Carter, T. J., & Gilovich, T. (2010). The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 98 (1), 146-159.
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M (2008). Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness. Science , 319 (5870), 1687-1688.
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To Do or to Have? That Is the Question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 85 (6), 1193-1202.
Van Boven L. (2005). Experientialism, materialism, and the pursuit of happiness. Review of General Psychology , 9 (2), 132-142.
