Money can’t buy happiness, but there are smarter ways to spend your hard-earned money.
Transcript:
CONWAY GITTENS: Listen, you’ve spent 10 years studying what makes us happy in life. So when you take a look at your research, what role does money play into our overall happiness and well-being?
GRETCHEN RUBINS: Well, there’s the old saying that money can’t buy happiness and money can’t buy happiness, but money can buy many things that contribute very greatly to happiness. So it depends on how we spend our money. So if we spend it on things like our health or our relationships with other people or enlarging our lives. In some way, contributing to causes that put our values into the world, that’s going to make us happier if we spend it on things that do not support our happiness, then that money is not going to be something that will contribute to a happier life.
CONWAY GITTENS: So I wonder, where do you think where do you think things will go from here. You during the pandemic, we all changed our mindset to only live once and everybody starts spending all their money on services, less on hard goods. Do you think that is something that will continue or will revert back to the way we were pre-pandemic?
GRETCHEN RUBINS: Well that’s such a fascinating question. And you’re absolutely right. Especially today, people say things like, I want to spend money on experiences, not on stuff. Well, one thing is, I think sometimes the line between an experience and a thing can be hard to draw. So for instance, is like a dog, a possession or an experience, or is a dining room table a possession or an experience. If now you’re going to have your friends over for dinner, is a camera a possession or an experience. What sort of both. So I think that sometimes it can be harder to tease out the difference between those two things than is possible. Then you then you might think, and I think every pendulum swings. And so people are sort of in this period now of really wanting to declutter and really lighten their load. And human nature being what it is. I imagine that pendulum will swing.
But I do think that it’s really good that people are aware of the fact that just buying, like your 10th pair of Black boots is not going to do that much for you, and that you really the challenge for us is to think like, how can I mindfully invest my money, as well as my time and my energy in ways that are likely to make me happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative. So it’s really having that purposefulness and thinking about it, not just being on like automatic or the impulsive purchase, which of course, with money, it’s so easy to be impulsive and and then we regret, right. Because you think Oh gosh, if looking back on it, I wish I had made a different choice. So part of it is just trying not to do things impulsively so that we can do them more mindfully.
CONWAY GITTENS: Yeah, I was just thinking, as you were answering, like, I wonder if that whole idea of money buying us happiness through services works until you get the credit card bill, right.
GRETCHEN RUBINS: Yeah, well, there’s always that. And I mean, one of the most precious things that money can buy us is the freedom from worrying about money. And so a feeling of security and a feeling of like yeah, I can pay for that. And it’s not a big deal. Oh, I have to take my cat to the vet, but it’s not going to be a catastrophe if she needs to some medication. These are things that make us happier. Also, one of the things that the research shows is that a sense of control makes us happier. If we really want to be able to have a sense of control of our lives, of the way we work, and money can often help us have a sense of control. Whereas if you don’t have money, you feel so much more buffeted about and a lack of control, and that itself undermines happiness.
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