How to spend money on yourself to nurture mental well-being
Scientific litsketch on boosting mental health
How can we get the most bang for the buck when spending money on ourself to nurture our mental well-being?
Research shows that when we are spending money for ourself, spending money on experiences like movies, live concerts or sports leads to greater happiness than spending money on material purchases like clothing or electronics (Van Boven and Gilovich, 2003). This is because we make more comparisons when buying material goods, making the choices more difficult and regretful than when buying experiential goods (Carter and Gilovich, 2010).
In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was asked to think about an experiential purchase of over $50 they had made. Group Two was asked to think about a material purchase of over $50. Both groups were asked about how difficult was their choice, how much comparisons they had made when making the choice, how satisfied they were when they made the purchase and how satisfied they are in the present time.
The results showed that people are more satisfied with their experiential purchases than material purchases when reflecting on their purchases because they were less concerned about whether or not they made the right choice. When shopping for a material good, we are more motivated to buy better, superior goods, and even after the purchase, we think about other products that might have been better. Also, waiting for experiences increases our happiness much more than waiting for material purchases (Kumar et al., 2014). Waiting to go on a holiday or to watch a live show is much more satisfying than waiting to purchase a clothing or electronic goods.
When you feel like you need a dose of happiness and want to purchase something for yourself, spend more money on experiences than material goods. Don’t forget to savour the pleasure and excitement of waiting for those experiences to extract the greatest happiness from your purchase!
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(6), 1193.
Carter, T. J., & Gilovich, T. (2010). The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 146.
Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilovich, T. (2014). Waiting for merlot: Anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1924-1931.