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Yes, You Can Buy Happiness - YouTube
Channel: Bloomberg Quicktake: Originals
[0]
Hey, it's Henry.
[2]
So this is the last episode of our season.
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And it turns out, we have some
extra money in the budget,
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and I want to spend that money on myself.
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So for this episode, we're going
to figure out how a person,
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in this case, me, can spend money
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to increase their own happiness.
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Now I know what you're thinking,
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"Money can't buy happiness."
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And you're right.
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Sort of.
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Studies have found that while
having more money greatly
[25]
affects the happiness for
people living in poverty,
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once someone earns around $75,000 a year,
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the amount of happiness they get
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from additional funds flattens out.
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So someone who makes on
average $200,000 a year
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isn't necessarily that
much happier than somebody
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who makes a middle class salary, like me.
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So it's kind of unbelievable
to hear that, you know,
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me doubling my salary
wouldn't make me any happier.
[48]
But while more money
doesn't necessarily mean
[51]
more happiness, how we
spend our money does.
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And like any good reporter,
I did a Google search,
[57]
and watched a TED Talk on happiness
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by this man, Dr. Robert Waldinger.
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He's the director of the Harvard
Study of Adult Development,
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a study that started in 1938,
and continues until this day,
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making it possibly the longest
study of human happiness
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ever to have been conducted.
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We found that many of the things we expect
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to predict well-being do,
like taking care of yourself,
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taking care of your health, not smoking,
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not abusing alcohol, okay, exercising.
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But the surprise was that the
quality of our relationships
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with other people actually
keeps us healthier
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and keeps us alive longer.
[96]
So we looked at their
cholesterol, we looked
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at their blood pressure at age 50.
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And we looked at their
marital satisfaction.
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And what we found was that
their marital satisfaction was
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by far the strongest predictor
of what they were gonna
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be like when they were 80.
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Happiest marriages at 50,
predicted better health
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and happiness at age 80.
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But to be able to predict across 30 years,
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that's a big deal, that
begins to get at causation.
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So relationships, it's
like exercise in a way,
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you don't just do it one week,
and then you're done, right?
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That relationships have to be tended to.
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So your marriage, your
friendships, they take work,
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they take constant attention
over time, or they wither away.
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So how can I buy good relationships?
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Well, you can't, but,
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but, that is a question you
should ask of the researchers
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who actually study this.
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Luckily, these researchers
also had TED Talks.
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And have been focusing
on that very question,
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how spending our money
affects our happiness.
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The reason why I believe it's
actually very interesting
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to study spending is
because it's so ubiquitous,
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we all spend and we all
actually have a lot of control
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over our spending.
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We are going to spend some of our money
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because we have to, and
are we really thinking
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about spending it in ways that
might actually make us happy?
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And if yes, what can we learn
as researchers to help people?
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So there's a lot of methodology
and findings that come
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from research done by people
like Sandra and Michael,
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but I wanted to boil down
some of the biggest takeaways.
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First off, and this
shouldn't come as a surprise,
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but spend money on building
social relationships,
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Though there is built into
our close relationships
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this element of reciprocity,
of giving back and forth,
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What we're trying to do in our research
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is say you can do more of it, actually.
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So it's probably not useful
to give someone $5 and say,
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"Will you be a closer friend of mine?"
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because that's not how it works.
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But it does work to say,
"Hey, I really like you.
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"And I'd like to take you out to lunch."
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So if you buy coffee, maybe
you might want to spend it
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on buying coffee for
yourself and your friend.
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Because we know that if you
spend it on someone else,
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you also gain greater happiness.
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The next big point is to spend more money
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on experiences and less on things.
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Tom Gilovich and his
colleagues at Cornell,
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for about a decade now,
have been doing research
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showing that, on average, buying stuff
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for yourself doesn't do
much for your happiness.
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But buying experiences
seems to make us happier.
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What we see when we when
it comes to actually buying
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material goods versus
experiences is that when we buy
[251]
our second watch, for example,
we might get the spike
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in happiness, but at some point
this actually, this effect
[256]
of happiness goes away.
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And to some extent, we might
even regret at some point
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spending, investing that much money.
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Whereas if we have experiences,
we can go to a concert,
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there's this effect of
anticipated happiness,
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and we look forward to going
to the concert for two weeks,
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even like building up to the experience.
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And then after the experience,
we can always go back to it.
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So we have a memory of the experience.
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We might even share it with friends,
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come back to it every once in a while,
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you know, when we get
together for a fun night.
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And finally, if you've been thinking,
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"I do want that Apple
Watch, and I know it would
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"make me happy," then good, buy it,
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you should know what makes you happy.
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If people manage to spend
their money in a way
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that is aligned with their
own psychological needs
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and preferences as reflected
by their personality,
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then that seems to be
making people happier.
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If I'm an extrovert, I might be better off
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spending my money on going
out with friends, kind of,
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having a very social time,
spending it on exciting stuff.
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Versus like a friend
of mine who's probably
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more introverted, what
they could do instead
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is spend it on things
that improve their quality
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me time, so to say.
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The first thing that we
recommend that people do
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is literally do an audit of your spending.
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And what's important to you
is completely up to you,
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so I can't say these are the things
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that should be important to you in life,
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but you know the things that
are important to you in life.
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And typically, when you
look at your spending
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in this way, you say, "Wow, I
should really shift some money
[338]
"from that big category
over to this big category."
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So to recap the big takeaways,
in order to spend money
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to get happiness, first
off, know yourself.
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Are you an introvert, an extrovert?
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How do you want to spend your money?
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Second, use your money to
build social relationships.
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And third, put an emphasis
on experiences over things.
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So if I were to analyze
myself for my money,
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if I'm getting the best return,
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I am a person who loves my family
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and I love sharing experiences
with them around food.
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So I'm thinking I will spend
that extra budget money,
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you know, for the purposes of the show,
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to take my mom with me to Italy
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and we have some fantastic meals.
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What are we looking at?
Yeah, it's--
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So, it turns out we got like $35.20 left
[388]
in the budget, so...
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Hey, Mom, do you want to go
to the Olive Garden tonight?
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