Money and Happiness

To the majority of the world, money is seen as an objective, something that they will give almost everything they have in order to obtain. Most do so with the belief that having a lot of money will supposedly make their lives happier. However, if we look at money as a means to an end, instead of the other way around, we have to wonder, just how happy will the way we spend our hard-earned money make us? The authors of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, figure out the answer to that question, and compile five ways that we can spend money in order to make ourselves happier and our lives more satisfactory. These past two weeks, I analyzed my spending, and thought about how four of the five pieces of advice: buying experiences, making it a treat, investing in others, and buying time could make me a much happier person; and in the end, I realized that applying these rules to my lifestyle will not only create a happier effect on my life itself, but will also make me more responsible with my money overall.

In the first place, the money that I spend on school expenses and otherwise is not my own. My mother, having the desire for me to focus more on schoolwork and to not stress myself out, forbade me from taking up a job during the school year. Lately, I’ve found that there is a difference between when I spend my own money versus when I spend my mother’s. The difference being I’m more likely to be conservative with my mother’s money, only spending it on things I truly need. With my own money, there’s less of a burden, and I don’t feel the need to be responsible with it as much since it’s my own money. I used to have the mindset that even if I run out at one point, my mom has my back, so I’ll survive. Nowadays, I usually have a feeling of guilt when I have to ask my mother for money. I held off telling her about how I needed a few hundred dollars to pay for tuition for as long as possible. I was secretly hoping that money would somehow fall out of the sky, so that my mother wouldn’t have to feel the burden of paying. However, the deadline was closing in, and I had no choice but to tell her. She didn’t show any signs of being upset at all, and immediately paid the tuition off. I know that she doesn’t mind giving the money I need and that she’s my mother, but I can’t help the feeling that I am taking advantage. Watching my spending helped me to learn from my mistakes, and to stop over-spending. I would usually spend my own money on things like candy. I would justify it and give myself excuses. However, this experiment taught me a better way to spend, and along the way, I learned to be much more responsible with my money.

To begin with, in order to test out the advice of the authors of Happy Money, I looked back on my experiences at the bookstore, which happens to fit in two of the categories, which are buying experiences, and making it a treat. I am an extremely avid reader, and I love to collect books. However, more than reading the books themselves, which is extremely high on my happiness level, I love the experience of going to the bookstore and deciding what book I want, because that is not the only thing that I do. As soon as I and my siblings enter the bookstore, we split off in multiple directions, scouring over the books, and making weird signals at each other from across the room whenever we find something we like. We enjoy walking around and marveling at the books and the weird people that tend to hide in the corners. We think up weird topics to talk about and let our minds wander freely. It’s a fun and rare experience to go to the bookstore, even if we don’t end up getting anything. It is going so infrequently that makes me appreciate it a whole lot more than if I went to the bookstore every day. “Getting used to things can be handy when it comes to cold winters or unpleasant smells” (28). However, trips to the bookstore are not something that my siblings and I would want to get used to. We like the feeling of excitement and newness that floods our senses when we walk into the building. Without even knowing, I was making the event of going to the bookstore into a treat. Now, when it comes to reading the books themselves, they are a part of the buying experiences category, because the reading of a book is an experience. An experience that you can relive over and over again, and it gets better each and every time.

When it comes to investing in others, the first thing I think of are the times my siblings and I went to the movies. I enjoyed taking them and hanging out with them. I never thought of those moments as a waste, unless, of course, the movie was terrible. The bottom line is, “The benefits of investing in others don’t stop at just making you feel happier” (124). It’s very satisfying to invest in my siblings this way, and it leaves me feeling much happier every time I look back on those moments that I threw popcorn at my siblings, or those moments where we were mostly just focusing and laughing at each other’s reactions to the movie rather than the actual movie itself. However, what’s even more satisfying is that it’s not only me that feels this way. Of course, there’s more to investing in others than just that in my life. My mother, as I stated before, takes care of most of my financial needs. That’s her way of investing in me. She’s not only giving me her money, but she’s also giving me her time, advice, and anything that I feel the need to go to her for. I usually feel guilty in those moments, because if I happen to fail a class, that’s more money out of her pocket. However, at the same time, that’s what motivates me to do my best in everything that I do. The thought of her having faith in me, and having my back at all times spurs me on and makes me work harder than ever to achieve and do the things that she believes that I can do. I’ve learned that investing in others doesn’t necessarily need to have anything to do with money, but it does have everything to do with devotion.

Last, but not least, I realized that I could apply the tip, buying time, to my life, as well. These past two years have been slightly crazy for me, without adding the whole from-home-to-college thing into the mix. Last spring, in 2017, I decided to double-major in both Communications and Business. It was a huge mistake on my part. I wanted to own a business in the future, but so far, I’ve only succeeded in setting myself back. It took a while for me to realize that I bit off more than I could chew. I was already stressed as it is, but I made it a whole lot worse for myself. So, I dropped the Business portion. It was a load off my back, however, there was a slight problem with that. Because I had dropped the extra major, I was no longer getting refunds. Not only that, there ended up being a couple hundred that I had to find a way to pay on my own. It was upsetting that my mother had to pay extra, but she was happy for me that I was no longer stressed out and failing classes. Of course, I feel guilty towards her, but also thankful. “Buying time isn’t always easy,” but it is worth it (55).

All things considered, I have learned a lot about my spending habits these past two weeks, and exactly what I can do to become a better spender. I’ve become more responsible with my money, which in turn, made me more aware of the things that I buy. Buying experiences, and investing in others are the top two on my list. Not only do they actually succeed in making me happy, but they also make me more considerate to both myself and others. Because I lived most of my life without having a job, I never saw money as an objective. I only saw it as a means to an end, a tool. And thanks to that, money doesn’t hold the highest value in my life. It’s nice to have, but it’s not everything, and that’s what Happy Money focused on—how to spend money, instead of how to save it or how to make it. Money, by itself, cannot make us happy. It's what we do with it that determines what kind of life we will live.

Works Cited:

Dunn, Elizabeth, and Michael Norton. Happy Money the New Science of Smarter Spending. Oneworld, 2014.