Showing posts with label buying happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buying happiness. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2014

The marginal cost of buying happiness

Working from home is so good for me that I can't think of any reasonable salary increase that would induce me to switch to a job where I have to go into the workplace.  I might consider doing it on a temporary basis for some ridiculous amount of money - like if I earned enough in six months to pay off my entire mortgage - but only if I could be certain that I could return to my current arrangement afterwards. If not, it wouldn't be worth this.

Some people would use this as an argument in support of the idea that money can't buy happiness.  But the fact remains that quite a bit of the happiness I do have was bought with money.  It's not that more money wouldn't make me happier, it's that the cost in happiness of earning more money would be greater than the amount of happiness that additional money would buy me. 

So, if my quick googling has led me to the correct economic terminology, it's not that money can't buy happiness.  It's that there's a threshold where the marginal cost (in happiness) of more money is greater than the amount of happiness that that same money could buy.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Things They Should Study: does ability to buy happiness correlate with happiness?

As I've blogged about before, my experience is that money can in fact buy happiness. And I am generally happy.  In any case,  I'm happier than I ever expected to be or than any fair, just or karmatic system should be allowing me to be.

Some people think that money can't buy happiness.  Someone should study whether these people who think that money can't buy happiness are happy.  Are they unhappy because they're not able to buy happiness?  Or are they happy because their sources of happiness transcend their life circumstances?

It would also be interesting to see if there's a correlation between money and happiness among people who believe that money can't buy happiness, and see if that differs from the degree of correlation found among people who believe that money can buy happiness.

I know there have been studies quantifying how much happiness costs (i.e. identifying the point of diminishing returns where more money generally doesn't buy more happiness), but I don't know of any that have compared people who can buy happiness and people who can't.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

What I learned from my 2009 New Year's resolution

My 2009 New Year's resolution was "shut up and buy it".

I did this because in the year or so leading up to my making that resolution, I found myself wanting various things that were significantly more expensive than I was accustomed to spending, and this wanting kept sitting in my brain and yelling at me.  I felt so guilty and conflicted about it - I can't just spend money!  Then I'm going to want to keep spending money! - but it kept sitting there in my brain nagging me.  So I decided that for a year I'd permit myself to buy whatever I wanted as long as I didn't have to go into debt or tap into my condo fund, and I'd use it as a learning experience.  If it started to hurt or I regretted it, then that's where the dividing line is.  If buying things didn't make me satisfied and instead just upgraded my wants, then I'd learn that that's how I operate.  In any case, instead of sitting there feeling deprived and guilty, I'd be doing something about it.

That was three years ago, and I didn't end up stopping the "shut up and buy it" at the end of the year.  But, I just realized, my wants didn't upgrade.  I bought the things I was wanting at the beginning of the year, they made me feel happy, and no new wants came in to replace them.

This did still increase my ongoing spending.  One of the things I wanted was better hair, and now I spent far more than I care to admit on natural shampoo and conditioner that achieve significantly better results than what you get at the drugstore. I started wearing more expensive bras (to fantastic effect!), and, while they don't need to be replaced quite as often as hair products, they still do need to be replaced from time to time.

But I bought the things I was originally wishing for when I started my resolution, and then didn't feel the need to buy any other things that I didn't have in mind going in.  I didn't get caught up in some endless treadmill of materialism, it turned out I just wanted some nicer things.

Which supports my ongoing theses that I know my shit better than I think I do and I can buy happiness.

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Buying happiness: resilience

I was going to close out my Buying Happiness series by writing about how money buys resilience, but the fourth letter-writer in this Carolyn Hax column: does it much better than I ever could.
People with plenty of money have crummy luck all the time, too, but it’s just an inconvenience for them. My parents are millionaires. Last week their heater, car, and garage door broke. So what?
If they were poorer, each problem would’ve caused two more problems. People living on the edge are vulnerable to every mishap in a way that is catastrophic. It’s very hard to break the cycle. You need a string of good luck that lasts for years.
By the way, I’ve always tried to live within my means and got hit with the housing crisis in a perfect storm that reduced me to zero. So I’m not saying here that poorer people are doing something wrong; it’s just about having more than enough money to be able to recover.
The first time I ever had serious computer problems was terrifying. I was in university, I needed the computer for work and play and social life, and I couldn't possibly afford a new one.  Fortunately, Dell's warranty support saved my ass, but the prospect of being computer-less was terrifying.

I'm having computer problems again (I'll blog about them more fully once they're resolved) and they're now far less terrifying.  Even if I can't coax the desired behaviour out of my computer, I have my work computer, I have my old computer (which doesn't work super well, but can still do safe mode with networking), and I have my wifi-capable ipod and an open wifi network in my building's lobby (plus one in my very own apartment as long as I can keep my personal computer alive for long enough to turn on the wifi on my router). I can research my problem, I can access my comforts and my friends, and, if absolutely necessary, I can swallow the cost of a new computer that will meet my needs for at least a year.  So what was an ordeal when I was in university is, at best, an item on my to-do list.  Surely a huge step towards happiness!

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Buying happiness: quality housing

My apartment was brand new when I moved into it, nearly six years ago.  It has many improvements over my previous apartment (which was built in the 1970s).  I have big windows (and I face east and am above the building next door), so I enjoy direct sunlight that helps my circadian rhythms. I have a washer and dryer in my actual suite, which means I don't have to schlep down to the basement three times per load of laundry, or hoard quarters and loonies, or worry about what I'm going to wear while I do laundry. I have a dishwasher, which means that my least favourite chore (apart from exercise and pest control) is completely eliminated.  And, speaking of pest control, I average one bug a year here, compared with one bug every two months in my old place and several bugs a month in student housing.  Since a bug equals a panic attack, this is a revelation.  Making rent is always tight, and I can't think of anything I'd rather be spending it on.


This is why I will never be convinced that money can't buy happiness.  I've bought a near-elimination of panic attacks, and of the tedium of two major chores, as well as a sunlight pattern that helps adapt my circadian rhythms to the realities of everyday life.

All of this sounds disgustingly privilegey, but this is why I'm so opposed to the N2 rent increase exemption - it puts the quality of life I enjoy further and further out of the reach of more and more Ontarians (which might include me eventually if I hadn't bought a condo - my rent has always increased at a greater rate than my salary).  I've benefited so much from buying this happiness that I want to to be affordable to everyone.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Buying happiness: summer skirts and dresses

I always feel frumpy and gross in shorts, so every hot day for my entire adult life I've been wearing skirts and dresses exclusively. They have many advantages:

- They're cooler. The breeze can blow up in between my thighs (right up to my ribs if I'm wearing an empire-waisted dress). I can be fully covered with less of the material actually touching my body. This is the best-possible balance of all of the advantage of being naked and all of the advantages of being clothed.

- They're attractive and femme. When I was a kid, and our summer vacations had us playing tourist in cities, I always felt particularly awkward and out of place in my suburban tourist shorts and t-shirts and running shoes. But I always feel like a proper grown-up city lady in my summer skirts and dresses.

- They make it very easy to look pulled together. In almost any of my summer outfits (with the exception of my long cotton hippy skirts), all I have to do is put my hair up (default for the summer anyway), choose a pair of shoes with heels (which I almost always wear anyway), put on big sunglasses (which I always wear outdoors in the sun anyway) and I look very close to glam. My "It's hot out and I feel fat" dress would fit right in at a wedding with the right hair/makeup/accessories, but it also wouldn't look out of place walking down the beach. I even wore it the second time we saw Eddie Izzard, after discovering at the last minute that I was too bloated to comfortably wear the outfit I'd originally planned, and I felt confident that I looked Eddie-worthy. None of my cool-weather outfits are that versatile!

- They're FUN! Skirts twirl and blow around in the breeze, and I can comfortably carry off flower prints in skirts and dresses that I'd feel frumpy wearing on a blouse with pants.

I've learned that I don't get tired of skirts and dresses (I'm still regularly wearing the skirts I bought when I first started my current job nine years ago), so whenever I see one I like, I try it on, and if it's reasonably flattering I buy it. My skirts pair nicely with plain fitted t-shirts and camis in solid colours, and the look is classic enough that I don't need to worry about any one piece going out of style. I still hate hot weather, but I never feel ugly and gross any more thanks to my summer skirts and dresses.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Buying happiness: attractive exercise clothes

Since I only ever exercise at home where no one can see me, I've always worn truly awful clothes. The sports bras were nearly 10 years old, the clothes themselves were somewhere between 15 and 20 years old, and they had no redeeming qualities except that they're cotton and light and comfortable. They were horrible enough that if, while exercising, I had ever found myself in a situation where a fire alarm rang or I had to call an ambulance, I would have changed clothes into something that at least acknowledged that the 1980s had turned into the 1990s before saving my life. After reading about some emergency or another where people had to flee their apartment building with nothing but the clothes on their backs, I had actually worried about how humiliating it would be if I were stuck in my exercise clothes.

Just recently, on top of all those aesthetic problems, elastics started dying. I was crossing my arms under my breasts and tugging my pants up. So I finally decided to splurge on new exercise clothes.

I got Secrets From Your Sister to fit me with an exercise bra which doesn't let anything move (while still giving me a decent line) and is a very fun shade of purple. And I got a simple black and charcoal yoga outfit with lines that flatter my figure. Even though I shopped well and got everything at significant discounts, that's still about $100 spent on clothes for something I hate.

What I didn't expect is how good these clothes make me feel. I look like I'm aware that the 21st century has started! I look like I have a waist! And a figure! If I were interrupted without a chance to change clothes, I'd look like a perfectly competent, fashion-aware person who happens to have been interrupted while exercising. And, underneath it all, a fun purple bra!

Attractive exercise clothes don't help the tedium or sheer hatefulness of exercise, but they do help mitigate the indignity of it all. My morning feeling of "Blah, ugh, I have to go exercise!" is now accompanied by a tiny little glimmer of "But I get to wear my purple bra!" While it doesn't make the process pleasant, it does make it less unpleasant.

If, like me, you feel utterly disgusting and hideous while exercise, I do recommend getting something attractive and flattering to wear. It does help, more than I would have expected.

Sunday, October 09, 2011

What if some people are better at materialism than others?

Some people think that money, or accruing material objects, doesn't lead to happiness. My personal experience is that it my money and my material possessions do make me happy. There are a lot of opinions about this in the world, but most of them (including what I've blogged previously on the subject) are rather absolutist, in that they assume it applies to everyone the same way.

But what if it doesn't?

The first possibility that comes to mind is that different people gain different degrees of happiness from materialism. But sometimes I hear people saying materialism doesn't lead to happiness in the first person, i.e. describing how they would purchase material goods thinking it would make them happy, but it didn't.

I've never had that happen to me. How does that even happen? How do you not know that something isn't going to make you happy, and how does this happen repeatedly?

Which leads to the second possibility: what if some people are better at materialism than others? What if some of us are good at judging in advance what material possessions will make us happy, whereas others are just purchasing stuff willy-nilly or are easily deluded regarding what will make them happy?