Imagine life without smartphones. No Google maps, no Uber and none of those apps that bring the many conveniences into our lives.
Imagine life without the internet. Or without personal computers. Or without televisions, microwaves and refrigerators.
It is easy to be happy without these things before they were invented and that was the reality for most of us while growing up. And it is quite possible to be happy without them even after they’ve been invented.
But it is so awfully hard to be happy without them once you’ve gotten used to them.
The same goes with experiences, though everything that changes us is all due to experiences. My daughters, since the time they started noticing, have stayed in nice places while on vacations. Until that one time we had to stay in a motel, and they still talk about it.
Such is human nature. We get used to niceness. It becomes the new norm.
And it is quite easy to bring niceness into our lives but extremely hard to let go. Finance writer Andrew Tobias says that a luxury once sampled becomes a necessity.
And once it becomes a necessity, the lack of it only brings unhappiness.
Consumption smoothing is something that gets talked about a lot by financial economists. In the most extreme version of it, you want to be borrowing money when you are young so you can have a bigger house and a nicer car that you then pay off as you get older.
Because when you are young, you have plenty of human capital but no financial capital. And as you get older, you turn that human capital into financial capital and pay off those debts.
So, the idea behind consumption smoothing is why delay the inevitable when the system allows you to borrow for a lifestyle that you are going to be able to eventually afford anyway.
But this notion that you want to have the same level of experiences for your entire life does not align with human psychology. You want a gradually rising standard of living to experience lifelong happiness.
These days, we stay in nicer places, but had I stayed in those places in my early 20s, I wouldn’t get to savor the experiences niceness brings.
Or when I am used to flying coach and occasionally get upgraded to business class, it gets to be a real treat.
So, money of course buys happiness. The way to maximize the return on that money on the happiness scale is to occasionally splurge and then revert to normal life again.
If you really want to feel sorry for anyone, feel sorry for the children of super wealthy families who will never get to experience the pleasure of a gradually rising standard of living. Because if you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth, it is basically all downhill from there.
So, pace yourself. Delay gratification. Live a little beneath your means. Tease yourself with anticipation and then savor those occasional splurges.
Thank you for your time.
Cover image credit – Michael Block, Pexels