The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Melissa Batai. Melissa is a freelance writer who covers topics ranging from personal finance to business to organics to food. She blogs at Mom’s Plans where she shares her family’s journey to healthier living and paying down debt.
Growing up, my family didn’t have much money. Many of my clothes came from my three older cousins as hand-me-downs. One time, I hit the mother lode—a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans was in the bag of clothes.
Woo hoo!
I finally had a pair of designer jeans. I wore them almost every day and felt like a million bucks. Once, my best friend asked to wear them, and I let her.
When they came back to me, they were covered with big white splotches. My friend had “accidentally” washed them when there was bleach in the washer. My jeans were ruined, and I was devastated.
Back to my unbranded jeans and my hand-me-down fashion.
In that instant, I learned how quickly the joy from material items can fade.
I’ve always been too cheap to buy designer anything. Why waste the money when the clothes will only last a little while? After my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans debacle, I never worried much about designer clothes.
In fact, I have decidedly not kept up with the Jones’ for much of my life. I drove a Toyota Tercel until it had 150,000 miles on it. Our current Toyota Sienna has 152,500 miles on it, and I have no plan to replace it any time soon.
I now regularly buy my clothes second hand, and in the world of big screen TVs, we make do with our 24 inch screen. Oh, we only have one television in our house.
My kids don’t have or play video games, and they have a very limited number of toys.
My husband and I have cheap flip cell phones with pay as you go minutes. No smart phones here.
We live a simple life, free of much materialism.
Sure, we’re on a tight budget, but mostly, my husband and I agree that we’d like to spend money on experiences rather than things.
I often feel alone in this thought process because many of the families around me have nice things—designer clothes, iPhones, new cars, etc. Yet, one researcher argues that my family and I are on to something:
“There’s a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will lasts longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong.
“‘One of the enemies of happiness is adaption,’ says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades. ‘We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them’” (FastCoExist.com).
This phenomenon explains why some people are always chasing the latest technology. You know the type. (Maybe you are one of them.) Even though your electronic gizmo, whether it be a phone, computer, video game, etc., is working just fine, you’ll put down your hard earned money to buy the next version. It’s a never ending quest to have the latest and greatest. I once worked with a man who had to get a part-time job on the side just to feed his technology habit.
However, Gilovich suggests, “Rather than buying the latest iPhone or a new BMW, you’ll get more happiness spending money on experiences like going to art exhibits, doing outdoor activities, learning a new skill, or traveling” (FastCoExist.com).
Even better, you won’t have a lot of clutter in your home because you’re not buying stuff.
Travel Experiences
In the year in between my undergraduate and graduate education, I had the opportunity to go to Switzerland to become a nanny for six weeks. I had never been outside the United States before. While being a nanny was pretty much a disaster (that could be an entirely different post!), I LOVED everything about traveling.
I can still remember my flight to Switzerland. I sat next to a man from Croatia who was a ship captain, and we talked almost the entire flight.
I had the chance to walk through downtown Zurich multiple times with the children, and I also took a trip by myself to the border of Italy. The journey was amazing.
Two years later, my cousin and I had the chance to go to China with one of my friends. We got to climb the Great Wall of China and visit Harbin for the annual ice sculpture exhibit. We rode a train for 20+ hours to get there. It was an experience I’ll never forget. To this day, my cousin and I can talk about that trip and instantly feel like we’re right back there again.
Dr. Thomas Gilovich acknowledges, “Shared experiences connect us more to other people than shared consumption. You’re much more likely to feel connected to someone you took a vacation with in Bogota than someone who also happens to have bought a $4,000 TV” (FastCoExist.com).
Two years after my trip to China, my husband and I traveled to Japan to visit his family before we became engaged. I’ll never forget walking out of the train station in Osaka and being fascinated by the busy traffic and all the different hair and fashion styles. I saw beautiful mountains and golden temples. It was definitely a trip to remember.
Family Experiences
Now that I’m older and have a family, worldwide travel isn’t as easy or as practical as it used to be. Instead, we try to travel locally and spend time showing the kids places rather than buying them things.
Since we moved to Tucson last summer, we’ve taken the kids to many different sites such as local missions, Old Tucson, and Tombstone. These trips weren’t always cheap, but they created memories that bond us as a family.
Why Are Experiences So Much Better than Things?
Think about your things. How many do you truly value? I can think of sentimental things that I love like a few of my late grandma’s possessions that I have or the ring I bought in Ireland, but honestly, there are not many material things that I’m attached to.
By contrast, I think fondly on all of my vacations, even a trip to Ireland where we stayed in a dank, damp cottage and found, in our beds that were so old that they sunk in the middle, many spiders. It wasn’t a good time while I was there, but now, all of us who went look back on the trip fondly and with laughter.
The Atlantic supports this idea, arguing, “Looking back on purchase made, experiences make people happier than do possessions. It’s kind of counter to the logic that if you pay for an experience, like a vacation, it will be over and gone; but if you buy a tangible thing, a couch, at least you’ll have it for a long time. Actually most of us have a pretty intense capacity for tolerance, or hedonic adaptation, where we stop appreciating things to which we’re constantly exposed. iPhones, clothes, couches, et cetera, just become background. They deteriorate or become obsolete. It’s the fleetingness of experiential purchases that endears us to them. Either they’re not around long enough to become imperfect, or they are imperfect, but our memories and stories of them get sweet with time. Even a bad experience becomes a good story.”
How about you all? What do you prefer? Possessions or experiences? Did you prefer one previously and now you prefer the other?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy https://www.flickr.com/photos/brianauer/2112309566/
