Investing our money in experiences and travel makes us better

Investing our money in experiences and travel makes us better

According to a study, experiential purchases make you happier than material ones.

Spending money to travel rather than to buy trivial and material things makes us happier. To confirm this, if anything were needed, is a study conducted by some psychologists, according to which while the ephemeral well-being of shopping is destined to last the time of purchase, that linked to travel will last much longer. Thanks also to the memories that, for obvious reasons, make you happy throughout your life.





This is the conclusion reached by an analysis conducted at Cornell University, whose first author, Thomas Gilovich, found that shopping or shopping gives the same euphoria as travel. The difference is in the long-term effects.

What he calls "experiential purchases”, Travels but also concerts or massages are what it is for better to use one's money to receive concrete happiness as a return. In short, if it is true as it is true, travels make people peaceful and complete, even putting aside a good nest egg to go wherever you want gives real satisfaction.

A systematic review

Gilovich and his team looked at 1.200 online customer reviews: half of the purchases analyzed were experiential (restaurants, concerts, shows, and travel), the other half material (furniture, clothes, shoes, and objects). The results of the survey showed that people would be more likely to comment on travel, places visited or to recommend, restaurants to try or museums to visit, than to give opinions on objects.

According to the study, in short, experiential purchases increase the gratitude because they do not trigger as many social comparisons as material goods do: experiences improve ourselves and the perception of things around us.

“Our research is also important to society because it suggests that general well-being can be advanced by providing an infrastructure that offers experiences - such as parks, trails, beaches - as much as material goods,” concludes Gilovich.

What do we have to do? Let's try to spend less on material goods for a while and invest a little more in "experiences".

A good concert, a holiday, but also a good book or a film at the cinema with best friends could improve us as people and improve, why not, also the measure of our gratitude, in a relationship of give and take that goes well beyond beyond the latest fashion bag. 



Read also:

  • Traveling makes us happy, that's why organize the next trip now!
  • Travel memories shape our personality. Here's how to store them

Germana Carillo

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