March 26, 2026 · 5 min read
Why Spending on Experiences Makes You Happier Than Buying Things
Why Spending on Experiences Makes You Happier Than Buying Things
March 26, 2026
In 2003, psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Leaf Van Boven published a study that changed how researchers think about spending and happiness. Their finding was simple but profound: people consistently derive more lasting happiness from experiential purchases than from material ones.
Twenty years and dozens of follow-up studies later, the finding holds. Experiences make you happier than things. And the reasons why have practical implications for how you spend your money.
Why Experiences Win
There are four main reasons experiences outperform material purchases in generating lasting satisfaction.
Adaptation. You adapt to things. The new phone that thrilled you in week one feels normal by month two. But experiences live in memory, and memories don't depreciate. The trip you took three years ago can still make you smile. The phone you bought three years ago is in a drawer.
Comparison resistance. Material purchases invite comparison. Your new car looks great until your neighbor gets a nicer one. But experiences are unique and personal — no one can make your vacation feel inadequate by having a "better" one.
Social connection. Most experiences are shared with other people. Concerts, dinners, trips, classes — they strengthen relationships. Things are usually enjoyed alone. And social connection is one of the strongest predictors of happiness.
Identity. Experiences become part of who you are. "I'm someone who hiked the Grand Canyon" feels different from "I'm someone who owns a nice watch." We define ourselves by what we've done more than what we own.
The Practical Problem
This research is widely cited, but rarely applied. Why? Because the spending infrastructure around us is optimized for things, not experiences.
Your Instagram ads are for products. Your email inbox is full of sale notifications. Amazon makes buying objects as easy as tapping a button. But booking a weekend trip, signing up for a cooking class, or planning a dinner with friends requires effort, coordination, and planning.
Impulse buying a $40 item takes 30 seconds. Impulse experiencing a $40 dinner with a friend takes planning, scheduling, and follow-through. The friction is asymmetric, and it tilts your spending toward things by default.
Rebalancing Your Spending
You don't need to stop buying things. You need to be honest about which purchases actually make you happy.
This is where emotional spending data becomes powerful. When you tag every purchase by how it made you feel — joy, regret, or necessity — patterns emerge that align remarkably well with the research.
Most people find that their experience spending (dining with friends, travel, classes, events) clusters heavily toward joy. And their thing spending (online impulse purchases, gadgets, clothing you wore once) clusters toward regret.
Not all things are regret and not all experiences are joy. A book you love is a thing that brings joy. A terrible concert is an experience you regret. But the general pattern holds: dollar for dollar, experiences generate more satisfaction.
The Memory Dividend
Experiences have a unique financial property: they pay dividends after the fact.
The $200 concert gives you joy the night of, but it also gives you joy when you remember it, talk about it, see photos from it, and bond with the friend who was there. The memory compounds over time.
A $200 impulse purchase depreciates immediately. By next month, it's just another thing in your apartment. No one asks about it. You don't reminisce about the day you bought it.
This isn't to say material purchases are always bad. Tools you use daily, furniture that makes your home comfortable, clothing that makes you feel confident — these provide ongoing value. The distinction isn't things vs. experiences. It's intentional vs. unintentional.
The Planning Premium
One counterintuitive finding from happiness research: anticipation is a significant source of happiness. People who plan experiences in advance get happiness from the planning itself, the anticipation, the event, and the memory afterward. Four separate happiness hits from one purchase.
Impulse purchases skip the anticipation phase. You go straight from "I want this" to "I have this" with no build-up. The total happiness generated is lower even if the in-the-moment enjoyment is the same.
This suggests a simple strategy: plan your experience spending in advance. Put a concert on the calendar for next month. Book a trip for the summer. Schedule dinner with friends for this weekend. The anticipation multiplies the value.
Applying This to Your Life
Pull up your last month of spending. For each discretionary purchase, ask two questions:
Do I remember this purchase? If you can't remember buying it, it didn't leave an impression.
Would I choose this again? If you could go back and reallocate that money to something else, would you?
The purchases you remember and would choose again are your core spending. Everything else is drift — money flowing out of your account without making your life measurably better.
Redirect the drift toward experiences, and your overall life satisfaction increases without spending a dollar more.
NALO's Joy Score helps you see which spending brings lasting satisfaction and which doesn't. Tag your transactions and discover your patterns. Free on the App Store.