Experiences vs Money/Things

[JamesR]

Recently in the past month I've been noticing this particular meme of "experiences not things brings happiness".

Maybe it stood out because I saw a version of it that was closer to "experiences not money brings happiness".

I've been frugal for the vast majority of my adulthood. So 18 years of frugality. It's so engrained, that it's almost a negative, the decisions I make don't necessarily bring me to a path of happiness.

I would like to increase the variety of my experiences. However, most experiences cost money, or have a high startup cost to get into it.

It doesn't seem feasible to enjoy a variety of experiences while being frugal.

How do you balance your frugality with gaining a variety of experiences in an affordable way?

[BlueNote]

Maybe it stood out because I saw a version of it that was closer to "experiences not money brings happiness".

Most of these "experiences" seem to be related to travel, eating fancy stuff, recreational activities, and sometimes family/friend oriented stuff.

I think the potential for happy experiences is much higher when one has enough money, skills and other capital to never have to work for a salary or actively run a business for money again. Other people may feel perfectly comfortable without the war chest, living pay check to pay check and spending all surplus on experiences. Personally I think the ERE way is a more robust and predictable model to maximizing happy experience in a lifetime. Just look at the journals on this forum to see the enormous variety and volume of experiences people are having and compare that to average people who work 9-5 and then try to carve out experiences during the weekends, vacations etc.

[Seppia]

in my household (DW and I), spending on "experiences"* is just a logical consequence of analyzing what we value in life / what really makes us happy.
I have never once said to my wife "wow I really remember fondly having bought that large TV screen", "our life would really have been happier had we purchased a second car" or "I wish our apartment was bigger".

Our eyes light up every time we mention our trip from Yellowstone Park to Moab to Lake Powell and ending in Zion via Bryce Canyon.

So by consequence we spend as little as possible on stuff, and use our discretionary budget for experiences mainly.


*95% of them being travel

[FBeyer]

Great experiences do not necessarily cost money. That's a false assumption. What you assume is that people's social media shit is representative of good experiences.

Cheap experiences:
fishing trips, reading with your children, taking walks with people you like, sex, gardening together, board game nights, social dancing, public lectures, meditation, drawing, visiting friends, read in the woods, take a day-long walk (AKA city hiking).

It's not that experiences cost money, it's that doing things makes you happier than merely owning things. Building a shed is actually a great experience. It doesn't have to be a 3 week vacation to a beach resort.

It's not what we do that matters, but how we choose to relate to what we do that matters.

Also: frugality is not about saving money, but about spending money well.

[IlliniDave]

That mantra is usually a high-consumption alternate to high consumption of stuff.

Happiness comes from within. "Having fun" is not the same as happiness. There are plenty of unhappy people who have a lot of fun--there's probably a similarity in the adrenaline/endorphin manipulation of experience chasing (using money) and that of buying stuff sometimes.

Nice experiences and nice things can both be great, but they aren't substitutes for happiness.

[jacob]

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/thing ... ences.html + comments

[ThisDinosaur]

You get a hit of dopamine when you buy an Experience or a Product.

After several months/years, the memory of the Experience is still associated with the emotions you had at the time. Meanwhile, the Product you purchased has been in your possession. You've used it every single day and gotten bored with it. The neurons in that circuit are now numb to that stimulus.

New Experiences vs New Products. At least with the former your garage is less cluttered.

[slsdly]

My brain must be broken. Put me in a new place, and I feel the same as if I stayed home. No dopamine rush. Maybe irritation since I probably won't get to sleep in my own bed . But my rowing machine makes me feel good months after acquisition.

Isn't dopamine better seen as the addiction response rather than the happiness response?

[Seppia]

Great experiences do not necessarily cost money. That's a false assumption.
*cut*
It's not that experiences cost money, it's that doing things makes you happier than merely owning things.

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/thing ... ences.html + comments

yes not all great experiences cost money. But this is true also about "things". A phenomenal pasta dish has a unit cost of below $1 and can give a lot of satisfaction.

The thing is: some experiences, and some things, cost a non negligible amount of money.
Since I allow myself a certain amount of money for "fun" things/experiences, I cannot (don't want to) do both.
I have found I get much more satisfaction from spending my allotted $1000 on a 4 day dive trip than purchasing a new flat screen.
Of course $1000 dive trips are not the only type of experience that gives me satisfaction. A $10 day hike does too. So during the year I have many more day hikes than dive trips.

In short:

Also: frugality is not about saving money, but about spending money well.

[Peanut]

As far as the high start-up cost, you might then try to trade a skill you have with one someone else has, like playing an instrument or something.

[Sclass]

How do you balance your frugality with gaining a variety of experiences in an affordable way?

I don’t. Still struggling after forty years of frugality. Suffering from guilt. Worrying about opportunity costs. Obsessing about waste.

I watch Great Houses of Scotland on PBS and I want to go check it out in person. But I cannot bear to spend the money when I can dump it into stocks.

I do get a real endorphin hit when I speculate and win. I’m kind of a gambling addict in securities. But that is a money generating habit for me.

I got stuck in my 35 year old car on the side of the road yesterday. That was an experience. The people in the car were livid saying they just knew that bucket of bolts was bound to quit. I just cannot bring myself to buy a new car. I got some satisfaction out of repairing it last night. I told my friends it would run before the sun went down. They were just pissed they missed our engagement.

I haven’t left the country in a long time. Actually I haven’t left the state in years. I keep asking myself what did I have to show for it the last time I went traveling?

So this is getting pretty extreme. I got so good at talking myself out of spending money I just don’t end up having too many experiences that cost money.

I scored a rare part for my vintage sewing machine in a junk pile at a rummage sale yesterday. Nobody knew what it was. What were the chances of finding this on a table at a rummage sale? It was like hitting the lottery. That felt awesome. Only cost me a dollar. eBay cost many times that for the same part. Balanced out getting stuck and towed.

So what gets me off? I don’t know anymore. I think this is a risk for people who get too good at sacrificing for the future. I’ve said it here before, I don’t know what to buy to make myself happy anymore. What I really want isn’t for sale or not good for me.

Everything seems like a shot of drugs now. Maybe this is why some guys hand their money over to a spiritual leader. None of the above. Money, experiences nor things especially if they can be easily exchanged for one another.

[BRUTE]

I keep asking myself what did I have to show for it the last time I went traveling?

what does any human have to show for spending some time on this mud ball? pyramids seems to be as good as it gets.

[7Wannabe5]

"In a wide, wide world, full of unimaginable numbers of people, I was- in addition to being small and insufficient- special. I was not only a quirky bundle of genes, but I was also unique existentially, because of the tiny detail that I knew about Creation, because of what I had seen and then understood. Until I phoned someone, the concrete knowledge that opal was the mineral that fortified each seed on each hackberry tree was mine alone. Whether or not this was something worth knowing seemed another problem for another day. I stood and absorbed this revelation as my life turned a page, and my first scientific discovery shone, as even the cheapest plastic toy does when it is new." -"Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren

In general terms, the purpose of any living entity is to maintain its own structural boundary and reproduce through the process of cognition with the environment.

[JamesR]

I don’t. Still struggling after forty years of frugality. Suffering from guilt. Worrying about opportunity costs. Obsessing about waste.

...

So this is getting pretty extreme. I got so good at talking myself out of spending money I just don’t end up having too many experiences that cost money.

I'm not happy that there's someone else also suffering this, but it makes me feel a little better to know I'm not alone.

This reminds me of "the optimizer" which was mentioned in the book The Paradox of Choice. The book said that the optimizer usually never really ends up happy because after spending so much time picking the 'best' possible choice, they end up with buyer's remorse.

I think that for the optimizer types, the process of choosing/picking/optimizing becomes the main game, and not the the actual result/choice. So maybe that kind of casts a pall on any experiences or things that end up being chosen.

Funny story of my optimizer nature: Sometime in early 2017 there was a massive sale of computer games on Steam, and I spent 3 days straight just picking out the best bang for buck games, analyzing the games by their reviews, and I ended up with a list of 40 top notch, mega fun games for maybe $80. I never bothered to actually make the purchase before the sale ran out.

[JamesR]

Our eyes light up every time we mention our trip from Yellowstone Park to Moab to Lake Powell and ending in Zion via Bryce Canyon.

That seems expensive to me. I have a tough time convincing myself to cough up money for that kind of thing. The only type of trips I do is slow travel with flights + live in a new place for a month or more at a time, where I rent a room, eat like a local, and keep my costs below $800/mo. I just work from coffee shops mainly and don't spend much outside of that.

Cheap experiences:
fishing trips, reading with your children, taking walks with people you like, sex, gardening together, board game nights, social dancing, public lectures, meditation, drawing, visiting friends, read in the woods, take a day-long walk (AKA city hiking).

It's not that experiences cost money, it's that doing things makes you happier than merely owning things. Building a shed is actually a great experience. It doesn't have to be a 3 week vacation to a beach resort.

I agree about building a shed being a great experience, I've rearranged my life to just build a house before, that was worth it.

But my normal INTP nature is kind of lazy which I don't particularly like. It often means that I don't typically actually go do activities that would be interesting. I might enjoy the activity when I'm doing them, but prior to actually doing the activity there's a huge amount of resistance against that, and I've been like that since I was a kid. It helps a ton if I have friends that enjoy doing things and I can just join with them, but that doesn't always happen since I relocate a lot.

Currently I'm slow traveling abroad with a fellow introverted friend and we just end up focusing on work and dating women, but don't do much variety of activities because of the cost and/or just complete lack of creativity/inspiration.

[JamesR]

I guess the root problem with this meme is the "Experiences" word here. It tends to imply unique memories that somehow stand out in a sea of all your life experiences.

So it becomes a hedonic adaptation issue, having to chase the next hot new experience for it to stand out.

So the trick is probably to just focus on normal every-day type activities and have a rich life with that.

[Seppia]

Our eyes light up every time we mention our trip from Yellowstone Park to Moab to Lake Powell and ending in Zion via Bryce Canyon.

That seems expensive to me. I have a tough time convincing myself to cough up money for that kind of thing. The only type of trips I do is slow travel with flights + live in a new place for a month or more at a time, where I rent a room, eat like a local, and keep my costs below $800/mo. I just work from coffee shops mainly and don't spend much outside of that.

Yes it was expensive, around $1800-2000 per person for 2 for 20 days all in, included flying from NYC.
Considering we knew we would not have lived in the USA forever (ended up staying less than 6 years) it was definitely worth the expense.

Also, to do the kind of travel you mention we would either have to be set already (we aren't) or we would have to give up our current jobs, which would not make any mathematical sense

[Sclass]

what does any human have to show for spending some time on this mud ball? pyramids seems to be as good as it gets.

Good point.

I'm not happy that there's someone else also suffering this, but it makes me feel a little better to know I'm not alone.

Hey it’s not so bad. What about the other extreme? Blowing away money doing things or buying things and moving on and on? Going into debt. Being owned.

It’s like the Matrix red and blue pill. Do you really want to be oblivious and happy yet fragile? Yeah I ate the red pill and it’s too late to turn back. But now I know the truth.

I still do stuff that costs money but it doesn’t feel good like it’s supposed to. I think I must have short circuited my brain’s pleasure centers with a frugality rewire.

I feel like an extreme environmentalist who can no longer enjoy a hot shower. It’s my fault, I did it to my own brain.

Not sure I can get back to that old place where I bought my first Sony Walkman and felt the thrill as I danced down the street listening to Michael Jackson. But it’s a ridiculous mental image and I don’t think I want to be there.

Is that bad or good? I’m unhappy because I cannot easily purchase a thrill that can be enjoyed guilt free...how bad is that? I’m under a warm blanket, in a quiet home wondering if I should make a latte or espresso this morning.

[JamesR]

It’s like the Matrix red and blue pill. Do you really want to be oblivious and happy yet fragile? Yeah I ate the red pill and it’s too late to turn back. But now I know the truth.

I still do stuff that costs money but it doesn’t feel good like it’s supposed to. I think I must have short circuited my brain’s pleasure centers with a frugality rewire.

Haha, the matrix analogy is perfect. We ate the red pill and ended up with a unique neurology

[Jason]

Not sure I can get back to that old place where I bought my first Sony Walkman and felt the thrill as I danced down the street listening to Michael Jackson. But it’s a ridiculous mental image and I don’t think I want to be there.

Whatever your feelings, I admire your courage to admit to such a thing.