This series of articles focuses on how you can spend your money to increase your happiness and is based on the book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton.
Today’s topic, the 3rd of 5, is Buy Time.
We all have heard Benjamin Franklin’s saying, “Remember that time is money.” This chapter from the Happy Money book focuses and presents this concept in a different way. Their research show that if you focus on time equaling money, it leads to decreased happiness because then you are not as willing to engage in unpaid activities that would increase your happiness like listening to music or socializing with people.
For me, a big part of this chapter is around our PERCEPTION of time. Those who FEEL like they have more time, are happier, even if they don’t truly have more time.
How you view the value of your time is also important. Generally, the wealthier you are or the higher your salary or hourly rate, the more you value your time and then you usually view time as scarce. This perspective of scarcity of time leads to more stress and lower overall happiness. 🙁
Generally wealthy people spend their “extra” time in activities that are higher in stress: shopping, commuting, and / or working. Sigh. The higher the income the more rushed and stressed people feel which (of course) does not correlate to more happiness. Those that feel like they don’t have a lot of time (low time affluence) are more stressed, don’t sleep as well, have more headaches and have lower job and life satisfaction.
An important take away for me is that you can do things to FEEL like you have more time affluence even if nothing else changes. I view this as a shift in mindset or making different choices that can increase your happiness.
A common choice is for people to move further from their work to buy a bigger house or more land. On average people in the US spend between 20-40% of their income on driving expenses. Of note, commuting was one of the activities that ranked highest for putting people in a bad mood and decreasing their happiness. It would be wiser to take a job that pays less and have a shorter commute, and then you would have the added benefit of that time with people you love or doing activities that add to your happiness. Humans generally underestimate the costs and day to day toll their commute takes on their wellbeing. The Happier Money book reported that 80% of the population said they wish they had more time for family.
Although many feel like they work more than they did 10, 20 or even 40 years ago, the data do not support this. The research indicated that in the US, we work the same number of hours as people did in the 1960s AND we have four additional leisure hours than people did back then, primarily due to gadgets and technology that have given us this additional leisure time. The issue is that we don’t feel this way.
Where has most of this additional leisure time gone? The majority goes to watching TV. The average American spends two months per year watching TV! YET this activity does not increase people’s happiness. They found that people who watch on average more than 30 minutes per day watching TV are not as satisfied with their life. They have also found that time watching TV is inversely correlated to wealth and income.
One way that people felt like they had more time affluence was if they helped others. Even if you don’t really have more time, helping others seemed to change and impact how stressed people were. The amazing thing to me was that they saw a difference in people’s perception of time affluence and therefore happiness with as little as fifteen minutes per day spent engaged in a volunteer activity. Wow. It has the double benefit of feeling good for helping someone AND helping you feel like you have more time available.
Too often we buy things to help us save time but then we don’t use that “bought” time on things we enjoy. Instead we often use that time on things like commuting, shopping, watching a screen or working which doesn’t add to our happiness.
Over and over again, the more I read, the more everything reinforces that socializing and spending time with people is one of the most important factors in people’s happiness and wellbeing. Make time for that.
A key takeaway from the book was to shift your thinking away from money and instead focus on time. A study was conducted where people did a word search with either time or money related words before they went into a coffee shop. They found that those with money related words worked harder and were in a worse mood than those who found time words. The people who found time related words in the puzzle talked more, socialized more and said their moods improved.
Thinking about time instead of money, gets people to do activities that improve their wellbeing. Time and money have much different mindsets. Focusing on money leads to stress, rushing, competing and often buying more stuff. By focusing on time people often think of things that are closer to their sense of their true selves and doing activities they enjoy. I know in the past when I have asked people to make a list of things they enjoy, the majority of items on the list do not cost much money or could be done for free.
To help you spend your money in ways that increase your happiness, ask yourself how a purchase will affect your time.
I think it is interesting the mental gymnastics we use to justify how we spend money when it usually doesn’t increase our happiness. Instead we would be better off by focusing on how we spend our time and making choices so we are doing activities that we truly enjoy.
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