Can money buy happiness?

"Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer." 

What does it mean to be rich? We can talk about a person being rich... "That Bill, he has tons of money. Oh, to be that rich." We can talk about a country being rich... "Qatar is the richest country in the world." And then we can talk about "richness" that has nothing to do with money, but with abundance. "That chocolate cake was very rich." "Argentina is a country rich in culture and history." "I admire Mary's rich knowledge of the world."

But it doesn't matter how rich you are, because money can't by happiness though, right? Wrong.

Jing Yang Zhong and Vincent-Wayne Mitchell conducted a study to determine factors of happiness (printed in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology) and came across some interesting results. While about 60% of the things that affect our happiness are out of our control (things such as personality type and situational circumstances), that leaves a whopping 40% up to us to create our own happiness. And what the study found is that happiness can be bought depending on what we buy and who we buy it for.

Being able to spend money on purchases designed to create positive experiences increased people's happiness. Therefore, going to a series of concerts brings more happiness to a person's life than does, say, buying a few CDs of a favorite band. More importantly, people were more happy overall when spreading out their experiential spending--going to a number of nose-bleed seated basketball games rather than sitting court-side once.

Lastly, the study points out that these purchases effect people's satisfaction with the area of their lives that were affected by the purchase. People who spend money on Zumba classes are more satisfied with their health (as opposed to buying Twinkies, which one could argue also brings happiness). Those who spend money going skiing with their friends and family multiple times a season are more satisfied with their social life than those who might spend $1000 on a pair of skis.

So what does this have to do with travel? Anybody who has been on a trip, whether it was a two-day hiking trip to a local trail or a ten-day cruise to the Caribbean, knows that their wallets might be a little lighter, but they come back feeling better. Sometimes it's the break you experience from everyday life. Sometimes it's the cultural differences you experience to make you feel more worldly. Sometimes it's the thrill of zip-lining or bungee-jumping or Scuba diving and knowing it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But it's about the experience.

So travel often. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money. But it will make you richer, and as Zhong and Mitchell pointed out, it will make you happier.

For a review and synopsis of the article, please check out Psychology Today. For the abstract of the article, find it here.