Can money buy happiness if spent correctly?
If you’re looking for happiness, you might find more of it by doing stuff rather than buying stuff. That’s the conclusion of a 2009 psychology study that compared college students’ satisfaction levels with purchases of things (clothes, for example) versus purchases of experiences (concerts, for instance).* Over the past 35 years, research has suggested that additional money doesn’t make people much happier beyond a certain point. Once the basic needs are met (clothes, food, shelter), increased income increases happiness only slightly. “While the pursuit of money for its own sake may not lead to happiness, it may be that how a person uses their money can have an impact on their overall level of well being,” according to the study’s authors, Ryan T. Howell, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, and Graham Hill, a graduate student at the university. To test this thesis, the authors recruited 154 students from the psychology department at San Franci
