Science shows that if you want to buy happiness, your best bet is to buy experiences not things. Physical objects may last longer than a one-off experience, but that fails to account for what’s known as the Easterlin paradox: We adapt quickly to our current levels of material wealth. We might be happier for a bit if we win the lottery, but in the long run, we’ll go back to however happy or miserable we were before. advertisement advertisement But that still doesn’t answer the question of how to allocate our wealth, especially when we have an unexpected sum of money to spend. Assuming our basic needs in life are accounted for, how would you spend, say, a surprise $10,000 gift? That’s the question asked in a thread on the forum Quora. Many respondents have absorbed the message that more consumerism isn’t the best use of money. The thread has all kinds of interesting ideas on how to spend $10K, and many of the ideas can apply to different sums of … [Read more...] about What Should You Buy If You Get An Extra $10,000? Anything But More Stuff
