What Should Australian Families Do With Their $900?
By now everyone has read about the Federal Government’s plans to stimulate the Australian economy by giving workers who earn less than $80,000 per year a one-off payment of $900 starting this week. The intention is to introduce several billions of dollars into the Australian economy through anticipated spending by consumers.
What would be the very best use of this windfall for Australian families? Some people say that due to the uncertain times they will save it for a rainy day or pay down their credit cards, others say they are going to have a spa day or buy their kids the electronic gadgets all their friends have. As Christians we hear our church leaders suggesting that we should tithe 1/10th of it to charity, or to the Salvation Army for their Victorian Bushfire Relief efforts.
While you are deciding what you will do with this windfall, you may be interested in the findings of a recent study conducted by some California psychologists, looking at what kind of purchase makes people happiest, which were presented recently at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting. The study participants answered questions about a recent purchase, either material (a car, home entertainment centre, etc) or experiential (a night at the theatre with spouse, a trip to Disneyland with the kids, etc) that they had undertaken with the specific intention of making themselves happy.
The most striking difference was how the participants reported others around them reacting to the purchase of the object or experience. It turned out that the purchase of ‘experiences’ led to more family happiness than did the material purchases. This was because the experiences led to a reinforced sense of relatedness: the shared experiences led to family members feeling closer to each other, leading to social bonding during the experiences, and shared memories to enjoy together always. Shared experiences also allowed participants to feel more alive, and more like participants in life rather than passive observers.
Psychologists who study this area say that people adapt to a new purchase of an object within six to eight weeks. After that, the thrill and pleasure of novelty and ownership wears off. But those who chose new experiences tended to show both higher satisfaction at the time, and also over time through memory and reflection. So what will you do with your money from Mr Rudd? Choosing an experience to share with the whole family will give yourself and your family members much deeper pleasure in the long run than any new ‘thing’.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/10/happiness.possessions/index.html