How money can buy happiness

Challenge the old saying – here’s how money can buy happiness, not just through experiences but possessions too.

Show notes

I’m sure you’ve heard the sayings, ” Money can’t buy happiness. “”Go for experiences not things.”

However, in this episode of the “Midlife Spotlight” podcast, we discuss the relationship between money and happiness, focusing on the idea that money can buy happiness, not just through experiences but possessions too.

We explore the concept of anticipating, savoring, and reminiscing as key elements in enhancing happiness through material possessions, and emphasize the importance of aligning purchases with personal values and goals. Happiness through possessions can also come from a few of your favorite things (cue The Sound of Music!).

We also encourage you to think about the importance of living for the present while also planning for the future when it comes to investing in things that will benefit your life.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion –

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska –

Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.

This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.

Kate: Hello and welcome to Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act.

I’m Kate Campion. 

Sara: And I’m Sara Garska.

Kate: And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how money can buy happiness and motorhomes. Now, Sara, I just want to talk about this in the context of course that things are pretty tight for people around the world, right now, I don’t want to say that money is something that’s absolutely necessary for us to be happy. That’s not the point of this at all.

But it’s rather to think about the things that we may have purchased in our lives, the possessions that we have, and realize that actually they can bring us as much joy, if not more, then the traditionally held “go for the experiences rather than things.”

Because one of the things that I was thinking about recently, I had a colleague of mine. So I still work in an office a couple of days a week doing a different job. One of the things she said to me was that at the moment all of these friends of hers seemed to be going overseas on these really long trips.

She was getting quite jealous about it.

To put into context in New Zealand, it is quite common for people to do a lot of overseas travel because we’ve got quite a small country.

But because of COVID, of course, over the last few years, people haven’t been doing that sort of degree of travel.

There’s a lot of people right now making up for lost time. I would agree with her that I’ve never seen so many of my friends going over to Europe or other things like that for these extended periods of time.

She was kind of feeling as though she was missing out on something and feeling a bit unhappy that she wasn’t being able to have these experiences.

Like I said, that is one of the things that got me thinking about, well, actually there’s happiness to be gained from our possessions as well.

And possessions, not that we have to go out and buy, but the possessions that we might actually have.

Now you and I have talked a little bit about my motorhome before because it is something that has had such a massive impact on my life.

So I wanted to kind of unpack a little bit about how the purchase of our motorhome has led to increased happiness and how kind of a bit of the story around that is something that you can use when thinking about your happiness as well.

Sara: I’m be excited to hear about it.

Kate: Yeah, we go to rewind back to 2017 and in 2017 my husband and I were, I think we were driving to a farmer’s market and saw a sign saying that there was a motorhome show.

That’s my recollection of this. 

His recollection of this is that we saw the motorhome show advertised about a week or two before it even started and we intentionally went out there.

Whatever the truth is, I don’t know, we ended up at this motorhome show and in the show there would have been about 100 plus vehicles of all different sizes, shapes, know, campervans. The one that – I won’t ruin the story, but yeah, ones with like a truck sort of front and like a more boxy back.

And I know in the States, you have a lot that to me look like a bus, you know, like they’ve sort of very, very long.

Sara: And I know like there’s a C and there’s a Class C, a Class A, as much as I remember, and the Airstreams.

So we call them RVs here.

Kate: I think if you know the difference between a Class C and a Class A, you probably know more than most people.

Sara: I went to one show and I became an expert.

Kate: Yeah. Well, those shows are really fascinating because you know, you just see all these vehicles and they like look really amazing.

And they’ve got slide outs and all kinds of, 

Sara: They are so cool. 

Kate: They’re very cool. And we were so taken by them that we were like, this is something that we would really, really like to have.

We left, we checked out all the different RVs and we were like, we like this one, it was a Winnebago actually.

We like this Winnebago, this is work because I think that’s an American brand. 

Sara: A classic choice, yes. 

Kate: And so we left with the brochure and then nothing kind of really happened apart from, there was one time when my husband and I were coming home from school and we deviated and went through a little sort of rest stop that was by the river and there was this woman outside her RV doing yoga on a yoga mat.

And I was just like looking at her thinking, I want the freedom of that life. Like I really want this. I really want this, this is the dream. And so 2019 then came around. At the show, at the time the show was every two years.

And so we went back, we again went and lay on all the beds, you know, checked out all the things, asked all the questions, absolutely no money to buy one of these things.

But still like left thinking, yeah, we still want this, this Winnebago. And then what happened was 2020 came around.

Now, at the time, I had a rental property that I’d had for a number of years. It ended up being a really messy situation with the person living in there who was my mum.

She was hoarding.

It was, it was like, we ended up having to get her out of the house and it was just a really actually awful situation.

But part of the story that I told myself when this was all unfolding was that we were going to use the money to do something cool, which wasn’t a motorhome.

It was that we were going to take the year off and we were going to, I was going to explore, making a full time living from my blog.

And we were going to do a world trip. Not a world trip so much more of a trip to Europe.

And we had like a cruise, you know, we’d paid a deposit on a cruise and then we’d get to go and do all these things.

And then of course that year was 2020. 

Sara: Perfect timing. 

Kate: So we had no jobs and the house hadn’t sold because everything had to go into lockdown, so we weren’t able to proceed with any transactions.

One thing was sure that our trip was definitely not happening. And so the beginning of the year was a bit blah.

And then the house did sell. And then we thought to ourselves, what if we actually bought a motor home with that money?

So we had a couple of hundred thousand and we were like, and I think I mentioned to you before in a different episode, you know, we could have paid off some more of our mortgage, but we didn’t.

We were like, no, actually we’re going to do this. So the reason why I bring up the motor home is that I’m not very spontaneous person.

As you know from our episode when we talked about strengths, you know, I’m very much about research and planning and stuff like that.

But the funny thing is, is that the motor hom actually creates a lot of spontaneity in our lives and a lot of freedom.

But it’s also really cool because it’s like our own thing and it’s all inside it’s all decorated how we like it.

It’s got all that stuff now. And so when I said to Ben, know, what do you think is the decision that we’ve made that’s had the most impact on our happiness, say in the last month and the 10, 11 years we’ve been together and he was like buying the motorhome.

And so for both of us together, sort of like having that in our lives is being something that’s been really, really key to our happiness.

Sara: I love that.

Kate: Yeah. So with happiness, because the whole purpose of this episode is thinking about how you can be happier, how you can make more of your happiness with things that you already have, is there’s these three parts to it.

And so if we say that happiness is kind of like enjoying the moment and we call that savoring. And then we’ve got anticipation.

So if you’re thinking about it. If savoring is enjoying the present moment, anticipation is enjoying your imagining of what that moment’s going to look like or what that thing is going to be like in-

Sara: The future. 

Kate: Yeah, it’s like future, future thinking.

I think, you know, you were talking, you’ve talked before about the purchase of your house and how that was something that you kind of anticipated.

Sara: Yes. So as I’ve mentioned, I rented for several years. And every year, when my lease would be up, I would move because I discovered that, you know, I could pay a little bit of money and just start in a different place.

So Houston’s huge. It’s very spread out. And so I tried different neighborhoods and I kind of had found where my part where I loved living, but I was still renting.

And then, and I wasn’t planning to buy a house in 2022. But it was on my, it was starting to be on my radar for maybe 2023.

And then it was really cool because I was talking to a friend, and she was like, I don’t know if I should tell you this. I was like oh well you need to tell me now. And she said a friend of hers was putting up,was going to sell her house, it wasn’t on the market or anything. And I said, oh, okay. And a couple days later, I sent a text to my friend. I said, oh, tell your friend I’m interested.

And so her friend reached out to me and I came to look at it. I had actually been in it seven years before.

This is kind of the cool part. I’d been in it when my friend had been house sitting. And I remember being in it and thinking, this house is so beautiful.

I’ll never have anything like this. It just, for me, it was just like, I wasn’t even ready to save or anticipate anything.

It was just sort of, that will never happen. then, but once I saw it this time seven years later, then it was like, I still don’t think I can do it, but I want it. So I was already into that savoring and savoring, anticipating.

So things started moving and I’m not going to bore the listeners with the whole process. But yeah, I took pictures and I started imagining myself in it.

And then it became real for me. And then it was once I made the decision and it obviously is a common theme for me, but I made the decision like, I’m going to take this as far as I can.

I still don’t believe it’s possible. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to keep moving forward until someone says I can’t.

Kate: And so you ended up with the house, didn’t you? 

Sara: I did. 

Kate: Not that anyone can see it right now, but I’m looking at, you know, you in your house enjoying your home.

Sara: And I bet your year and I will add this. Like, so the friend that originally told me about it every single time I talked to her, I said, I wake up every single morning happy and I’ve never had that experience in my life.

I’m pretty optimistic and stuff, but I don’t remember ever like having a time of my life where I woke up every single morning just so happy when my eyes open and I see my bedroom, ‘m just like I’m living here.

And so I can really relate to that. So yes, scary, lots of money, all that stuff. But the happiness that comes from it.

Yeah, just I was not a believer things could make you happy till I landed here.

Kate: So true. And you’ve just summed it up perfectly with what I was saying about how you looked forward to it.

You imagined yourself being here and you got a lot of joy from probably bit of fear too when you’re buying a house. Let;s be honest,

You know, lot of a lot of hopeful anticipation. And now you’re in your home. You love it in the same way that I wake up.

You know, actually the last trip that we went on, I was driving. I was driving the motorhome and I said to my husband I never feel more in charge of my own life than when I’m driving this.

I don’t know why. But there’s just something about it.

Sara : You feel like a badass when you;re driving an RV. I’ve only been on one RV trip but I made it a point to learn to drive it as soon as we got in, it was like, just in case something happens to the other person, I should know how to do it. Driving through New Mexico and Colorado, through ,mountains, it is an incredible experience to be behind the wheel of a big vehicle. So I agree with that.

Kate: and then the same thing with you happiness too, probably not so much because you’re still living in your house, when you’ve been away you might think about your home and what you love about it and there’s alot of joy to be had thinking about it.

Sara: If you can get me out of the house.

Kate: I’m the same. Introverts.So the idea behind that little part there was then to think about when you’re looking at your things or when you’re planning on buying something is how can you maximize that feeling of anticipation, how can you really draw that out.

When you actually have the thing, how much can you enjoy being in it or appreciating it in the present moment.

And then even talking about the stories, you’re just reminisced with me then when you’re shared about how you saw the house, you didn’t think it was possible.

Then you went through and bought it and chances are you felt a renewed sense of appreciation and love for your house when you were remembering that struggle of it.

Sara: Absolutely. It still seems like a miracle. It’s just like- you’re right. Just talking about it, I have noticed as you’re talking about your RV, your face looks different. You always look beautiful. But when you talk about the RV, you just light pp and I assume I do that when I’m talking about the house.

Kate: You do. And so that’s, you know, I mean… Experiences are well and good and very important, but the things that we own in our lives can light us up too.

Sara: Yes.

Kate: Yeah. And then another way about money buying us happiness, that I was thinking about, was about spending in alignment with our goals and our values, and again, to tie that to the motorhome.

So I’ve done quite a bit of, you know, in my own life, I’m quite clear on what my values are.

And so one of them is a feeling of belonging. And that feeling of belonging is normally connected to a feeling of belonging to people, but also to places.

Now the funny thing about the motorhome is even though it’s, it moves, it’s mobile, it is still like my own place.

And I’ve got a lot of happiness in the different trips that we’ve taken with family members, for example, like it’s quite common for us to go on a trip with my parents who also have bought an RV the same year from the same place.

We always joke, you know, we look like we’re driving in tandem, but you know, We all go on trips together, but at the end of the day, we retreat to our own space.

We’ve rented houses for Christmas holidays, where we’ve parked our RV there so we can go back and have our place, and it’s been really great.

Also like I said about our little dogs, just love the motorhome so much. it really, like being in that place creates a real strong sense of belonging for me.

Choice. So I mentioned the woman who was doing the yoga thing, and initially I used to think one of my key values was freedom, but I’ve actually come to realize it’s choice, not freedom.

So it’s more that I’ve got the option to choose, and with this particular purchase, I now have the option to choose where to go on my travels in a way that I didn’t have before.

One of my love languages is quality time, so obviously that really feeds into that. 

Sara: With Ben and the dogs.

Kate: Yip exactly, and then like I said the relationship I’ve got with my parents, us both having a motorhome has brought a completely new dimension to our relationship because we go off to these places together. And it’s just  so much fun.

Sara: And then you still each have your own place.

Kate: I know. That’s the real plus side. For those introverts amongst us who really like our own space, so you’ve got your own space but you can go other places.

So spending in a way that creates that feeling of savoring, spending in alignment with your goals and values, can you think of any sort of purchases you’ve made that have really been in alignment with your goals and values that have made you feel good about them?

Sara: Yeah, yeah, so I’m a little bit different. One of the things, like I don’t have trouble spending on, so I do have trouble spending on some stuff, like travel’s something, just I have trouble spending on.

I didn’t grow up in a family that traveled and my husband and didn’t travel a lot, so I still haven’t got to the place where I can easily spend on that.

But where I do, and this is so aligned with my values, is I do spend on my education. Like, that is probably, that gives me more joy – after my house. But, you know, a house can only do so much, I love, like, taking courses.

I did my… I have a master’s in counseling from years ago, so I was trained as a counselor therapist, and then I worked in higher education.

I did a lot of career counseling and resume writing and those kind of things. And then, at this part of my life, I had gotten life coaching myself.

I had gotten a coach and that really helped me personally. And so, I invested in getting my education so that I could, you know, improve my skills in that way.

And so that’s… and that just seems like the gift that keeps giving, I learned… I keep… finding other things I want to learn and invest in.

But to me, that gives me more joy than anything. No one thinks anything about if somebody’s a golfer, and they belong to a club and all the stuff, the money that goes with that or people that have boats. So all that’s great. But for me, my boat or my RV is my education. And that just is where I love to put money.

So for me, sometimes it’s like Sara pull back on spending on that, then maybe you could take a trip.

Kate: Well, no, it’s the same thing for me actually, because another one of my core values is learning. And I’ve invested a lot of money in my own learning over time, because that gives me a lot of joy. So yeah, totally, totally can connect to that.

Sara: Not you know, because I think, you know, I worked in a college setting.

So I also love traditional education as well, love it just for its own self. So, but I think a lot of times we think everything has to be for a purpose.

And for sure, a lot of what I study is for good purposes, but it’s just also fun.

Kate: Yeah.

Sara: think that’s the part like it’s like, no, this is just fun on its own. It’s like, even if I hadn’t made a business, I still would never have regretted learning anything I’ve learned.

I just feel that passionately about it.

Kate: Yeah. That’s all about like expanding and keeping on growing. Isn’t it? Yeah. And so the third thing that I was thinking about in terms of money buying happiness was some other random research that I stumbled across.

And it was about our favorite things. So in this research, they did a study between people, they were talking about these feelings of like income inequality.

So income inequality is basically, let’s say you’re living in a house. Your neighbors have got a house and they’re living in such a way that makes you feel like you’re not earning enough money.

Maybe they’re doing some really flash renovations. Maybe they’ve just bought a new car. So it’s like you feel as though on the scale of things, you’re just not measuring up.

And what they found in this particular study was that when they got people to think about their favorite possessions, that they actually made them feel better and it reduced those feelings of income inequality.

And I know that today it is like we’ve been talking about some like quite big examples like RVs and homes that seem – they’re definitely not everyday spending items.

But in this study, it was actually about everyday spending items.

By that I mean like an item of clothing. And so you can’t see it behind me now because A, we’re not showing the video. B, I’ve got my screen on blur, but I’ve got this swan, a Crown Lynn swan that sits on my dresser behind me.

And when I wake up in the morning, I always like to look at it and it gives me like a nice warm feeling inside because it’s just one of my possessions that is one of my favorite things. I like how it looks. I remember the story around how I got it and it’s there. So like, yeah, even if those, like I said, those big examples seem out of reach, you can increase your happiness by simply thinking about like those small things that you own.

Sara: Right. Yeah, because, yeah, a lot of times, as you said that, I started scanning my house for those little things. I have a picture that my grandmother picked that over a hundred years ago and my mom had just given it to me since I got this house.

It’s fairly new in this house. But I never. It’s… I see it every day and I just. It just does something.

So… and there’s lots. I was thinking the first thing that popped to my mind when you were talking about that is my coffee machine.

Like, it’s like it was a gift from my daughter and just like it still makes me so happy every morning.

So I get a lot of joy from the little things too. 

Kate: Yeah. it’s about that. It’s appreciation. That love of the things that you’ve already got.

And to kind of tie into that is our… I know I said, think I said I had three points and that was the last, but there is one more.

It is quite important to think about living for now as well. As a cancer survivor and it’s something that I’ve talked about, one of the trickiest things for me was to balance like living for now versus living for a future that suddenly I wasn’t sure that I was actually going to have.

And as the years have gone on, like for example, I couldn’t even… Our retirement saving is quite different in New Zealand, but I couldn’t even think about saving for retirement because what was the point, I might not even make it.

But yeah, as you get older, as I got older and I got past that, I realized… I started thinking more in terms of making it to retirement and taking care of myself in the long term, but it’s that tension between not just always putting off… putting off… things for the future, putting off those purchases that you think might improve your life in some way.

Because you made a comment to me ages ago on one of our previous episodes when you said that if we just paid off some of our mortgage with the money that we got from the sale of that house, then all that would have changed was the numbers on a screen.

Because we weren’t going to be mortgage free by doing that. I mean, yes, it would have made a difference, but we were still going to have that debt.

Whereas by choosing to buy that motorhome, then we’ve already had coming up three years of joy from that. Like I said, has been the thing that my husband said has made the most difference on our happiness.

And it is kind of funny because we are about 20 years younger than the average motorhome person in New Zealand, when we first started going and everyone was like, are you borrowing your parents’ one?

No, no, that’s not ours. We’re grow ups. We have our own, but that’s sort of like something I wanted to share as well.

Don’t put off for too long the things that you might want to buy that you’re going to do it later or whatever, like if it feels like you’re ready for it, but you’re just letting that thing.

Sara: And I don’t think we’re talking about putting your future at risk.

Kate: So no, we’re not.

Sara: Because, but I think there is this, I just, from talking to people, you know, of course we wanted to take care of our future and everything, but I also see people, and I think this is what you’re alluding to is they sacrifice their now for this idea about the future.

And I, because this thought just came to me, I haven’t done any research, but I’ve seen things around like, you know, from the time people retire, you know, there’s an average retirement age in the US, and then there’s kind of an average death age in the US.

And unfortunately, those two are not super far apart. And so I think sometimes like if we just keep always putting things off into the future and we’re not really enjoying, savoring, our life now, I think that can have its own problem.

So we’re not saying go spend all of your life savings to go do the thing. But definitely maybe consider doing some of the things that really call to you now instead of waiting for another 20 years.

Sara: Because you might get those 20 years if you’re having some joy in your life.

Kate: And it’s so true. Yeah. So is there anything else you wanted to say on this topic?

Sara: No, this, I mean, this was a fun topic because anytime I get to talk about my house, it just makes me so happy.

And but having this conversation and not really thought about it in the same way that you had, but it made so much sense. You know, I can see the value of it. I really hope that our listeners are able to take that value too.

It’s like, yeah, get the pleasure now, as much as you can. Because I think once you start doing that, it opens you up to, like you said, when you first had your idea about getting an RV, it was another three years before it happened.

We’re not talking about doing something impulsively and just, like I said, going out and spending all your money, it’s like, but there’s fun in starting to envision it and to plan for it and to just anticipate it because that’s half the fun.

And then the thing you want starts working its way towards you. Once you kind of open your mind to it, a lot of times you can actually do things you didn’t even think were possible.

Like I didn’t think I could be in a house. And buy a house, and you know, but by allowing myself just to be open to it, then I saw ways of doing things that I could not have even imagined.

If I just said, no, no way. If my friend had told me that, and I was like, nope, that can never happen.

It wouldn’t have happened. And it was just by like, give myself little bandwith. Maybe like, yeah, probably like you and Ben did like, don’t know how it’s going to happen.

Maybe we can do this someday.

Kate: And I’m totally totally in belief of just like even dreaming the impossible dream kind of thing. Because like you see once you once you open your mind to the fact that could be possible, you don’t even know.

You know, I never thought never thought the way in which we ended up getting our motor home would happen.

And it was like, it wasn’t a fun situation to go through at all. But we actually in in using the money for that way, we actually made best of a bad situation.

So there was a lot that came from that. 

So to wrap us up, I just wanted to share that idea that happiness can be found in experience of course, you know, we were all told that but it can actually be found in things as well.

And then when you buy things that enable you to actually anticipate to savour and to reminisce things that are in alignment with your goals and your values or become simply your favorite things, they can all add to your overall happiness and well-being.

Sara: Absolutely.

Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can’t wait to see you next week.