Can we get better at “buying” experiences like we can with buying stuff (as we looked at in the last post)? But does it affect our experiences if we think too much about the money we’re spending on them?
By being thoughtful with our spending on experiences, we can benefit in a few ways:
- We can learn which experiences are the most important to us
- We can learn how the timing of experiences matter so that we can make the most of them
- We can afford more experiences as we’re only paying for what matters to us and be able to save more towards our other financial goals
We start by looking at a deeper level what we are actually seeking from a specific experience and find out how to obtain this experience without paying extra for what we don’t care as much about.
Let’s look at a few examples that show how this works:
Entertainment
So recently I’ve been trying really hard to rationalize buying season tickets for my local baseball team that is historically very good at disappointing its fans (this is a lot of teams, but for me, it’s the Padres). The plethora of the different buying options on the number of games and seat locations that range from the price of a small car to a budget bicycle made me really think about what I enjoy about the baseball game experience. I could choose to sit anywhere from a feet feet behind home plate to the grassy hill behind the outfield walls and go to between 20 and 81 games.
So I thought about what was really important to me about this experience and realized it was mostly about being outside with friends and family, eating good food and talking about baseball and life (if you really want a conversation with someone, go to a baseball game, it can be so slow that there isn’t much else to do at times). Being close enough to the players for better yelling opportunities was of secondary importance.
Looking at the underlying experiences (outside, friends, food, chatting) from the actual experience (attending a baseball game) helped me realize that I didn’t need the more expensive seats to get the experiences I enjoyed the most. So I didn’t need to overpay for parts of the experience that were less important, which means saving money to be able to go to more games or spend in other areas.
My example was about baseball games, but this type of thinking to identify what really matters about the experience can also apply to going to the theater, concerts, or any other type of entertainment experience.
Dining out
I was just out of school, making not a whole lot, and then I got my first business travel experience for three weeks. And it came with reimbursement amounts for food that were well above what I normally spent at home. The first week was an excitement of going out and trying new places that had cloth napkins and ordering dessert every meal. The second week was getting take out and ordering $20 quesadillas from room service. The last week was just wishing I could eat a bowl of cereal and toast for dinner.
So what happened? The frequency of an experience can affect how much we enjoy the experience. So it’s not just knowing what we value about an experience but also understanding how the timing of having the experience matters. I very much enjoy going to a steakhouse for an anniversary or birthday but when I could do this weekly while on business travel, it just lost the specialness of the experience.
Some experiences feel meaningful to us because we don’t get to do them very often so there is a benefit to us in both having a better experience and potentially saving money by understanding how doing more of the same experience isn’t always better.
Travel
Now you may be thinking at this point, is this getting “better” at spending on experiences discussion really just about spending less money?
Nope. It’s about understanding when spending less or even more on an experience is worth it to us. Travel is an example for me where spending more on some experiences is totally worth it. After being too cheap in my younger days on travel, I realized I could reduce many of the annoying aspects of travel by spending a bit more and the overall experience got much better for it. Examples of this for me are trying to take direct flights as much as possible and staying in a place within walking distance of the main areas I wanted to be and that had more than one room area. I’m willing to pay more for these aspects of travel to have more time and rest while traveling with kids that improves the overall experience. Then there are other parts of the travel experience that aren’t worth it to me, such as buying clothes that change color in the sun, but may bring a lot of joy to someone else.
Takeaway
Figuring out what parts of an experience we value over other parts will be different for all of us but the process of being thoughtful about why we enjoy an experience will help us with the choices we have about what is really worth paying for. This allows us to focus on experiences and pay for what matters the most to us while improving our overall joy we get from the experiences. Plus, in the process, we may potentially be saving us money to use on different experiences or for other spending goals.
