Since spending money requires us to spend time working to earn the money, we might as well try to make sure the spending is worth it to us. That the benefit we get from the spending is greater than the loss of time we have given up in exchange. Note: we all have to spend some money on basic essentials to survive that we can’t avoid, so this is more about the spending we actually have choices about.
One way I think about getting the most out of my spending is by asking myself:
How much joy do I get per dollar from this spending? We’ll call this “JOY$” – joy per dollar spent.
When we can choose our spending, doesn’t it make sense to try to get the most joy (or happiness) out of it that we can? Especially when we are exchanging our time and life for it?
So then how do we measure our JOY$?
Here is the equation: it’s up to you
That’s probably not very helpful so here are 3 tips to get the most out of our spending:
1. We get more JOY$ when our spending is more aligned with our values
In the video course, we talk a lot about identifying what is really important to us – our why’s for living and our values. In short, we identify our reasons for living (why’s) which come from our core values about who we want to be as people. We then focus our spending to achieve these why’s and live out these values. So we will get more JOY$ from our spending when it is helping us achieve those things in life that are most important to us and the person we want to be.
For example, I get a lot more JOY$ out of a dinner out with friends than my third TV/movie subscription service because the first type of spending is more aligned with my values than the second type of spending (which I actually never end up watching anyways as I just scroll the selections endlessly).
2. We think about JOY$ relative to our other spending rather than on an absolute basis
We likely get some amount of joy of any spending that is optional, otherwise why are we spending it at all. If we are choosing to spend on something that brings very little joy at all, then the answer is easy: just stop spending money in that area. Hold on for a second while I go cancel my spending on my depressing news of the day website subscription.
But to get the most out of our spending when we do get some joy out of a bunch of different possibilities, we have to compare our spending to see which spending brings us the most JOY$.
So we can rank our spending on a 1 to 10 scale by lowest to highest in terms of the joy it brings us. Then we can ask ourselves if we want to actually spend more on the highest ranked items and less on the lowest ranked items.
For example, if one item is a 10 in bringing us joy (let’s say donuts) and another is still a solid 5 (let’s say a fast food Mexican chain that sometimes gets questioned over whether their beef is actually beef), then we can ask whether we should move some of that spending from our almost beef tacos to more donuts.
3. We ask whether the JOY$ from the spending lasts for a while or is relatively short lived
We have an amazing tendency to adapt quickly to change in our lives – whether good or bad – so that we end up in roughly the same place in our lives with happiness after a while regardless of the change. This tendency is related to a concept called hedonic adaptation. What this means for us is that spending that used to bring us much joy may bring us much less joy over time as we get used to the spending.
Think about how we feel when we first get a new car – it smells nice, it has new technology, it’s quiet and clean – then compare it to after a year when it smells like cheerios, we’re annoyed with the technology beeping at us all the time and it’s just part of our everyday lives.
So we think about whether the joy we get from the spending will last or not. We can do this by thinking back on our past spending experiences and asking ourselves what type of spending had a longer lasting impact on our happiness, including on our present day life. In our next post, we’ll look a bit more at what types of spending may actually add more to our happiness.
Takeaway
We aim to increase our JOY$ by aligning our spending with our values, and then allocating more to spending that brings us more joy that will last for a longer period of time. We are intentional with our spending to increase our JOY$ because we know this spending often comes at the expense of our time so we want to make the most of it.
