New Research Reveals How to Spend Money to Be Happier
The Spending Myths That Are Costing You Happiness
You already know the feeling. You buy something you've been wanting for months, and for a day or two, life feels great. Then it fades, faster than you expected. Before long, the new thing sitting on your shelf just feels... normal.
That cycle has a name: hedonic adaptation. Your brain is wired to adjust to new circumstances, which means the emotional high from buying stuff wears off quickly. The car, the handbag, the new phone — all of them lose their shine faster than you think.
Here's the bigger myth: spending more automatically makes you happier. Research tells a more complicated story. Higher income does correlate with greater well-being, but the relationship depends heavily on where you start on the happiness spectrum. For already-happy people, happiness keeps rising with income; for the least happy, it tends to plateau around a threshold (Killingsworth et al., 2023). The takeaway is not that money is irrelevant. It's that how you spend it matters far more than most people realise.
The good news? Science has now mapped exactly which types of spending actually move the needle. Here are seven ways to get more happiness from the money you already have.
7 Proven Ways to Spend Money for More Happiness
1. Spend It on Someone Else
This one surprises almost everyone. In a landmark study published in Science, researchers at Harvard and the University of British Columbia gave participants either $5 or $20. Some spent it on themselves; others spent it on someone else or donated to charity. The people who spent on others were significantly happier by the end of the day, and the dollar amount made no difference at all (Dunn et al., 2008). A large-scale replication later confirmed the finding across thousands of participants (Aknin et al., 2020).
The key is that the spending feels meaningful and connected, not obligatory. Buying a friend a coffee or covering someone's lunch is genuinely enough to shift your mood for the better.
2. Buy Experiences, Not Things
Researchers from the University of Texas recruited 2,635 adults and tracked their happiness in real time using random text messages throughout the day (Kumar et al., 2020). People buying experiential things — dinner out, a gig, a weekend away — reported higher happiness than those buying material goods like clothes or gadgets, regardless of the cost.
The reason experiences win is simple. They live in memory. A meal you shared with people you love stays vivid for years. The coat you bought that same week? Your brain files it away almost immediately. Experiences also tend to feel more personal and unique to you, so social comparison plays a much smaller role.
3. Pay Someone to Handle the Tasks You Hate
Researchers analysed data from nearly 6,000 adults across the U.S., Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. People who spent money on time-saving services — a cleaner, grocery delivery, a cab instead of driving — reported greater happiness than those who didn't, even after accounting for income (Whillans et al., 2017). A separate analysis of nearly 40,000 participants found that couples who outsourced household tasks reported greater relationship satisfaction too.
The catch is that most people resist doing this. In surveys, fewer than a third used their money this way, even when they could afford to. The researchers call it a "time famine." If your weekends disappear into errands and chores you resent, outsourcing even one of them is a direct investment in your well-being.
4. Match Your Spending to Your Personality
A Cambridge study used over 76,000 real bank transactions to test whether spending alignment with personality predicted happiness (Matz et al., 2016). It did, strongly. People whose purchases matched their personality reported higher life satisfaction than those with higher income or higher total spending who were not spending in line with who they are.
An introvert who spends on books and home upgrades tends to be happier than one who follows trends and buys social experiences they don't actually enjoy. Getting clear on what genuinely excites you and directing money there pays off in lasting satisfaction rather than buyer's remorse.
5. Invest in Personal Care and Health
A major multinational study published in Nature in 2024 found that spending on personal care — gym memberships, therapy, skincare, health services — ranked among the highest-happiness spending categories tested (Stenlund et al., 2024). This category had not been a focus of much prior research, which makes the finding particularly significant.
When you spend money on your physical or mental health, you are not indulging. You are protecting your baseline. People who made purchases that consistently improved their happiness showed measurable improvements in overall well-being at a six-month follow-up, and the effect was comparable in size to the boost from simply receiving extra money in the first place.
6. Donate to Charity
Charitable giving consistently ranks among the top happiness-producing spending choices across cultures (Stenlund et al., 2024). Donating to charitable organisations produced some of the highest happiness ratings of any spending category tested, across both low-income and high-income countries alike.
One nuance: the study found that people who kept their charitable giving private reported even more happiness from it. Giving for the genuine satisfaction of helping, rather than for social recognition, seems to amplify the emotional reward. So the next time you donate, you really do not need to post about it.
7. Spend on Education
Paying for a course, a workshop, a language app, or a professional qualification sits in an overlooked category of high-happiness spending (Stenlund et al., 2024). The 2024 Nature study highlighted education as a spending type that generates significant emotional benefit and had been underrepresented in earlier happiness research.
The logic compounds over time. Learning something new builds confidence, often connects you to other people, and unlike a material purchase that fades, a skill you develop keeps giving. It is one of the few purchases that genuinely grows in value the longer you hold onto it.
What This Means for Your Wallet
The science points in a clear direction: money absolutely can buy happiness, but only if it travels in the right direction. Expensive stuff tends to disappoint because your brain adapts to it quickly. A gesture of generosity, an evening out with people you love, or finally getting your Sunday back by outsourcing a chore you dread? Those things stick.
Next time you have some money to spend, run it through this list before you reach for your phone to buy something shiny. Your future self will thank you.
References
Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Proulx, J., Lok, I., & Norton, M. I. (2020). Does spending money on others promote happiness? A registered replication report. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(2), e15–e26. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000191
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687–1688. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1150952
Killingsworth, M. A., Kahneman, D., & Mellers, B. (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), e2208661120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilovich, T. (2020). Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 88, 103971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103971
Matz, S. C., Gladstone, J. J., & Stillwell, D. (2016). Money buys happiness when spending fits our personality. Psychological Science, 27(5), 715–725. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616635200
Stenlund, S., Whillans, A. V., Chen, F. S., Dunn, E. W., & Thoits, P. A. (2024). How spending decisions shape happiness in everyday life. Communications Psychology, 2, 146. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00166-6
Whillans, A. V., Dunn, E. W., Smeets, P., Bekkers, R., & Norton, M. I. (2017). Buying time promotes happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(32), 8523–8527. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706541114
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