Money Does Buy Happiness When Spent on Others
What’s the Latest Development?
It has become somewhat common knowledge that income earned over a certain threshold, usually expressed as $75,000 annually, does not add to the earner’s overall happiness or feeling of contentment with their daily life. While that may be true when it comes to spending money on yourself, spending money on others seems to return an even higher amount of happiness. To this end, researchers say that how we spend money has the greatest impact on whether our purchases will increase or decrease the amount of happiness we feel toward life.
What’s the Big Idea?
The notion that spending money on other people is more satisfying than spending it on ourselves has interesting implications in the business world. By extending the often unpopular metaphor that corporations are people, it may be true that individual companies will reach more satisfactory ends by spending their money on others, whether that means making charitable donations or making more of an effort to have personalized interactions with customers. Both individual and corporate spending that seeks to benefit others first falls under the same umbrella of social spending.
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