The Gift of More
Holiday shopping can be a love-hate relationship
For some, the idea of heading to an overcrowded department store to sift through overpriced gifts that contain trace amounts of personalization or thoughtfulness, can feel like micro-torture or at best, a seasonal obligation. While this can certainly get your Grinch heart pumping, it doesn’t mean you hate the holidays or even gift-giving. It’s just not your bag, baby.
For others, they eagerly anticipate the holiday shopping season (usually sometime around mid Sept) with great nostalgia and maybe even a tinge of competitive flair. Holiday shopping can provide a sense of tradition as well as an excuse to spend the day with your bestie or other family members who share the affinity.
Are there other “types” of holiday shoppers? Sure, but these are just two examples on opposing ends of a shopping spectrum. Personally, I mostly fall into the first category (I’ve been called a Grinch more than once). However, I very much look forward to the entire holiday season, but I’m a strictly “celebrate one holiday at a time guy”. I loathe department stores displaying Christmas garb in October (insert eye roll emoji). But to be honest, I just don’t like the commercialization of Christmas and the societal pressures of buying “stuff”. So, several years ago I decided to take the red pill and free myself from these BOGO overlords and their materialistic matrix!
What does the science say?
Before I share my personal recipe for lower stress holiday shopping and sanity, let’s take a quick look at the age-old question – Can Money Buy Happiness? If you randomly survey 10 people on the street, 8 out of 10 people would probably say no, influenced by the long-standing belief and often misquoted verse that money is inherently evil and cannot bring happiness. This has been the subject of many scientific studies, but in the age of big data, science has shifted in recent years.
In 2010, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, along with economist Angus Deaton, published a landmark study suggesting that while earning more money improves life satisfaction, day-to-day happiness tends to plateau once household income reaches approximately $75,000 annually ($115,000 in 2026 adjusted for inflation). However, in 2021, researcher Matthew Killingsworth challenged this conclusion with a larger, real-time study showing that happiness continues to increase as income rises, even well beyond $75,000. In 2023, Kahneman and Killingsworth collaborated on a follow-up analysis and largely reconciled their findings, concluding that happiness generally continues growing with income for most people, although a plateau may exist among the least happy.
It's HOW you spend it.
So what does this really mean? Well, to put it very simply, having higher income isn’t a guarantee of more happiness, but it certainly helps. Well, yeah Duh! Nothing groundbreaking here, so I wanted to dig a bit deeper to see if there was more to the story. Not surprisingly, there is. When dealing with Life and Money, take caution. It can be a thorny rose and with most things in life, the devil is in the details.
Okay, so you have good income, things are comfortable and you’ve got a little jingle in your pocket. Great, but before you break the speed limit getting to the mall and handing it over to the overlords, let’s take a quick breather.
Research in behavioral psychology suggests that happiness isn’t determined solely by how much money we have, but also by how we choose to use it. Studies have identified four particularly effective ways money can improve our well-being:
- Buy Time Back: Paying others to handle tasks we dislike frees up time for activities and relationships that bring us joy.
- Buy Experiences: Spending on travel, adventures, and shared experiences often creates greater and more lasting happiness than purchasing material possessions.
- Save It: Building financial reserves creates peace of mind, reduces financial insecurity, and provides a greater sense of control over our lives.
- Give It: Generosity, charitable giving, and helping others can increase our own happiness by fostering connection, meaning, and purpose.
Which brings me back to my own recipe for holiday shopping, which isn’t really shopping at all. My kids are now college age, but several years ago I decided to throw them a little Christmas morning curve ball. As they were quickly approaching their high school graduations, I was becoming more self-reflective and began to think about fleeting quality time with them, seasons of life and the pressure of a Dad not giving lame gifts to his semi-adult children. I also waited until the last minute, but that’s a different story..
Instead of scrambling to buy them something that would be very forgettable, I decided to give them each a special weekend trip. The rules were they could choose any weekend, any US location and any accompanying event (concert, show, amusement park, etc.) to squeeze into the weekend. I designed a flier for each of them, printed and wrapped it and gave that as my single gift to each of them (my wife too). This helped me avoid holiday traffic and the mall, but it also created special memories that we’ll always have.
Buy the Experience
Experiences are one of my favorite ways to spend money. Buying experiences creates a sense of excitement with an anticipatory nature plus quality time together and as an added bonus, they don’t clutter your garage! While material gifts may bring immediate joy, their value and novelty fade quickly. In contrast, experiences, much like good investments create long lasting value that becomes more valuable over time. If you take a second to reflect, your most cherished memories were most likely experiences involving loved ones.
I realize you may not be able to take all 12 of your grandkids to Las Vegas to see a concert. Experiences don’t need to be extravagant to be amazing. One of my favorite gifts in recent years, was taking my mom to Clifty Falls for a day hike on her birthday. If you can go while the waterfalls are flowing, bonus points!
The takeaway: Money can buy happiness when we use it intentionally to create MORE freedom, memories, security, and purpose. The goal isn’t simply to accumulate more wealth, but to use the wealth we have to live a richer, more fulfilling life. So, this holiday season, I encourage you to consider these concepts as you think about your gift-giving options. This is your opportunity to break out of the Matrix and create your own rules!
Cheers, Brian
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