Transcripts

Laura Rowley:
Research has found that women will overspend to stay with a social group; men will overspend to impress other people.

Laura Rowley, author of the book Money & Happiness, says unfortunately buying things and having money isn't what's likely to make us happy. In fact in an interesting way it contributes to the problem.

What scientists have found is people who have five or more friends outside of their immediate family are 50% happier than people who don't. It takes time to cultivate those friendships and if you're so busy earning so that you can spend more and more and more, you don't have time to invest in that.

To show how we tend to overvalue money, researchers put a quarter in a coin return of a phone booth.

And they had people go in and make a phone call. Some people found the coin in the coin return and some people didn't. After that they asked people to rate the happiness of their entire life overall. Well, the people who found the quarter rated their happiness of their entire life much higher than the people who didn't. So, it points up that importance of separating temporary pleasure from long-term happiness.

And Laura says true happiness comes when your money and your values are in alignment.

I drive a 1995 beat up mini-van - that's not my value. One of my big values is sending my kids to college and so instead of having a nice car, we put a little bit of money away every month for our kids and so I'm wealthy in the way that is most important to me.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.