In the article, Can Money Buy You Happiness?, written by Amie M. Gordon, she explains whether or not money can really buy you happiness. She starts out the article by bringing us into her mind as she goes to buy some new shoes at the mall. As she is pulling into the parking lot she notices that the parking lot is overcrowded, and she wonders to herself if people had read an article going over the benefits of spending money on experiences rather than material goods. She believes that the spending of money on material goods will make you feel happy in the moment, but as time passes that happiness quickly goes away. However, the spending of money on experiences rather than material goods brings you happiness that doesn't just go away days after
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He states that we can take our experiences that we might have not thought were the best moments, and we can look back and reflect on them and genuinely see how happy and fun the experience was for us. Amie gives us an example of this first reason as she dives into her trip to Costa Rica and how she thought the trip was miserable, yet she recalls on the moment and can manage to put a positive spin on the trip and can now look upon that experience and say that it was a very fun trip. She also contrasts the point where she says that she bought a couple shirts from Costa Rica, and how she thought that the shirts were very nice at the time. However, she states that the shirts give her no pleasure to look back on, and they are just hanging in her closet collecting dust (Gordon …show more content…
This reason states that material things can always be topped by other people. You go out and buy a very nice pair of shoes, you think they are really nice as the price tag for the shoes was $300, but when you show up to work the next day you see a co-worker bragging to the other workers about their new shoes. You wonder what makes them so special ann he tells you that they were $400, and that they were much nicer than the shoes that you just bought. He uses an interesting scenario to finish out this section of the article and round out his point on experiences are less susceptible to social comparison. He gives the people the option of making $50,000 while other people make $25,000 or $100,000 while others make $200,000. Almost 50% preferred the $50,000 just so they could make more money than the other people (Gordon 2017). The second scenario was when he asked whether they’d prefer two weeks of vacation while everyone else got one, or four weeks while everyone else got eight weeks of vacation, 85 percent of people preferred the four weeks even if other people got more (Gordon 2017). This solidifies the point of experiences bring people more joy than material things. The third and final reason is “Experiences help us create relationships”.He dives into this point as he has the idea that when we spend money on experiences we are usually with others while as when we are buying material
He states that we can take our experiences that we might have not thought were the best moments, and we can look back and reflect on them and genuinely see how happy and fun the experience was for us. Amie gives us an example of this first reason as she dives into her trip to Costa Rica and how she thought the trip was miserable, yet she recalls on the moment and can manage to put a positive spin on the trip and can now look upon that experience and say that it was a very fun trip. She also contrasts the point where she says that she bought a couple shirts from Costa Rica, and how she thought that the shirts were very nice at the time. However, she states that the shirts give her no pleasure to look back on, and they are just hanging in her closet collecting dust (Gordon …show more content…
This reason states that material things can always be topped by other people. You go out and buy a very nice pair of shoes, you think they are really nice as the price tag for the shoes was $300, but when you show up to work the next day you see a co-worker bragging to the other workers about their new shoes. You wonder what makes them so special ann he tells you that they were $400, and that they were much nicer than the shoes that you just bought. He uses an interesting scenario to finish out this section of the article and round out his point on experiences are less susceptible to social comparison. He gives the people the option of making $50,000 while other people make $25,000 or $100,000 while others make $200,000. Almost 50% preferred the $50,000 just so they could make more money than the other people (Gordon 2017). The second scenario was when he asked whether they’d prefer two weeks of vacation while everyone else got one, or four weeks while everyone else got eight weeks of vacation, 85 percent of people preferred the four weeks even if other people got more (Gordon 2017). This solidifies the point of experiences bring people more joy than material things. The third and final reason is “Experiences help us create relationships”.He dives into this point as he has the idea that when we spend money on experiences we are usually with others while as when we are buying material