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Millennials who buy less are happier
- pydry 4y agoPeople who earn enough to put money aside are experience less psychological distress and therefore happier, says study's author. News at 11.
- tinglymintyfrsh 4y agoMainstream media gaslighting Millennials having less discretionary income to feel happier about it? Also, sure, poor people in non-urbanized, less technologically advanced situations are happier but at what trade-offs?
- californiadreem 4y agoThere's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
- alyandon 4y agoAlso, sure, poor people in non-urbanized, less technologically advanced situations are happier but at what trade-offs? I grew up in a small oilfield town. I, fortunately, managed to escape but I can tell you with no equivocation that "happy" is not an adjective I'd use to describe the majority of the population of that place.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 4y agoFor this millenial, stuff is cheap. Space to put stuff is expensive. It is far too easy to get all the stuff you'd ever want, but unless you can afford to live in a giant ranch-house, the clutter will drive you mad. So yeah, getting rid of things makes me very happy.
- olliej 4y agoI'll take correlation or causation for $100 Alec. More seriously the article doesn't really provide compelling argument for causation in either direction.
- hindsightbias 4y agoVirtual consumption is still consumption.
- NemoNobody 4y agoNot at all like consumption as defined in the pre digital world. For example, if I create a digital comic and publish it to one website and all 8 billion people alive read that comic, UNIVERSAL consumption - I still just made one thing, one time and published it once. It also still exists for all future humans to consume and can be consumed repeatedly without limit.
- LewisVerstappen 4y agoPeople who dont take financial advice from CNBC are richer
- Arrath 4y agoI am happier buying less, because it means I'm socking away more safety net for the next time the economy takes a shit.
- Ancalagon 4y agoPeace of mind for the next once-in-a-lifetime economic downturn can’t be beat, that’s for sure.
- no_wizard 4y agoof which, I've experienced 3 since 2007. - Housing Down Turn - Start Of Pandemic Downturn (not everything was a rocket ship) - Post Pandemic Downturn Not so once in a lifetime, it seems. EDIT: if I include what I witnessed with my parents, I'd include the 90s / early 2000s tech bubble burst in this, which would make it 4
- foepys 4y agoGP made a joke ;) Millennials and GenZ have been getting told this "once in a lifetime" story for years now. It's the same with all these natural disasters that apparently only happen once in a century every few years.
- NemoNobody 4y agoThat's called Capitalism. The Economic system we've built our entire society upon breaks every 7-10 years - that's totally normal, but sometimes it breaks more than expected - as you stated, also not very rare. Plus it requires 3% gains each year forever - which is obviously impossible. I'm just over the whole thing really.
- ac29 4y ago> Plus it requires 3% gains each year forever - which is obviously impossible. You can buy 30 year Treasury bonds that pay well over 3% (the market rate was 3.88% yesterday). 30 years isnt forever, but its a substantial portion of a human lifetime. For those worried about inflation, 30 year TIPS are paying 1.54% real (inflation + 1.54%).
- djha-skin 4y agoOver specific conclusion. Anyone who buys less is probably happier. Wise spending is a universal, timeless principle of happiness.
- shadowgovt 4y agoIt may also be an effect of happiness (in the "contentedness" sense), which means that if someone is unhappy, telling them "Just buy less" may be a worthless remedy for them.
- moffkalast 4y agoEspecially if you have an account on Wise.com, then every purchase with it is a Wise purchase taps temple. Happiness speedrun any%.
- wutheringh 4y ago[dead]
- zamalek 4y agoLiving with (and having experienced multiple times) the degree of property crime in Johannesburg South Africa taught me an extremely valuable lesson: more stuff is more worries. While nice expensive things getting stolen doesn't translate to everywhere in the world, nice things costing you more money and more stress does. For example, having to wait for a scarce part to repair your lambo. Or having to drive your lambo at 1mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoI'm beginning to wonder if cnbc is already using gpt3 to write fluff articles on nothing-burger studies. We've known for decades that buying material things does not make one happier long term, due to the headonic treadmill. Stress makes one less happy. Financial security reduces stress. Spending less than you make and saving leads to financial security. Therefore, being fiscally responsible leads to increased happiness. How is this news to anyone?
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- justincredible 4y ago[dead]
- Nasrudith 4y agoIt may not be news to you but a lot of people have truly dismal fiscal literacy and terrible habits. The sitcom credit card episode trope is real, which surprised me as I thought of it as contrived stupidity since I was a child. Hell, many regard /thinking with math and using it to make decisions/ as inhuman.
- midoridensha 4y ago"Journalists" have been writing fluff articles for ages. I've been seeing these fluff articles on nothing-burger studies for many years now, long before GPT3. If anything, GPT3-written fluff articles will be an improvement.
- comonoid 4y agoMillenials who are happier buy less.
- SaintSeiya84 4y agoindeed, people buy stuff to fill a void in their lives, don't have the void? don't need to buy.
- notch898a 4y agoI started buying more shit once I was strapped down with family responsibilities. When I had little responsibilities going for a weeklong hike and camp or whatever is liberating and costs almost nothing so can save a lot. With a shrieking toddler you'll be very lucky if they tolerate something like that for 2 miles and a few hours, so the unhappiness of being unable to fulfill your goals gets replaced by some meager slivers of efficiency from material goods and home-based hobbies that cost money in the form of the rent to house the hobby if nothing else. I wonder how much of this is "I can no longer do the shit that I really enjoy for free, so I'm at least going to buy a nice lobster to eat in the 15 minutes I have before the next meltdown of the toddler or caretaking of the elderly parent."
- bennysonething 4y agoYou've just described what has been happening to me since becoming a parent. Suddenly consumer electronics matter to me because I'm stuck in the house a lot more. I regret my purchases. But if you can only watch movies in the house then a good TV and sound bar are nice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- coolbreezetft22 4y agoSame thing happened to me. Since becoming a parent I've gotten back into video games like I was when I was a kid/teenager. Before I had my first kid we didn't even have a TV now there are 3 in my house. I also read a lot more books as well. It's much harder to just spontaneously go out and do stuff with friends. Even when the kids have been put to bed and are asleep you can't just leave the house so I end doing things at home like playing games. I've definitely had my share two mile hikes that end in whining and complaints but as they get older (6 and 3 now) it's gotten better and more activities open up
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoHm, let me guess. So we take a generation that has been essentially subjected to the worst generational economic warfare in modern memory (from the boomers). Where basic subsistence existence while saddled with bloated college loans, no job prospects, inflated housing costs, exhorbitant healthcare, high food and rising energy/fuel costs... So basically, those who are "buying more" in the millenials aren't doing it by choice... basic living takes up that much more of their income, which is the definition of economic insecurity. They aren't ABLE to save. Another word for those people is "poor". But those millenials that aren't "buying more" by some relative percentage of their income are probably... more economically secure. Yes, they are saving because the CAN save and they aren't "poor". Millenials are definitively less consumerist than boomers. That isn't some pop sociology take, it is basic economics: THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY to be consumerists to the standards of the boomers. You don't need to ascribe it to some superior collective ethos, or arbitrary generational trend. It's the result of boomer economic warfare on all the other generations. The boomers should have their medicare and social security yanked for what they did to this country. Source: Gen X-ish, not a millenial.
- agentwiggles 4y agoI was recently fantasizing about winning the lottery and had the somewhat funny realization that I really couldn't think of what _things_ I'd want to buy. I'd buy a nice but not extravagant house, on a nice but not huge piece of land, and just enjoy having the free time to do things like spending time with my family and playing guitar. In short, what I want out of life is largely not material things, but just a nice place to exist and pursue my interests. I realize, of course, that nothing about this is particularly radical, I don't expect this comment to blow anyone's mind. By my estimate a cool 8-10 million would be more than sufficient for me to have basically everything I ever wanted - i.e. buy the aforementioned nice home and then live comfortably off the returns for the rest of my days. If any recently minted tech billionaires reading this would like to donate to the cause of me fucking off from society to the woods, feel free to shoot me an email ;)
- mrccc 4y agoIf you haven't yet, I'd recommend to check out the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). You probably need much less than 8-10 million to exist and pursue your interests indefinitely. I'd recommend the blog by Mr. Money Mustache as a good entry-point.
- hellothere1337 4y agoWait until you'll own nothing. That's when the real happiness kicks in.
- SaintSeiya84 4y agothat's the lie of the minimalism: blaming stress and life misery on the stuff you own. Is rather what you don't own the cause of stress and misery.
- velmu 4y agoHuh? Imagine owning a motorboat and not owning a motorboat. Who has the stress?
- SaintSeiya84 4y agothe one without the motorboat that will be probably poorer than the first and cannot take his family on a motorboat trip every weekend. Also renting a motorboat is a stressor too in case you can afford it.
- now__what 4y agoA motorboat is a silly example that most people don't want anyway. Minimalism is, like consumerism, still obsessed with things. Hop onto r/minimalism and you'll quickly find many people who stress over not having fewer material possessions, and who force themselves to forgo essentials like clothing and hygiene products. It's not the final answer.
- NemoNobody 4y ago"Lie of minimalism" - I've never encountered that belief before - you've obviously never tried it. Minimalism doesn't mean "going without" it means finding out what you need to be happy, and having only that stuff.
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoIs there anyone who truly believes that, or is it just something the WEF tries to convince people to believe? Not knowing if the landlord is going to "alter the deal" on a month-to-month basis is stress-inducing, not happiness-generating.
- mattnewton 4y agoPeople who can buy more services instead of goods tend to be wealthier. I’m happier now that I can just Lyft/uber/bus/subway everywhere and don’t have to own a car- but when I was poorer I couldn’t afford to just grab a 30 minute taxi whenever I wanted and I had to own a car. I feel like this is a huge confound.
- SaintSeiya84 4y agoIs the other way around: people that are wealthier can afford to buy more services. They are objectively more expensive than owning in the long run.
- mattnewton 4y agoI think we’re saying the same thing?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- velmu 4y agoAll depends. Regarding moving about every day, hard to beat owning a beater Toyota or Honda over a 2-3 year period than using Lyft or Uber for that. But if you want to move around with the latest gadgets a couple of days a week, maybe car sharing or taxi or sharing makes more sense.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoI think this depends on the service being purchased and the location. Cars have an upkeep cost, insurance, etc. If you're using a car only sparingly it may in fact be cheaper to use a service.
- realPubkey 4y agoGet even richer an rent a house in the middle of the city, ed voila you "save" even more money.
- tippytippytango 4y agoAs a millennial that developed a shopping obsession for a few months last year, it made me miserable. Every time I bought something I’d be thinking about what I needed to buy next to solve the (very minor) problems the new thing created. Endless research trying to buy the right thing.I’d buy something and get some dopamine for 5 minutes then have buyers remorse for days. I cut all that off and I feel so much better. I have learned how to love the things I have instead of finding flaws for an excuse to buy the next thing.
- bennysonething 4y agoThis is exactly what happened to me last year. I used to be pretty frugal. Rarely replaced computers or other consumer electronics. Then I ended up buying a mid range sound bar. A very good oled TV. And a graphics card. Really stupid. It cost me more than mone, it was all the time researching, reading endless reviews. Configuring it all.
- t3rabytes 4y ago> it was all the time researching, reading endless reviews Interesting. This is actually where the dopamine hit comes from for me -- being educated at the things I want to buy at the rest for whatever price-point and goal I'm trying to achieve, whether that's something for the house (TV) or something related to a hobby (bike, espresso machine, etc).
- tippytippytango 4y agoYes, it really is the time more than the money. When you realize how much time was spent trying to decide if it’s worth paying an extra $200 for a feature… ouch
- midoridensha 4y agoI don't see what's stupid about this. How often do you replace your sound bar or TV? I bought some nice monitors for my PC setup 1-2 years ago after a bunch of research, but they were replacing 10+ year old monitors. I don't expect to replace the new ones any time soon, so it's not like I'm doing endless research on computer monitors. I stopped after I got these. Now I just enjoy them. I also got a TV and soundbar less than 6 months ago after lots of research; I no longer research those things at all. I'll probably keep both of them for many years too.
- hooverd 4y agoI was curious about the first author, and apparently she is the "Petsmart Associate Professor, Retailing and Consumer Sciences" at the Norton School of Human Ecology at UArizona. Do other companies have sponsored professorships? Also here's the study in question: https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/materialist-values-financial-and-pro-environmental-behaviors-and- https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/materialist-valu...
- Ancalagon 4y agoWow what a title.
- klondike_klive 4y ago"Ma! I got tenure Ma!"
- noncoml 4y agoCorrelation not causation? Could it be that people who are unhappy resort to buying for their dopamine fix?
- Buttons840 4y agoI've learned to appreciate old damaged things. I dropped my new MacBook and bent the case. Great, now I don't have to worry about keeping it in perfect condition anymore, I can just enjoy using it. If it stops working, great, now I get to buy a new one that isn't damaged. That bent case ultimately relieved me of a lot of anxiety.
- Enginerrrd 4y agoOh yeah, getting the first scratches and dings in an expensive thing is very freeing. On the other hand you can probably take it too far. I've got a 2013 HP laptop whose case is physically broken in multiple ways. Yet, I run linux on it, and I've replaced the battery once or twice and it meets my needs so I've yet to upgrade. When I do, I'll buy an ~2019-2020 vintage thinkpad or something and I'll be stoked. I've been doing this with phones since forever. Every upgrade is really significant, and its cheap since it's a couple years out of date.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoI'm a big fan of 2nd hand, goodwill, and garage sales. I've gotten so fed up with Ikea tier furniture that a good garage sale will net me things that are cheaper and far more reliable than anything I'd buy in a store.
- ElevenLathe 4y agoI'm an estate sale hound too, but at some point somebody has to make/buy new stuff for people to buy at swap meets in 50 years. I'm wondering if it will be possible to buy affordable, non-trash-tier furniture in another 50 years? Presumably 80%+ of the antiques that exist now will still exist, but I'm guessing effectively none of the Ikea-grade (and crappier) stuff will.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoThere's still good wooden furniture made out there but it's incredibly pricy. I presume this is what will be in antique shops. Shame that we'll probably end up with fientorue that's just built into the walls with padding replaced from time to time. When I lived in California, I managed to furnish a good amount of my home with street finds. Solid wood furniture, tables, one time a color laser printer, and my personal favorite: an LCD tv where the previous owner forgot to sign out of the smart tv.
- orwin 4y agoYou can also buy solid wood furniture at Ikea, but it cost a bit more. In fact, i have two solid wood furniture in my house from Ikea. The rest i built with my father. Mostly pine, with ash for the more delicate stuff (like chairs).
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoGood to know, though I'd rather own the hand made pieces made by you and your father. The love and care oozes from the wood ;)
- standardUser 4y agoAs a young adult I was baffled by the way older generations seemed to have endless money for furniture and electronics and pricier household items. The "standard" method of furnishing a room costs like $5k per room. How were these middle class families furnishing these massive 4 bedroom houses in the burbs with dens and dining rooms and patios, etc? I suppose these are mostly one time purchases, but then there's the new stereo, new and bigger TV every few years, new speakers, and endless stream of seldom-used kitchen appliances. Sometimes it seemed like people were using their limited wealth to entomb themselves in their own home. Not that plenty of Millennials haven't done the same thing! But this article is basically about how having a budget probably makes you less stressed than not having a budget, which is far less interesting in my mind that how and why people spend their money, and the generational differences.
- jerf 4y agoDig into inflation statistics for the past several decades and dig past the single unified number. That has its utility, but you have to remember it is a summary statistic, and in this case, it is obscuring the answer to your question. Dig into what it is summarizing to a higher level of detail. And the resulting answer is fairly simple: They literally had more money, relatively speaking, for that sort of stuff. Why? Well, that's complicated, and there's a lot of subjectivity in the judgment of it. Some of it is that a higher "standard of living" means that while your housing today may be more expensive than the "same house" 70 years ago, it isn't the "same house". As a simple example, your wiring is a lot nicer, but that cost some money. (This comes to mind because of the horror stories my father is telling me about the renovating he is having to do to his parent's house to get it on the market.) One could write books on the ways your house is not actually the "same house", mostly in good ways. Some of it some issues related to wealth disparity and the way more of our wealth generation isn't going into our pockets, for a wide variety of reasons, with a wide variety of subjective valuations attached to those reasons. Some of it is that they simply didn't have the ability to spend money on what we do now; many goods and services we use today didn't even exist then. I'm trying to avoid significant value judgments in this post, even though I have opinions all day long on these matters, because the simple answer to your question is just, they literally had a larger proportion of their income to spend on such things.
- ryanSrich 4y agoAs a millennial. Here's a neat little hack to spend less. Have kids. That way, all of your discretionary income can go to paying for daycare! /s
- Xylakant 4y agoDidn’t work for me. Daycare is free, except for 20EUR lunch money per month. /s
- Enginerrrd 4y agoNo joke! We were paying well over $2,000/month for two kids part time. All the daycares have a waiting list that is months to years long and you can't get on it until you have a birth certificate. That's INSANE. No wonder no one my age is having kids. We need to start enacting policies that support families with young kids like, NOW, before we are really feeling the demographics crunch because in 20 years it's going to be WAY too late.
- ryanSrich 4y agoIt truly is obscene how anti-children the US is. We paid $13,000 out of pocket WITH healthcare insurance for each our births (since we never get close to hitting the deductible). My wife didn't get a single day of paid maternity leave (either legally through the state, or from her work). Then, once they were ready to go to daycare that's $2,300/month per child.
- californiadreem 4y agoThis poem by Wordsworth comes to mind: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. —Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn." When it comes down to it, I just want to have certainty when I go to bed at night that I'm not failing myself, my family, or my world. I desire a clean conscience and no regrets and no one can sell those to me.
- jeffwask 4y agoAs a Genxer for my wife and I the thing that helped the most in getting off the consumerism cycle was abandoning all commercial television, paying for commercial free services, and cranking up the ad blockers. The constant barrage of psychological manipulation to tell you how you are not keeping up with the Jones's is overwhelming. I almost can't stomach event TV like the Super Bowl or New Years. It feels like the event is no longer importation and barely the focus as they slam cut from commercial to commercial designed to make you feel worse about yourself and push you to buy the next thingy. I honestly start getting a headache it's so much worse than it was even 10 years ago. It's like looking at the code of the Matrix now and it disgusts me. The focus isn't on entertaining the audience anymore it's about keeping you captive while the pull apart your psyche. I have a 10 year old car I drive 100 miles a month. It's a tool not a contest. Why would I need a new expensive vehicle with phone home capabilities so they can start blasting ads at me on startup or start charging me monthly for heated seats. When I'm gone, no one is going to remember of I drove a 14 year old Nissan or brand new Rivian. Once we got off the train it became easy. We focus on long term upgrades to our house, paying down debt, and saving for the inevitable retirement. Even as someone making 4-5x the national average, I endeavor to be frugal because it doesn't last. We spend on stuff that will actually bring joy not stuff someone has blasted our brains into thinking we need and we buy quality which makes a huge difference.
- tcbawo 4y agoAs a technologist, I’ve started to compare my career to that of a professional athlete. My utility and pay multiplier is defined by WAR (wins added vs generic replacement player), to use baseball terminology. Also, my WAR will decline with age without continuous reinvention and luck. A minority of players become coaches/managers. In other words, at some point I will be out of the big leagues. I shouldn’t pretend that my prime earning years will last indefinitely. I am expecting and planning early retirement, at least out of the fast lane.
- madaxe_again 4y agoYour comment reinforces what I was already going to say — correlation != causation, and in fact, I think in this case they have it backwards. You suggest that you are happier because you have cut down on your exposure to advertising and “inadequacy content”, and this has resulted in a drop in expenditures, rather than frugality directly being the thing that resulted in happiness. It’s the same in my case - I decided, quite a few years ago, that chasing status was a sucker’s game, and stopped buying crap that signalled status. I drive a truck that’s older than me, live in a 45m2 log cabin I built myself, wear clothes that were barely fashionable 20 years ago, if I’m even bothering with clothes, and spend my days doing whatever the hell I choose, because it turns out that by not engaging in the consumer mill you suddenly have all this cash sitting around and not much to do with it, so you invest it, and suddenly spending your life working and chasing status in some career or another also seems a lot less appealing. I’ve never been terribly happy with myself, which is just a de facto part of my nature — but I’m certainly content with my existence, and knowing that I’ve got a war chest tucked away that would make Croesus blush amply fulfils any status desires, as if I chose to, I could buy a few thousand teslas and drive them into the sea, and just carry on as I am. I believe the term is “fuck you money”, and it beats the crap out of having some shiny bauble on hire-purchase. I don’t even think about it until I find myself on the receiving end of “oh, you must be so poor to live this way, why don’t you work harder or get a new car”, and I just smile and remind myself that I could probably buy their mortal soul. It’s also eminently achievable for anyone on a halfway decent income, if they stop frittering it away on crap. The only thing that I do from time to time spend cash on is the occasional adventure. People tell me I should do a YouTube channel, or an instagram, and I tell them that I’m not doing this for anyone but me and those I take along with me. I don’t give a tiny flying rat’s ass about “personal brand”. Stuff doesn’t bring joy. Status, as it’s sold via the drip drip drip of planned obsolescence doesn’t either. Security and freedom and time, do.
- punyearthling 4y agoThen why am I still sad, CNBC!?
- JohnFen 4y agoNot just millenials. I've noticed that people of all ages tend to be happier when they buy and own less, unless the reason they buy and own less is because they are poor.
- nunez 4y agoThe headline is not exactly what the article claims. The article claims this: > Millennials who implement “proactive financial strategies” tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives, according to the new research. This _can_ mean spending less, but can also mean creating a budget and sticking to it or even spending _more_, but more responsibly.
- pcdoodle 4y agoI've moved from being a consumer to creating products that I want myself and sell them. I'll gladly spend money to eat healthy and have a nice bed. What I find truly fulfilling to consume, are tools that get used often doing the work I enjoy doing. I also use a 2015 macbook air to write code when needed, so don't take my words the wrong way. Get good at "Good Enough".