Meeemmmmorieeeeessss.... 🤣 Experiences are better than things every time! Unless the thing is used to create memories. In 2000, my husband and I enjoyed an epic trip to Malaysia. While there I bought a couple of platters, which amazingly survived the trip back to the U.S. A couple of years ago, I decided to start using them, and stop being afraid they'd get broken. Now when we cook pot stickers I serve them on those platters. It's like a two for one deal. Using them reminds me of our trip (in our pre-kid era), while also creating new memories of eating way to many pot stickers with our kids.
Yes! Meik Wiking wrote a book called "The Art of Making Memories" that talks about stuff like this. The more callbacks to an experience you have, the more you get out of that experience throughout your life. My favorite example is a time where he didn't want to forget the moment he was in, so he took a massive whiff of a glob of SEAWEED nearby. One moment of looking like a complete weirdo in exchange for a little reminder of that moment any time he's near the sea. 😂 - Ben M 🤓
I rarely buy experiences because of anxiety: social and financial. Plus I'm saving up for a home. However, I am working on my financial security and mental health, so hopefully as I get more secure and improve my mental health, I'll be more comfortable with buying experiences.
I just put in my budget for a road trip to camp with a friend. I’m excited cause it will be a nice change from my “go to work go home” march. Thanks for this post!
I actually did my most recent newsletter post on this exact topic, how especially for kids, they're going to remember that time spent together the most.
I really enjoyed this type of discussion! He covered this somewhat in the last half, but IMO both cases really come down to making a habit of appreciating what we have. That might be memories, or it might be the cool things we've acquired. For example, experiences are equally meaningless if we don't sometimes take a moment to remember them. That's one reason I really like Google Photos. It keeps giving me notifications about "you did this 2 years ago" and I can look through my photos and enjoy those memories. Similarly, sometimes when I pick up my smartphone I take a couple seconds to remember what an amazing device it is compared to what was around when I was a kid and how amazing it is that nearly everyone can have them now. Really this applies to everything, including relationships, but it's something that takes a little bit of work to engage that appreciation. Great video, really got me thinking!
Love this advice! And ok, so totally unrelated, but I work over at Sony Pictures and worked on The Afterparty. It seriously does not get the love it deserves! Whenever folks ask me what my favorite thing I've worked on is, it's that, and then they nod and go "oh, huh" clearly never having seen it. So thank you for enjoying such a fantastic show!!
Wow! Thank you for your service 😌 It's amazing how few actually FUN murder mystery shows there are. Maddie and I were desperate to find something like Knives Out or Glass Onion, and The Afterparty was the PERFECT vibe. Ugh. At least Severance is doing a new season in January. 🙌 - Ben M 🤓
In effort to pay down my credit cards, I have created a FIFO chart of my credit card purchases. We are currently paying off our trip to Disneyland last fall. Looking at the list of purchases, I am like "I am OK with paying for this still because I have wonderful memories from it." There's also things like pizza we ordered one night because the pantry and bank account were empty. I keep thinking that pizza means nothing to me. I am sure we had a good night. But I really cannot remember it for the life of me. It really makes me think twice before reaching for that credit card. Is this the sort of thing I want to see on my FIFO chart in a year?
I don't agree. You needed that laptop for work, so it was not an expense that could have been swapped out with an experience. As you need the laptop, changing it should be one of your real expenses (sinking funds). Also the discussion doesn't go as deep as I would have liked, where is the research?
True - I'm not saying every possession could be swapped out with an experience and result in higher net happiness (possessions and experiences aren't necessarily exclusive categories, either). My point in this video was to highlight the way things we purchase interact with our happiness over time. The laptop and the road trip highlight that difference for me. Although my laptop has made HUGE contributions to my happiness (it's partly why I work at YNAB full-time now), the actual laptop itself is often a source of frustration while the trip is still a source of good memories. If you want to deep dive into this topic more, I'd recommend looking at the research of Thomas Gilovich and Elizabeth Dunn - they're some of the leading researchers in this area. And (per usual) I'd recommend checking out Daniel Kahneman's research, particularly his work on the "remember self vs the experiencing self" and hedonic adaptation. - Ben M 🤓
Thankfully, no 😅 I filmed this quite a while before I went on paternity leave, but schedules and other projects led to it being published much, much later. I'm feeling 100%! So you can expect sketches in the next video 😉 - Ben M 🤓
Gonna have to disagree on this one Also it’s objectively privileged AF to assume that everyone is able-bodied and everything is accessible to those of us who aren’t Also there’s absolutely no chance of me selling my records (which *are* a lifetime of memories, and *are not* “just stuff”) and switching to Crapify. I don’t care how much cheaper it is.
