savage money / By Jennifer Savage

Lust for Stuff

Or, why those material goods you’ve been craving will bore you two weeks later

(Aug. 26, 2010)  It can’t buy you love. Then again, love doesn’t pay the bills. It’s not everything, but when you’re scrounging change to put enough gas in your expiring car, it sure makes a difference. It won’t guarantee contentment. It can create conditions in which that condition is more easily cultivated.

How does money connect to happiness?

Back to that falling-apart car with the empty gas tank and your need to get somewhere. Five dollars would probably get enough gas for a trip to town, a couple errands done. A thousand and you could take the car in to the mechanic, buy some peace of mind. Fifteen thousand and hey, you could get yourself a new car that not only wouldn’t break down, but would have a working stereo and a windshield cleaning fluid reservoir without a hole in it. You could clean your windshield while driving! Like normal people! Money does buy happiness!

Not so fast. Say you end up with that new car. You’re ecstatic. What happens next?

In her latest book, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, Ariel Gore writes about moving up from a battered old Dodge Colt that “rode like a dirt bike and sounded like a leaf blower” to the car she’d dreamed of, shiny and red. “I didn’t worry about roadside breakdowns or getting pulled over for missing lights or missing registration stickers,” Gore enthuses.

What happened next? She got used to it.

That’s what we do. Humans tend to adapt. Sometimes that gravitation to an established normal causes us to tolerate suffering. We stay in abusive relationships. We step past folks sleeping on San Francisco sidewalks. At some point, our brain decides it’s all part of the scenery. In more positive circumstances, the ability to become accustomed to new conditions helps us thrive. If life demands we step up, and we do and we get used to an improved level of existence, that’s a good thing — right?

Sort of. Psychologists use the term “hedonistic adaptation.” “We all fantasize that some life change will cheer us up — permanently,” Gore says. The reality is that acquiring bigger-better-faster-more boosts happiness only temporarily. For Gore, it took about two weeks — not that she would’ve ever traded back, mind you, but “the magic had worn off.”

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE >SHARE