The Triumph of Experience

Here’s an insight I find useful:

If you want to buy happiness you are much better off buying an experience rather than a thing.  That’s because a thing like a car, new clothes, or cool gadget will always wear down, break down over time, while an experience, like going to the Galapagos, or a great concert, will only improve over time. You’ll always have it (Paris, bunjee jumping, that meal) forever. In the long term an experience delivers more happiness per dollar.

Oh, and warm puppies (and children) are experiences, not things.

That wisdom is my phrasing of Daniel Gilbert, of “Stumbling on Happiness”, interviewed by the Times, pointed to via Mark Hurst at, naturally enough, Good Experience.