You really can buy happiness, it turns out; but even when we can afford it, most of us don’t. A study suggests that those who outsource dreary chores or pay for convenience report greater life satisfaction, regardless of factors such as income or the number of children in the household. When researchers from the same team gave subjects $40 to spend on a material product, and then another $40 for something that would save them time, they found the latter option had a much more marked effect on happiness. People reported more joy and enthusiasm (perhaps paying for a taxi home had spared them an unpleasant commute, or allowed them time to unwind with friends) and fewer negative emotions such as anger (possibly because they were not wrangling about who should wash the floor). That is not much consolation to those who are both cash- and time-poor. “Nobody likes scrubbing the toilet bowl,” observed one of the study’s authors; but the people hired to scrub loos usually have to clean their own when they get home. Yet even among millionaires surveyed in the Netherlands, less than half regularly paid other people to do tasks they loathed. This may be why they were millionaires, but the money they saved was time they squandered. Enjoy yourself, if you can afford it: it’s later than you think.
