Spend money on experiences, not possessions (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Spend money on experiences, not possessions (2009)

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This is why I'm awfully proud of our senior class gift in high school. Random, I know.

Most high school classes give something like a couch, or a sign, or a statue, or something else that they can engrave their class name on. We, however, gave the long time crossing guard an all expense paid vacation to Hawaii. I will always remember the look on her face when it was presented, and I can imagine it being a fantastic break for a lady who made very little money and somehow always looked happy.

We bought ourselves an experience.

Awesome story - thanks for sharing!

I'd work with you.

Happiest people I've met. Nepalese. One of the poorest nations on the planet.

Money and happiness do not correlate.

I remember a Nepalese didi (sister) laughing her head of at the "stupid American" who had left her lodge without paying that morning. What an idiot for forgetting to pay. Her neighbours were falling around laughing. I caught the guy by lunch time, and he felt so bad he walked all the way back. I would love to have seen their reaction.

"Life is about experience". You can buy some of it, but not most of it. And the best things in life really are free.

Judging from these comments, I must be the only person who does not like traveling. I like hearing stories and learning about other cultures, but the idea of flying around the world seeking adventure is a hassle to me. Does that make me a bad person?

Besides, there is so much to do as is, like learn assembly. =)

So take a ship.

You can learn Assembly on the way, if you must.

I've traveled enough to know I'm not a huge fan of it. It is a hassle.

That said, I think I'd enjoy living in a unique place 3-5 months out of each year.

Traveling doesn't have to be a hassle. Maybe you should try doing it in a different way. It's hard for me to offer a specific suggestion without knowing where you're from, where you've traveled, and how you've traveled.

Not the only one. I teeter somewhere inbetween.

Most places in the USA are unremarkable; as my mother would say when my father talks about visiting a new state park, "seen one tree, seen 'em all". Cities nationwide are relatively the same beyond superficial differences. I spent a week in Rhode Island a year ago, and today I couldn't tell you any way it was meaningfully different from the Silicon Valley besides 'it had old buildings'.

On the other hand, visiting Japan as a teenager was really cool.

There are so many amazing places in the USA. I'm astounded that you're saying most places are unremarkable. I'm not sure where to begin with suggestions. Slot canyons of Utah? Rain forests of the Pac NW? Appalachians? Small old coal towns in the NE PA? Snowy peaks of CO? Thousand Islands? Lancaster County, PA? There are big and awe inspiring places that I love and there are small and curious places that I enjoy too. There is so much here. Such a big country! I live in NYC now, and almost every neighborhood is remarkable in some way. You just have to open your eyes.

I'm curious why you thought Japan was cool. Could you explain?

Where in Rhode Island were you? What did you do there? Who were you with? Did you meet anyone?

If we are talking about nature, I agree. I love nature, and I love visiting cool environmental features. I was speaking mostly of cities, which is what most people I know want to visit when they talk about traveling.

Visiting Japan (suburbs, not city) was like visiting a sort of parallel universe. Everything was fundamentally similar, but totally different. Additionally, I was learning Japanese at the time, so it was rather exciting just trying to converse with native speakers. It was quite a while ago so I can't think of much in the way of specific examples of the 'bests', but they have a number of cultural aspects and traditions I preferred over their western equivalents, such as sleeping accommodations and choice in breakfast foods. (always found most western breakfasts beyond cereal/oatmeal and toast despicable)

Providence. Spent the week with a girl, roaming around the city a bit.

How are sleeping accom different in Japan from the US? What do Japanese people usually eat for breakfast?

I imagined Prov to be somewhat different from SV. Isn't SV composed of some smallish towns (PA, etc) and then vast modern suburbs? Isn't Prov an oldish city by US stds? Multi-story buildings with shopfronts, apts above, more pedestrians, less cars, narrower streets, different building materials, a harbor, more mom & pop shops, than SV? Granted, it's not Japan, but what did you expect?

Well, they use a futon (they are different from the Western futon, looks something like this: http://futonmattressinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/futo... ) which I found very comfortable. I don't know all the details, but while they still have a 'comforter' and a 'mattress', they were markedly different. The pillows were made of something similar to buckwheat hulls, and kicked the ass of every fluffy pillow I'd used to date. I have since acquired a buckwheat pillow, although it's not quite as good as whatever mystery filler it was. Not quite as cool and fluid. For breakfast, my favorite was hot rice mixed with small bits of meat and a raw egg cracked over it.

edit: I forgot about onigiri, that stuff was amazing too

Providence is most definitely different from SV. I wasn't disappointed or let down either- I expected pretty much what I got. I guess you could say besides the weather (rain) I felt I could have had pretty much the same experience in any of the US cities I've been to. Japan was different, because I was discovering the place rather than living in it. So, perhaps my lack of fascination with Providence stems from the fact that I am not enamored of m&p shops and old buildings. It was nice, but nothing to write home about.

The hostels I stayed in gave me a futon with a nice blanket. Most futons in Japan are thin (~4 inches thick), but quite comfortable. Several of the hostels had quite luxurious baths. In a town called Beppu, I stayed in a hostel that had natural hotspring pools available for guests. For $20 a night, that place was luxurious.

I stayed with a family in Japan. The dad was American, the Mom was Japanese, and they ate cereal and toast every morning. The dad said that's pretty much what all the kids eat. Another popular snacky thing is onigiri. It's a rice ball with a mystery filling (usually tasty), wrapped with dried seaweed. I ate them quite often for breakfast when I was on the road.

EDIT: Silverstorm's link is exactly the type of futon I slept on.

Most places in Asia are unremarkable; as my mother would say when my father talks about visiting another Asian country, "seen one temple, seen 'em all". Cities continent-wide are relatively the same beyond superficial differences. I spent a week in Tokyo a year ago, and today I couldn't tell you any way it was meaningfully different from Hong Kong besides 'the eyes on everything were bigger.'

On the other hand, visiting San Francisco as a teenager was really cool.

You are correct- it is, generally speaking, the change from what you're used to that makes something remarkable.

I think you underestimate how diverse the US is. I enjoy leaving Seattle to visit the south. To get away from the cold shoulders of the pacific northwest, and to talk with very welcoming southerners. Georgia is particularly nice to visit for this reason. I like driving across the US, getting off the major interstate and driving in the middle of butt fuck egypt to stop at a small bar or restaurant in the middle of Tennessee and getting some good barbecue. Do you know how many different styles of barbecue there are? That a memphis dry rub is completely different than the sweet stuff you get in the Carolinas, and still different yet from the stuff in Texas? I like these small differences between parts of the US. Eating hot boiled peanuts off the side of the road in Florida, eating Elk burgers in Montana, seeing the gigantic Wisconsin state fair.

When I go traveling, I like to learn about the regional differences in a few of my interests. Those things are: The outdoors, food, music, and idle chitchat. I think the US provides a lot of diversity in these things. It's weird going to a random small fry rock concert in Seattle and watching the crowd stand around and listen. The music is blaring, it's good, and the crowd is going wild, intently staring at their feet, enjoying themselves. Why do they do it? I don't know, you don't see it so much in Portland, it's just how we are in the damp, dark city of Seattle.

I could go on about the millions of delicious hamburgers I've eaten everywhere, the blues guitars, the beer and everything. But I guess I'm just trying to say the the U.S. can be fun, and you just have to get to know the people in order to notice the differences between the cities.

But, I guess that's only if you like traveling :D. Fortunately there are more experiences which don't require leaving your hometown.

I think I'm in the same boat, kinda. I love the idea of visiting places, I enjoy learning about other people(culture, their lives, experiences, history) but the idea of traveling there... It's just not for me, I sometimes wonder if I'm simply stuck in the wrong time, because if we had teleportation things would definitely be different.

I happen to hate flying and the process of traveling in general. It is a huge hassle and it takes a lot out of you. But i literally force myself to do it as often as I can. In the last two years alone my wife and I have lived in the UK (London and Brighton) and France (Paris and Cannes). During that time we road tripped to Italy and Switzerland. The experiences we got from the trip were invaluable, not something you can learn about but something you need to experience first hand. These experiences always reshape me as a person and inspire my work.

For a few hours of hassle, you get life changing experiences. That's why we invented Valium :) Anyways, that's my .02. Experiencing another culture first hand changes you, it makes you see your world differently.

I'm the same way. My girlfriend and I argue about it frequently.

I am happiest when I can sit in my office and be left alone. I don't like traveling, I don't particularly like the "outdoors", and I'm not big on vacations.

A couple years back I spent three months on a photography expedition in the Atacama desert, and while it was a rewarding experience, I'd have been just as happy spending that time alone in my apartment; but then again I'm somewhat of a hermit.

I think it's probably a useful generalization that people on average prefer experiences, but like all generalizations, it's certainly not true for everyone.

You can't base world travel on the Atacama desert. I mean, I'd love to go there, but it's one of the most hostile places for life on the planet. I'm all for avoiding people for a break, but there are places with a bit more life and colour without being party town.

No disrespect meant to your preferred lifestyle. Just saying that when you do next pop out you might try somewhere less hostile like the Galapagos or Easter Islands. Kind of a moot point, as the next place more hostile than the Atacama is probably the Moon.

I wasn't mentioning that as an example of world travel, I was mentioning it as an "experience", which the article suggests are more useful than possessions. My point (which I didn't convey properly) was that by most accounts, that expedition was quite an "experience". I certainly don't regret going (The gallery show when I returned was pretty well-received), and it was nice to traipse around South America with my friends, but I'd have been just as happy sitting at home by myself for a couple months (and would have saved myself a lot of money).

As to Galapagos or Easter Island, I have zero desire to visit either. I find nothing interesting about the natural world (which sounds awful, and I don't mean it to).

I just got back last week from taking my girlfriend to the Dominican Republic for her birthday (which was a much more traditional vacation). I didn't take my laptop (something she was keen to require); but our hotel had Wifi. I found myself using my iPhone 4 to keep up on things as much as I was able. If it had been up to me, I'd have sat in the hotel bar reading RSS feeds all day.

Eight of my friends invited me to go with them to Europe. Working on a startup, I was pretty hesitant because of the financial hit. To make ends meet, I ate out less and spend a lot less time and money shopping online.

In the end, I had an amazing time over there and it'll probably be one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

i've spent about 2 months out of each year for the last 7 years travelling to japan or europe. each time there is usually some big ticket item competing for my dollars.

often times, when i succumb to the material good i'm perpetually disappointed with it in what it can't do or offer me.

last year i went around the world (ireland 1wk, england 3wks, france 1wk, italy 1wk, belgium 3days, china 5days, japan 1month) and it cost me about $7500. i was thinking of buying a fancy TV instead. had i bought the TV i wouldn't have spent quite as much, but no doubt i would have just sat on the couch ... watching TV. even though $7500 is A LOT, i've never regretted it. not once.

I recently realized what the phrase, "Own enough stuff, and it starts to own you" means. The more things you buy, the more you're obligated to use them to justify paying for them. Your time isn't your own anymore ("I bought this guitar, so after work I must practice, also must figure out new SLR camera, and plan trip around new skis..."), and you're hemmed in to pursuing uses for your toys. I think there's a certain freedom to being bored.

There are scale issues as well:

* things go in the way when you want to move (change of house, country...)

* you have to maintain, clean them, keep things tidy

* you're tempted to take a better insurance (against robbery or fire) as you own more

* you're tempted to buy/rent a larger house (and one extra room costs a lot, which translates into less time available for me)

etc :)

yes. I wish i could move to an apartment building that offered most amenities already, in which part of the rent is to keep certain things in stock or buy new things. Why buy fancy dishes when you can just "rent" them.

George Carlin Talks About "Stuff"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

"The things you own end up owning you." ~ Fight Club movie, screenplay by Jim Uhls

> "I bought this guitar, so after work I must practice"

You may view that as being trapped by your possessions, but if I buy a guitar it is because I want to learn guitar.

I see this discussion popping up here and there. People are clearly tired of consuming for the sake of consuming. We seek other kicks. Nothing strange with that, this follows the development ladder of spiral dynamics or Maslow.

But it's worth pondering what this does to the economy at large. What happens when we start to perceive value more in fluffy stuff like experiences than physical goods? It would certainly affect the job market and the opportunity cloud for startups.

It's time for everyone in business to ask: what are people willing to pay for in the post consumer society?

On the shopping list for a 21st century man would be:

Experiences.

Social status (never goes out of style, but the accessories do).

Time.

Health.

Emotional comfort.

This is worth keeping in mind when you build your startup. Can you package your service in such a way as to speak to the 21st century man in us all? This man does not just want to solve a problem, he wants to feel good and have fun doing it.

You're assuming that everyone has already managed to obtain everything they need. I don't think this is the case.

Society is a spectrum - the person you are a describing resides at one end of that spectrum .. there are still many people who need (and want) to buy physical goods, over experiences.

> But it's worth pondering what this does to the economy at large. What happens when we start to perceive value more in fluffy stuff like experiences than physical goods? It would certainly affect the job market and the opportunity cloud for startups.

A narrow consideration, but not surprising for a Hacker News comment. I think the bigger picture is that this is a major transition in economies, and it is very good for people.

Imagine a toy model economy where all the people have suddenly shifted to only wanting goods - let's say they are Pogs. They don't want any services. As it happens, there is an absolutely ginormous Pog-making machine which can meet the entire economy's demand for Pogs. And extremely efficiently, too, so that basically all it needs is some paper to run. What's going to happen in this economy?

What will happen is that all the ordinary people will slowly transfer their capital and savings to the owner of the Pog machine in exchange for the Pogs they so crave, and the owner will make out like a bandit, since he only needs to pay the paper mill occasionally. (Nor will the owner be spreading the wealth - like everyone else, he lusts for Pogs.) In the extreme, everyone is a bankrupt peon with no job and the owner owns next to everything.

You might think of this model as a little intuition-pump for 'what if robots ran all the machines in a manufacturing economy?' Fortunately, we aren't in such a manufacturing economy, but shifting to a service economy where the machines haven't taken the only jobs available, and so the robots and machines are on net very good for us - their manufactured wealth gets shared.

> I think the bigger picture is that this is a major transition in economies, and it is very good for people.

Oh, I agree. We're leaving the industrial age and that's a good (and big!) thing.

Every year my wife and I spend a day throwing out anything we haven't used in a year. Anything that wasn't used for 6 months goes upstairs where it's still accessible, but out of site.

Actually we ebayed a bit last year, and we give stuff to charity shops rather than just throwing it out if we can, but doing this once a year refocuses your view on buying stuff. Will I still use this a year from now has a substantial impact on your buying decisions.

As with many others here, the only expenditure I never regret is travel.

Nice to see others with the same attitude. It's a thing of beauty to see a room cleared of clutter and reduced to the bare minimum of furniture/stuff.

We follow a very similar process in our house. If it hasn't been used in 6 months or so it goes out the door. Either to charity or ebay.

Hmm... I always hated spending money on things that don't last. Food is the best example- I eat it today, and a week from now I'm 10 dollars poorer with 'nothing' to show for it. Travel poses similar issues.

Though, that is largely tied to a childhood of being super tight on funds. Buy candy, enjoy for 10 minutes, or buy LEGO/game/card, enjoy for months or years.

> I eat it today, and a week from now I'm 10 dollars poorer with 'nothing' to show for it.

worse, a few years from now, you still have something to show for it and have to start spending money on bigger pants.

One thing that I never regret spending money on: Travel.

Spent a year and a half in Brazil (just came back). Best year of my life.

For me the trick is to just wait for a few days whenever I lust after new items (1080i vs 720p? Feels like a vital decision now but tomorrow I'll stop thinking about it). I do indulge in expensive clothes, and gadgets that have a high return on productivity (like an SSD drive or quality kitchen utensils). I also spend on food, but that turns out to be a great investment for psychological, social and health reasons.

Well I say that and I just placed an order for the new MacBook Air!

There has been quite a bit of research concerning money, materialism and happiness. This paper makes a good overview of current research on the subject and links to other papers : http://bss.sfsu.edu/rhowell/Pubs%20-%20PDF/Howell_Hill_JPP_0...

It's a really interesting topic. There is a diminishing return effect : when you are poor more money does make you more happy but after a certain point (where basic needs are satisfied) there is a drop off in the benefits of added money.

From research it appears that materialism have a negative effect on happiness. This meta-analysis confirms it by looking at the existing studies on the subject : http://lilt.ilstu.edu/staylor/csdcb/articles/volume6/wright%...

The first cited paper suggests that spending money on experiences will yield a greater happiness than spending money on stuff.

What I'd really like to see is for more kids without the financial means to be given a chance to study abroad. Living in other cultures changes your perspective on the entire world, and it saddens me that it is typically the more privileged who are able to make it abroad.

In LA there are even kids in South Central who have never seen the ocean... and they live 13 miles from it.

How do you escape the trap?

I'm not that far in. I'm 28 years old. Just got married. $42k in student loan debt. No kids. But it still feels impossible to escape the momentum of keeping up.

My job pays well but not well enough to quickly escape the loan debt. That feels like the biggest barrier between me and the things I'd rather be doing (startups, travel/vagabonding, ...).

On the plus side, you're only 28. Nothing to stop you from engaging in those experiences in a few years, rather than just yet.

I was in nearly the same boat as you - debts (not student loans, misspent youth instead) and have nearly eliminated my debts and am about to move on to that phase of my life, with more expanded financial freedom. I just turned 31 and I feel like I have many opportunities still to enjoy things just as much as I would have in my twenties.

For me, it was first to identify all of my/our expenses. Amazing what amount of money can flow through one's hands.

Compare income to that expense, and you know if you are positive or negative.

To go from negative to positive, or to set aside "fun" money, I decide if any of those items could be dropped or paid off sooner, rather than later.

This is also a basis for allocating an amount to stash for savings - I like to have between 6 months and 1 year's living expenses set aside - You never know what's going to happen, and I feel so much more secure.

Once the safety net goal is reached, that same amount, when not directed to fun experiences, can also be directed at retirement/investment income.

If you've ever played the game of Cashflow (Robert Kiyosaki) you come away with the notion of having passive assets generating enough cashflow to cover your expenses - Very powerful idea.

What is the monthly payment and interest on that?

$620 per month at about 7% average (3-4 loans between 6.x% and 8.5%). I've got $5k left one one loan that is $150 of the monthly payment. I'm going to dip into savings and pay that off in the next month or two. That'll leave me at $470 per month and $37k total.

Travel is probably the best thing to spend money on. Get out. See the world. It's big and it's weird and you come back a better person for having reveled in it.

(I did 2 months last year - 1 month in Thailand/Laos, 1 month in Europe & Egypt. No regrets, at all, save the mad case of food poisoning in Egypt, but I'll spare you the gory details ;)

The title in itself is complete and tells it all. Experience is the best thing to have.

Experience is the only thing you have.

i forget most of what i experience. possesions such as fun to drive car, nice house, extended LotR DVD, games, books, the smartphone im typing this on all provide reoccuring experiences that i enjoy over and over.

As I see it, you are buying a possession that gives you multiple experiences. So, by transitivity, you're still spending money on experiences, though not in the big, hell-of-a-cruise-dude kind.

starting about 3 years ago we tried to institute a "spend money on experiences or assets philosophy". By assets meaning things that hold or go up in value over time. So for household items -- spend a little more on an antique or quality versions, rather than a consumable that will only last a few years and end up in a landfill -- and try to tend towards not spending much money at all on things that are inherently depreciating, making that as small a portion of our spending as possible.

The experiences part we've been successful with, the assets part not always so much.

The more stuff you own, the more worried is your mind. Live light, live happy.

Absolutely wrong! Do not spend money on experiences or possessions. Try to avoid spending money altogether.

Best of all, shut yourself in your room and spend the rest of your life sleeping. You'll save tons of money that way!

This is an obviously wrong exaggeration and almost a straw-man argument. That kind of rhetoric is rude and should have no place in any discussion.

what if you like the experience of buying a possession?

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