In this essay,Ross Gittins reviews a study recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that came to the conclusion that purchases made toward the end of experiencing some life event make us far happier than purchases of sheer material goods. Among experiential purchases they included concert tickets, skiing, vacations, and dinners. Material purchases were simply tangible goods with some indefinite duration of utility.
While I am not sure I ever paused to think about this before, I completely agree with the hypothesis. Sure, it must be hard to objectively and consistently metric, and the study's results must therefore be slightly suspect. Nevertheless, in my own life, my best memories are are the product of experiential purchases.
That said, and I know some of you will quarry with this, I would hesitate to put dinners in that bucket. While there have certainly been meals in my life that I will not soon forget, I group 90% of my meals into a category of purchases whose lifespans are so abbreviated they are barely experiential.
