“Money is definitely just a small part of the happiness equation.”
-Ashley Whillans
Want to know how money impacts happiness (and how you can talk to your kids about it)? I tackle this important question in this episode of The Art of Allowance Podcast with the help of my guest, Ashley Whillans. Ashley is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School in Negotiations, Organizations and Markets. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia and was named a Rising Star of Behavioral Science. Her research, which focuses on understanding how the daily and long-term decisions that people make about time and money (in their personal lives, relationships and workplaces) impact well-being, has been published in leading academic journals as well as The New York Times, The Economist and The Los Angeles Times, among others.
SHOW NOTES (Find what’s most interesting to you!)
- From actor to Ph.D. in Social Psychology: how Ashley became interested in topics around time, money and happiness [1:49]
- Using money rather than hunches in decision making [5:46]
- Control over money [9:43]
- Experiential purchases versus material purchases [10:37]
- Material purchases and joy: being strategic about what you buy [16:33]
- The components of happiness: the experiencing self versus the remembering self [20:55]
- Advice for parents on mental accounting errors [26:38]
- The sharing element of money [33:15]
- The monetary influence of Ashley’s mom [38:40]
- Ashley’s definition of money empowerment [40:45]
- Walking distance to work as an investment [41:20]
- “Focus less on earning money than what your gut tells you.” [42:18]
- Accounting for Time: how socializing with family and friends daily is the equivalent of an extra $102,000 of income (You can access all of Ashley’s six-part series on Money, Time and Happiness that’s part of Harvard Business Review‘s “Big Idea” series.) [42:53]
- Ashley invites you to join the conversation with her via social media and the web. [45:22]
- Per the reflection at the end of the episode, here’s my blog post about chores and allowance.
Click here for the full transcript.
Interested in more information on the impermanence of stuff as well as Marie Kondo, whom Ashley mentions during her discussion of material purchases and joy? Then be sure to check out this recent blog post featuring my thoughts.
If you’re curious to find out more about how you can use money in specific ways that will make you happier, then you should check out Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. Think of it as brain hacking your way to help money actually buy you happiness. Ashley was a research assistant heavily involved in this book.
If you liked my conversation with Ashley, then I think you might also enjoy my episodes that feature Ashley LeBaron and Elizabeth Odders-White, other terrific money lifestyle researchers.
If you like this podcast, then please give us a review and subscribe to the show. The Art of Allowance Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Radio Public. Subscribing is free, and it will help me produce more enriching content for you to enjoy. Thanks!
You can find out more about our movement at theartofallowance.com as well as download a sample or get a copy of my new book, The Art of Allowance.
You might also want to check out The Money Mammals, our program to get your children excited about money smarts when they’re young. Until next time, I wish you and your family well as you journey forth. Thanks for listening.
Full Transcript
This transcript is from The Art of Allowance Podcast, Episode 20, featuring host John Lanza and guest Ashley Whillans.
00:00:00,320 [John Lanza]
Hello, this is your host, John Lanza, and welcome to episode 20, the big two zero, of The Art of Allowance podcast.
00:00:11,380 [Ashley Whillans]
I, I think an important point on the younger than four is that in the studies that my lab mates have run, um, they were also asking these toddlers to give up very valuable resources, i.e., Goldfish crackers, right? [chuckles] So money might not mean anything to a two to three-year-old, but Goldfish crackers, those are precious and valuable. So thinking, again, even instilling this belief of giving up something you really care about, um, to someone else, um, as, as a way to increase your happiness and, um, someone else’s happiness is, is an important part of the equation.
00:00:48,720 [Ashley Whillans]
[upbeat music]
00:00:51,180 [John Lanza]
Today, I am talking with Ashley Whillans. She is an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School in negotiations, organizations, and markets. She received her PhD in social psychology from the University of British Columbia, and was named a rising star of behavioral science. Her research focuses on understanding how the daily and long-term decisions that people make about time and money in their personal lives, their relationships, and at work, impact wellbeing. Her research has been published in leading academic journals and The New York Times, The Economist, and the LA Times, among others. Welcome, Ashley.
00:01:30,040 [Ashley Whillans]
Thank you so much for having me today.
00:01:32,020 [John Lanza]
Well, we are very excited… I am very excited to dig in and see how we, as parents, can help our kids use their money, uh, and maybe even how we can use our money to improve [chuckles] to improve, to improve our own and, uh, their wellbeing. But before we fully dive in, I’d like you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, Ashley.
00:01:54,380 [Ashley Whillans]
Sure. Well, you did such a great job of introducing me. I, I won’t provide the sort of hard, fast facts, but I will talk a little bit about how I became interested in topics around time, money, and happiness, which are really, like, the key focus of my research. So, um, I was, um, an undergraduate, uh, taking psychology courses, um, and I read the book Stumbling on Happiness, um, that was written by Dan Gilbert at- who is a professor at Harvard here. Um, and he basically says that we’re not very good at predicting either the decisions or the conditions of life that are going to best predict our wellbeing. Um, and I thought that was a fascinating concept that was really relevant to me at the time. I had just… I was a professional actor prior to going to college, and I always thought, since I was a really little kid, that I was going to be an actor forever. When I finally went to theater school, I went, “Oh, goodness, this is not for me at all, whatsoever.”
00:02:54,840 [John Lanza]
[chuckles]
00:02:55,160 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, I was not very good at blocking, so if someone told me to go left, I would go right. I couldn’t remember my lines, and I enjoyed the library much, much more than I enjoyed performing. [chuckles]
00:03:06,230 [John Lanza]
[chuckles]
00:03:06,340 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, and so after reading Dan books- Daniel, uh, Daniel Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, I went, “I think there’s something to that.” We really aren’t very good at predicting in advance what’s gonna bring us happiness. And luckily for me, I’m from Vancouver and was living back at home with my parents at the time since, well, theater school was expensive, and I had spent all of my college money on that school. Um, and I figured out that one of his students worked at the University of British Columbia, Liz Dunn, um, who’s the author of Happy Money. Um, so I
00:03:39,280 [Ashley Whillans]
started to enroll in classes at the University of British Columbia, and I more or less forced her, uh, to hire me as an undergraduate.
00:03:46,440 [John Lanza]
[chuckles]
00:03:47,680 [Ashley Whillans]
Uh, although I didn’t have very much experience, I had a lot of tenacity. I don’t know if I had tact, but I had tenacity. Um, and I applied so many times for her lab that eventually she let me in, um, and I became fascinated with how the daily decisions that we make around time and money can have really long-term impacts for our subjective wellbeing in ways that we mispredict or, uh, don’t quite expect on the front end. Um, and working in her lab shaped my entire career and my life. I happily, uh, stumbled into happiness research, um, and haven’t looked back. Got my PhD from the University of British Columbia, and worked on Liz Dunn and Mike Norton’s book, Happy Money, as an undergrad RA, which further solidified my interest in doing a PhD. So the takeaway from my biography, and I think that’s relevant to this podcast, is often what we think is going to bring us happiness or think that is going to bring happiness for those that we care about, isn’t often truly what brings us joy in the moment, and we all need to do some hard thinking, some deep thinking about, um, what we’re prioritizing in life, and whether our priorities regarding money and other resources, like time, are really in the right place, or whether we might wanna reallocate our money and time in different ways to promote actual happiness as opposed to expected satisfaction.
00:05:08,600 [John Lanza]
Uh, this is super exciting, and I, I, I… That is totally relevant to this, and, uh, this is- I, I knew that you had worked with, uh, Liz Dunn and Michael Norton, uh, but I did not know anything about the actor background, so that is… I, I, I love this, the, the, the route you’ve taken because, you know, we all have interesting routes, and that seems like it makes a lot of sense. And, [chuckles] and to go from, from actor to a PhD in social psychology is pr- a pretty- it’s a pretty, pretty big jump, and, uh, obviously, this is something that has, uh, really clicked for you. So this is, this is great, and I, I think a theme for what I’d like to get across to parents or ta- uh, discuss here, uh, is revolving, revolving around this idea that we should use science to make better s- decisions about how to use money, um, which is very much at the root of… You, you named two of my favorite books, Stumbling on Happiness and, uh, and Happy Money, and how we can use money rather- money rather than hunches because we know that our hunches now can be suspect, which is something you could probably talk to us about a little bit. [chuckles]
00:06:18,528 [Ashley Whillans]
… definitely. I mean, I think with, with regard to any decision, we often intuit- so one, one really, I’m sure you’ve talked about this, um, on prior, um, episodes if you’ve talked about happy money, but we have this false belief that having more money or a more prestigious job is, is going to get us more happiness. And this isn’t- this is true both for people who are more in the middle income of distribution, and also for people who are really high income earners-
00:06:47,168 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm
00:06:47,308 [Ashley Whillans]
… who make a lot of money. So Mike Norton and, and his colleagues, Grant Donnelly and others, recently published a paper suggesting that even people with $10 million in the bank think that they need more money to gain greater happiness. Um, and I think that’s because money is a signal, right? So it signals to ourself and others that we’re valuable con- contributors to society, that, “Wow, if I’m making a lot of money, my time must be very valuable.” But what we fail to recognize is that this pursuit of money often comes at the cost of other resources, like time and social connection, that actually matter more for our happiness than how much stuff we have, um, or what fancy title we’re given in the office that we work at. Um, and so this is one hunch that we would do better listening to the a- academic literature as opposed to listening to our gut, which is that we often think for ourselves and, and for our children, that money should be the most, uh, key priority. But as it turns out, other factors, like enjoyment of your… the daily tasks you do at your job, the meaning that you get, the satisfaction you have, the time you have to spend with friends and family and on hobbies, matters a lot more. And of course, this is a really important consideration when you’re teaching your kids about the value of money, is that you want to be thinking that money matters to the extent we make or make ends meet and, and, and meet our basic needs. But money is definitely just a small part of the happiness equation, and we need to be thinking about what are the other factors that we care about? Good social relationships, having time for meaningful hobbies, contributing back to society. Um, and all of the decisions that we make about money, given that they’re wrapped up in things like how many hours I work, um, do come at a cost to these other factors, these qualitative factors, like leisure or social time, that matter for happiness. So even beginning conversations early on around is money everything, and, and should we be chasing money versus prioritizing other things, is, is a really important place to start looking at the academic literature.
00:08:54,888 [John Lanza]
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a very good point, and that’s one of the things that we talk about on the podcast here, is identifying, you know, what money does mean to you and what, for example, you know, ultimately, I think you w- we want our… We talk about this concept of kids being money empowered, and I think that’s- it’s different for everybody, just like an allowance system is different for everybody. You know, families are different. But with the- with regard to money and, and wealth and money empowerment, money empowerment is just the idea that you have control of your money, and s- so much of that is understanding exactly what you’re talking about, that, you know, money is not going to get you what you think it is, because, like you said about Dan Gilbert, like, we’re terrible at predicting what our future selves are gonna be happy with, right?
00:09:42,768 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, I think the point around control is interesting, because having a lot of control over how much money we have and how much we spend, um, having control of our money might come at a cost of having control over our time.
00:09:56,768 [John Lanza]
Mm.
00:09:56,867 [Ashley Whillans]
And so a lot of my research looks at these sorts of trade-offs. If we focus a lot on our job, this might come at the cost of being able to focus our attentional resources elsewhere. So really thinking about what your prioriti- what your priorities are in life, and then thinking about whether you’re spending money in a way that serves those priorities, is a really important point.
00:10:17,108 [John Lanza]
Yeah, and I, I think I- we may come back to the t- I, I think time will be part of the theme, the trade-off between time and money throughout. Um, but I, I find that that can be a difficult thing to get across to the kids, aside from just conversations about the trade-offs that you’re making, or you or your wife or your partner is making. But, um, experiences is certainly something that you have looked into and something that, you know, we- I think we all have this, this sense that experiences matter more than things, and that they can certainly impact happiness, and now we know there’s a fair amount of research that supports this. And… But I’d love for you to help us understand intellectually what we already kind of know emotionally. Like, I say that, and everybody goes, “Of course,” but it’s not s- it’s still not what people do, because they’re spending- they still spend an inordinate, an inordinate amount of money. When I say them, I say we [chuckles] spend an inordinate-
00:11:11,518 [Ashley Whillans]
Sure
00:11:11,518 [John Lanza]
… inordinate amount of money on housing and on cars and all, more than you’re spending on experiences. So, like, what does the science say about the importance of experiences, and how can we get that across to our kids?
00:11:25,728 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, so experiences, just to kind of unpack this, this term a little bit, are any purchase, so any, any way of spending money that’s going to
00:11:35,568 [Ashley Whillans]
have you involved doing something as opposed to having something. So, um, going on a trip, um, you know, uh, walking around, you know, uh, uh, going on a sightseeing tour in a new, new city, going out for- to a museum, going to a, to a restaurant. Um, these are all examples of experiences. There’s some gray area, right? So you could think about, um, if you buy a camera, that might be a material object that facilitates an experience, right?
00:12:07,108 [John Lanza]
Sure.
00:12:07,148 [Ashley Whillans]
So you can have the experience of walking around and seeing your house, your community, in a different way than you wouldn’t have seen it otherwise because you’re now, like, in the role of a photographer. So there’s a little bit of gray area, but in general, experiences are-… um, purchases that involve doing. Um, and material purchases, which is how this literature usually kind of compares the relative benefits, are things that you own, stuff in your house, um, a painting, a water bottle, a, a watch. I’m just, like, naming things off in my apartment. [laughing]
00:12:37,210 [John Lanza]
[laughing] Right.
00:12:37,440 [Ashley Whillans]
A, a new pair of shoes. Those are all material purchases. You own them, you have them, um, and they’re something that you have as opposed to that you’re doing. Um, and, and the empirical literature suggests that experiences, meals out, vacations, they bring more happiness. And it’s important to think about the fact that the empirical literature suggests that experiences bring more happiness at each phase of the happiness cycle. So I like to think about, is this giving me something… If- is this purchase making me feel happy when I think about it in anticipation? Is it making me feel happy right now in the moment when I’m doing it? And does it also bring me happiness when I’m thinking about it afterwards? And so experiences are great on all three of those dimensions. When you think- you get some happiness just from thinking about this vacation you’re gonna take, just from imagining the restaurant that you’re going to eat at, um, talking about it with a friend. Um, and so some of the happiness benefits of an experience comes from just this anticipation. And then, and experiences also tend to involve other people. They’re social. You might go on that walking tour with one of your friends or a family member, and so because experiences tend to be more social, they also bring greater happiness. And finally, experiences, you, are really hard to compare against other things. So if you’re com- if you’re making a, a choice between one pair of black shoes and another, and maybe one is slightly cheaper, one is more expensive and has higher heels, um, when, when you’re done with making that purchase, you can think very concretely about whether or not maybe you should have just chosen the cheaper option. These heels are actually kind of ugly. [laughing]
00:14:11,670 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:14:12,460 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, but when you’re, when you’re making decisions about experiences, you’re comparing apples to oranges. You’re saying, “Well, I really enjoyed this one restaurant, and I don’t actually know how this other restaurant was.” So then you enjoy your, your experiences even more, um, upon reflection, and again, experiences are something that are novel and unique, so you’re more likely to share them. So in general, experiential purchases, purchases that focus on doing, yield greater happiness than material purchases. And again, I think the social focus is a really important key that you could communicate, right? So if you’re thinking about, what is the purpose of money, well, one broader purpose of money, it could be used as a tool to have meaningful experiences with people that you care about. Um, and so one thing that you could communicate to your kid is, like, you wanna be thinking about, we know that your friends and your family, those things really matter for happiness. And so if we can think about making purchases that enable us to spend meaningful, quality time with people that we care about, that, that’s a good way of spending discretionary income because it acts as a, as a way to connect socially with, with those around you.
00:15:17,980 [John Lanza]
I like that a lot, and I, I love this, uh, that, that three-prong, you know, the idea that you have the anticipation, the experience, and the remembering because that’s something that, that intellectual- that, that way, we all know that, that feeling. I mean, and, and I, I, I think I’ve read that a lot of times the anticipation of a vacation can be even better than the [laughing] experience of the vacation, uh, particularly with a family-
00:15:40,969 [Ashley Whillans]
Right
00:15:40,969 [John Lanza]
… family vacation from time to time. And then, of course, the remembering, I remember also reading in Happy Money that the remembering can even make up for a, what would be considered an, a not so great time. I think they were talking about, uh, one of Liz Dunn’s trips to, uh, through, uh, it was a bike trip that was, that was not, [chuckles] not a pleasant bike trip, but the remembering afterwards, it has, was, was kind of wonderful because, like you said, it’s something that’s original, and it’s something that can’t be compared to anything else. And I thought that was really interesting, that even a difficult experience can be remembered fondly.
00:16:18,980 [Ashley Whillans]
Mm, whereas, you know, just buying stuff, accumulating things, you don’t have that kind of nostalgia attached to an object often, right? So if you’re going to make a material purchase, right, so this is another- this is the other side of the coin here. Um, you know, it’s not that material purchases never bring happiness, never bring joy. Um, uh, you know, the, the Marie Kondo approach to, to material purchases are, like, you, you touch it, and you think about it, does it bring you happiness?
00:16:44,080 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:16:44,300 [Ashley Whillans]
But actually, material purchases do bring you happiness when you’re using them. So say you buy… So this is just about being more strategic about what we buy, not making unnecessary purchases. So we can think about a pair of sneakers. So one of my lab mates is an avid runner, and he was like, “You know, my sneakers bring me a lot of happiness, and it’s because whenever I wear them, I’m doing something I love, and I think about how those sneakers enable me to do something I love.” And so he ran a study on this ’cause he’s a grad student, right? [laughing] So that’s what-
00:17:15,220 [John Lanza]
[laughing] That’s what you do.
00:17:16,780 [Ashley Whillans]
You test your assumptions in the world, and sure enough, what he finds is that
00:17:21,599 [Ashley Whillans]
material purchases, you derive happiness out of using them.
00:17:25,360 [John Lanza]
Mm.
00:17:25,720 [Ashley Whillans]
So if you, if you have a pair of shoes that you really like or a pair of leggings that make you feel awesome, you actually do gain some happiness each and every time you use or wear those purchases. But this is only true for things where, you know, there’s usefulness, there’s utility, uh, from it, where, where it’s something that means something to you. Um, in the absence of having that kind of,
00:17:49,420 [Ashley Whillans]
you know, f- special feeling that when you’re wearing it or using it, material purchases don’t do much for our joy on an everyday basis, in part because we don’t really look forward to them, and we certainly don’t really talk about them with others after the fact. And if anything, when we do, it’s because we wish we would’ve chosen the other option. Um, and so we’re directly comparing it to the alternative.
00:18:10,180 [John Lanza]
Yeah, that makes sense. I was, uh, reading this New York Times article r- recently. They were talking about the National Association of Home Builders. They do a, uh, they do a kind of a dream home every year, or, or model home every year. Back in 1984, this was 1,500 square feet, and this year’s model is 11,000 square feet, right?… and [chuckles] I mean, that’s just an obscene amount of room, like, for… And, and f- and family size is going down on average. So it was just an odd thing, and I- but it did- I did go back and look at some of the research, and I, I know ’cause I’ve had this debate with people where they’ll say, “Well, you know, they will get more home satisfaction,” but I know, and you can speak to this, that the research shows that overall happiness doesn’t increase when you get any of these kind of material purchases, whether it’s a, a, uh, home or a car or anything like that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
00:19:06,790 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah. Well, it doesn’t… It, it’s domain specific. So this- there’s, like, some studies where people, you know, get luxury cars, and they [chuckles] think it’s just gonna make their whole life better.
00:19:15,900 [John Lanza]
[laughs] Right.
00:19:16,640 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, and we habituate to g- to positive experiences, so we stop, like, we get a luxury car, and it feels good, like, the first couple of times we ride it, and we feel h- greater satisfaction with this car ’cause we just spent a bunch of money on it. So partially, it’s just an endowment effect. I owe this… Um, I own this overly expensive car now, and so I’m going to enjoy it because-
00:19:36,300 [John Lanza]
[laughs] Right
00:19:37,360 [Ashley Whillans]
… I paid for it. [laughs] And so-
00:19:39,260 [John Lanza]
That’s tenac- that’s tenacity right there.
00:19:41,780 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Um, but, but those effects go away. And to your point, so, like, you, you know, you eventually kinda go back to the satisfaction with your car that you had with your Sedan before you bought your Mercedes. Like, so the, the effects habituate because you stop treating it like a special, novel, unique, important experience. Um, and also, exactly to your point, it doesn’t generalize. So maybe you might be a little more satisfied with your car, but it’s not like that all, all of a sudden, that, that getting that car or those marble countertops, um, facilitates you spending more time with your friends and family, and then al- also makes your relationships better, and you have a richer social life and better hobbies. [chuckles] Like, your countertop is doing nothing for those other two-
00:20:23,480 [John Lanza]
[laughs] Right
00:20:24,240 [Ashley Whillans]
… It matters a lot for happiness.
00:20:25,680 [John Lanza]
Yeah, no.
00:20:25,920 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, and so, well, well, if I ask you, like, overall, how satisfied are you in your life, that’s not gonna change. You might get a slight uptick in how satisfied are you with your countertop, but I think if you ask anyone, most people would say, “Well, I’m trying to prioritize the happiness of my overall life versus my happiness with the, uh, the countertops in, in my home.”
00:20:45,100 [John Lanza]
So is it… That is, um… [tsks] I, I just got off. Now, you have to, you have to… I, I’m, I’m dangerous with some of these terms, so you, you may have to correct me ’cause I-
00:20:54,530 [Ashley Whillans]
Okay
00:20:54,530 [John Lanza]
… I just read Daniel Kahneman’s book. So that, and I think this is one of the, a really important point that I try to get across to people that haven’t necessarily read his book or are familiar with his research, is this idea of the, um, the experiencing self versus-
00:21:09,280 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah
00:21:09,290 [John Lanza]
… the remembering self.
00:21:11,340 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah.
00:21:11,550 [John Lanza]
And I think you were talking a little bit about that. So can you, like, clarify that for everybody?
00:21:16,180 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, so the experiencing self… And so this kinda goes back to in general how, as I, as a happiness researcher, um, you know, think about how, what I’m measuring. Um, so, so happiness can kind of be broken down into t- two components: overall cognitive evaluation of my life, so when I think about my life as a whole, how happy am I? And then the experience of, of happiness that I get out of, you know, moments. So how happy am I feeling right now? How much joy have I experienced today? Um, and so this remembering versus experiencing self, the experiencing self is actually my, um, subjective evaluation of, of my day-to-day, like, how I’m actually truly feeling, whereas this remembering self is like the narrative I tell myself about my life. Um, and, and those two things don’t always map on, and, and really, when you think about it, um, the experiencing self, I think, matters more, right? So, um, you- we can’t- we’re not guaranteed our tomorrows, but what we have right now is the moment.
00:22:16,660 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:22:16,940 [Ashley Whillans]
So we should be thinking about maximizing the, our happiness and satisfaction, the joy that we experience across each and every day, um, as opposed to this kind of retrospective happiness. It- that matters, too, um, but our, our overall evaluation doesn’t necessarily, with- of our lives, doesn’t necessarily track with the actual joy we derive out of out- out of the moments of our days. And so we need to be thinking about not only, you know, how would I think about my life if I was looking at it from a bird’s-eye view, but actually, how do I feel when I’m living my, my moments, my minutes, my hours? I mean, that can actually be a really helpful conversation to have around money allocation is… or even task allocation, activity allocation. Where do I feel happiest? Where do I feel least happy in a day? Thinking, thinking backwards into my moments.
00:23:11,120 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:23:11,360 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, a- and if I have more unhappy than happy moments, how can I go and get more happy moments? Is there something I can do to spend money? Is there some conversation I can have about priorities? Can I shift some of my priorities? We really wanna be thinking about: How can I get to happier moments? In addition to thinking about overall, how, how happy do I feel in my life.
00:23:32,660 [John Lanza]
Okay, now something is not clicking for me ’cause I’m not understanding this. So when you, uh… So if we’re focused on our kind of experiencing self, doesn’t, doesn’t, uh, doesn’t the research suggest, like, for example, um, the, the home research we were looking at or, uh, car research, that you will feel happier about your upgrade, the upgrade of your car in the moment if you’re thinking about the particular car? So I remember seeing something like, you know, y- y- you’re not necessarily happier in traffic driving a Yugo than you are a BMW, but when you’re actually thinking about your BMW or whatever luxury car it might be, maybe that, that experiencing self is feeling a certain amount of happiness. Whereas, certainly the remembering self is not gonna remember the purchase of the BMW, whereas they are gonna remember whatever experience is there. Do you, do you understand, like, um, uh, uh, do you s- understand my confusion there? What, what am I not understanding out of that?
00:24:35,848 [Ashley Whillans]
… and it’s, it’s just, it- the satisfaction that we get out of any of our decisions, um, is gonna depend on whether we’re kind of thinking about our life as a whole or thinking about a specific moment or experience. So this even came up in the material purchase example, right? So when you ask people to think back to a time in which they made a material purchase versus an experiential purchase, it’s exactly what you’re saying. Um, people remember the experiences as more positive-
00:25:00,588 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm
00:25:00,598 [Ashley Whillans]
… ’cause it’s unique, and maybe it involved other people, maybe it felt personally relevant, but when you ask people to reflect back on a material purchase, they, they don’t gain any of that satisfaction. [laughing]
00:25:10,878 [John Lanza]
[laughing] Right.
00:25:11,848 [Ashley Whillans]
So it’s like, yeah, like, I’m staring at my water bottle that’s doing absolutely nothing for me.
00:25:15,978 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:25:16,168 [Ashley Whillans]
Of course, greater happiness, like, are- who- what, what re- what, what institution do you work at, right? Um, but, but when you ask people about the actual experience of using it, then people gain some satisfaction, some utility from it, right? They’re, they’re getting some consumption utility out of that water bottle.
00:25:33,848 [John Lanza]
Mm.
00:25:33,948 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, so I guess really the main broader takeaway is that different, different purchases in our life are gonna have different effects on different kinds of happiness. Um, and we have to think about what are we trying to maximize? Are we trying to maximize momentary happiness, long-term, overall happiness? And that’s really a, a value judgment in terms of what you’re trying to get more of in your own personal life.
00:25:56,548 [John Lanza]
Yeah. No, that makes sense. There’s a, there’s a great line, uh, in Happy Money where, where that kind of sums up [chuckles] uh, what we’re talking about to some extent. It’s like, “We’re happy with things until we find out there, that there are better things available.” [laughing]
00:26:10,878 [Ashley Whillans]
[laughing]
00:26:11,388 [John Lanza]
And I was just trying to think, like, what… You know, it’s something we talk to our kids about, and, and I think it’s one of the main reasons that it’s really important to set up a system where kids have some autonomy over their own money so they can learn this lesson by themselves. ‘Cause you could tell them till you’re blue in the face, and they’re still gonna buy something that they want, but only once they’ve bought something that they want and realize that something better is out there will they start to learn this lesson. Um, do you have any thoughts on, like, advice for parents to better get… I, I just think this message is something… You know, I’m, I’m very explicit with my kids about this, but I feel like if you could teach your kids this message, that, you know, you’re gonna be happy with a thing until you find there’s better things available, really can kind of, uh, have them avoid a lot of, um, [chuckles] a lot of expense and potential kind of pain from those expenses.
00:27:04,848 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, and I, I think, um, and you- maybe you’ve talked about this in previous episodes, I think another way that you can help, you know, kids sort of… Like, so I love this point of endowing kids with money and giving them control over income, um, so that they actually are making- so it feels nontrivial, uh, especially if you tie it to effort. It’s something that they earned, and now they have to make a conscious decision of whether to spend it, whether to save it, whether to give it away. Um, and that choice feels costlier when it’s earned money, um, and when there’s an actual value attached to it, right? Um, than just kind of o- uh, endowing kids with some money a- and, and getting them to give it away.
00:27:44,438 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:27:44,468 [Ashley Whillans]
So that’s one of it, is I would say, you know, you, you want to really instill these messages. You need, you need kids to feel like it’s really their money, that they take ownership over it, that they earned it, and that the choices that they’re going to make are consequential, right? Um, because this kind of goes to this idea of mental accounting. People are much more generous and spend way more hedonically, um, so much more on, like, experiences and that kind of thing when they’re spending someone else’s money. [laughing]
00:28:11,038 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:28:11,748 [Ashley Whillans]
But when they’re spending their own money, they take it very seriously. They try to… You know, they make all of these errors that we’re talking about. They’ll, like, make a material purchase ’cause they wanna have something tangible. They, you know, are a little bit more selfish. Maybe they save a little more. Um, and so that’s sort of the first step in this conversation is, is making kids feel like it’s really their money. Um, that they’re- they have some skin in the game, and that it’s really a decision that they’re making that has consequences. So that’s sort of the first part. Um, and the second part is this comparison or this contrast effect, exactly as you’re saying, right? Um, I think that’s really important, and I’ve shown in some of my research that it is. So a- letting kids spend in sort of their nat- nash- nat- natural inclination way, maybe to buy some Lego or something that maybe they never play with, or some gift card, or some iTunes credit, whatever, you know, kids are into these days.
00:29:02,308 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:29:02,788 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, I’m so outdated that probably none of those examples were relevant. [laughing]
00:29:06,018 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:29:06,388 [Ashley Whillans]
And I don’t have kids, so whatever.
00:29:07,938 [John Lanza]
Yeah.
00:29:07,968 [Ashley Whillans]
Just imagine in your mind, so listeners-
00:29:10,228 [John Lanza]
Yeah
00:29:10,238 [Ashley Whillans]
… will imagine the most relevant examples to them.
00:29:12,028 [John Lanza]
If you multiply that, your feeling of being outdated, with being, having, being a parent by 10 times, that’s about how feel- that’s about how outdated I feel as a parent. [laughing]
00:29:22,288 [Ashley Whillans]
So, so you let, you let kids make this allocation decision of whatever thing, latest fad thing they’re into these days or whatever. Um, and then you give them the opportunity to choose to do something that you know… You kind of constrain their options. So you kinda say, “Well, you know, last week you made the decision to spend on this, and I want you to just have this experience of trying to spend in a, in a different way that might feel slightly different.” Um, so I’m working with one charitable organization right now, where we’re providing charitable allowances in schools, um, and having kids actually endow them with money and make a decision to give to charity, right?
00:29:55,158 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:29:55,448 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, so they’re, they have to choose the charities. Um, it’s up to them. So they scroll through this website, and they kind of pick a charity or a cause that they really care about. Um, they learn exactly, like, the beneficiary of the charity or of, of the money that they, they gave. Um, and so having this direct comparison between the feeling of having spent money on something for yourself directly contrasting with this experience of having done something that we know is better for, for happiness-
00:30:22,788 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm
00:30:23,068 [Ashley Whillans]
… um, than spending it on a material purchase. I think that’s one way, and getting, getting kids to, like, articulate, like, how are they feeling? We know that generosity is one of the most powerful predictors of, of happiness in terms of spending, so in a, in a way that you can spend money to, to promote greater happiness, in part because it makes us feel like we’re doing something really meaningful. Um, and we-… and we’re making a significant and valuable contribution in the world, which is something that kids really, you know, often feel like they don’t have a lot of, of say in the world, right? So, um, they, they wanna help. Um, they’re starting, you know, once you get around, like, the ages of 11 to 13, which is where we’re running this study, these ages, they’re starting to notice disparities in the world. Um, and they feel a little bit like they wanna help, but they’re not quite sure how. They feel a little bit disempowered. So providing a charitable allowance and having some conversations around where would you like to give this? Or constraining options between, you know, experiences or charity, things that we know are good for happiness, and then having kids actively reflect about how did it feel when you did X, and, and was it different when you did Y, when you, when you spent money on charity and why? That could be, you know, a powerful lesson, uh, for, for, for kids, ’cause then they’re seeing their, their own- they’re thinking about what they did and their own response to that action.
00:31:36,974 [John Lanza]
That’s, uh, that’s fascinating, ’cause I was actually just gonna ask you, ’cause I- one of the things I know is that we tend to spend… We have very kind of high personal to pro-social spending, and, uh, in other words, we spend more on ourselves than we do for others. And put in terms of this podcast, we have the three jars. There’s the share, which is charitable giving, the save, which is longer-term savings, and the spend smart jar. So put in the terms of the podcast, our spend smart jar is filled with more money than our share jar. But like you said, happiness tracks with the use of the share jar money more than the spend smart jar. And I was gonna ask you about an idea for parents, but this is an interesting… What you’re doing in the study makes a lot of sense, which is that really have your kids invest, you know, spend the money in both ways, and have them actively reflect on that spending. I love that idea.
00:32:28,924 [Ashley Whillans]
And, and it’s so interesting because actually, this charity is making the same argument around jars, but for adults.
00:32:35,824 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:32:37,164 [Ashley Whillans]
‘Cause adults, kids, kids are making, are, have more in their, their, like, spend jar than their, their share jar, too, right?
00:32:44,054 [John Lanza]
Yeah.
00:32:44,084 [Ashley Whillans]
So, like, a- just like kids have more in their spend for themselves and less on their spend on others. And so the charity that I’m working with is like, “How do we get people to have this third account?” So spend, save, and share.
00:32:55,144 [John Lanza]
Yeah.
00:32:55,364 [Ashley Whillans]
How do you get people to start thinking about those are the three ways, um, that, um,
00:33:01,724 [Ashley Whillans]
that they’re, they’re spending their money? Um, and, and it’s really important, I think what you’re doing, is that starting that mental accounting at a young age. Because what we find is that adults today, millennials especially, are giving less than in previous generations because they’ve never learned or had conversations around the sharing element of money. Um, and that’s in part due to desecularization and other factors, but we’re not, we’re not learning how to share in the same way that we’re learning how to spend and save. Um, but the most powerful action is by helping kids help themselves and really recognize the benefits for themselves.
00:33:42,324 [John Lanza]
No, in fact, you hit on, uh… Now, now my mind, now my head is just, like, spinning with some ideas, because one of the issues that we always run into, and if, a- as I’ve written three kids books, and one of them was about the share jar, one’s about the spend- the save jar, one’s about the spend smart jar, um, and one’s about the share jar. And the one with the share jar is more about f- having, um, some agency over what you’re doing with that share jar money. ‘Cause one of the issues that happens is it becomes very easily forgotten, and in some cases, it’s just because, you know, some kids are amazingly kind of pro-social, but other kids are not, and they’ll forget about it. Like, for example, our kids, we do have to remind them, and, and there’s plenty of opportunities to the, to remind them. You know, they have stuff that’s going on at school, whatever that might be. But as I’m thinking, I’m thinking there, there’s probably some ratio, ’cause part of the reason the kids have less share jar money is because that’s what we’re doling out to them in our allowances. I’m thinking, like, we should have kind of a more, a ma- a, a… There’s gotta be a better ratio for the allowance that ties into a better, kind of, a better well-being, kind of, out- uh, a well-being or happiness. Uh, see, this is, now, now I’m ex- this is an exciting concept, because we could have this other idea. We have this allowance, then we have the kind of happiness allowance, which is a, a kind of a different concept, and, uh, this is something we’re gonna have to talk about offline, I think, too, ’cause I, I love what… I love this i- I’m getting excited about how you should adjust the levels of each of these jars to do what we s- talked about at the beginning of this podcast, which is, like, how do we use money to maximize our own well-being, and in this case, our kids’ well-being? This is exciting.
00:35:26,724 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, and I, I mean, I would argue that, you know, we all need to make these adjustments. We all have too little in our share jar.
00:35:33,644 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:35:34,824 [Ashley Whillans]
Rates of donations have been on a steady decline for the last 30 years, both in Canada and the US, um, in part because we don’t, we don’t allocate enough to the share jar, but we don’t often even think about the share jar in the first place. Um, and, and facilitating conversations, so our project is one part school education and sports team education, so tying sports goals to charitable allowance. So kids will make, you know, for passing well on a soccer field to their teammates, they get some charitable allowance that’s pushed back to them that they can decide where, what, what, what to do with.
00:36:07,764 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:36:08,304 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, is that part… Another part of that project is actually looking at how these conversations around charitable giving not only affect kids’ motivation and beliefs to give to charity in the immediate moment and over the long term, but also how they shape parents’ beliefs, um, around the importance of charitable giving.
00:36:25,994 [John Lanza]
Mm.
00:36:26,244 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, so, so having these, facilitating these conversations with our kids, um, might help us better walk, you know, walk the talk and think about contributing more in our own lives. So these conversations and thinking about what can we do? Can we ourselves have a happiness jar and think about putting more of our experiential or, uh-… pro-social allocations there is something I think that is, is not just important for kids, but important for all of us to think about, uh, m- and, and, and do more of.
00:36:56,316 [John Lanza]
Yeah, hear, hear. That is a great idea. The, uh, and the other thing is, I remember reading in the research that the benefits- so you’re talking about 11 and 13, but the benefits of giving, uh, emerge among, among children before the age of two. So this, this is something that really we can start from a much earlier age, ’cause, you know, we’re starting an allowance at, say, four or five years old, and if you’re, you know, putting more emphasis on that share jar, then, you know, you might be really kind of, you know… I mean, the idea that maybe by doing that, you’re setting your kids up for having a, a, a, you know, a much happier life when it comes to money is totally in line with what, uh, we’re trying to do. So this is, this is really interesting. I, I, I love that study that you’re doing. [laughing]
00:37:41,096 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, it’s great to connect. I, I think an important point on the younger than four is that in the studies that my lab mates have run, um, they were also asking these toddlers to give up very valuable resources-
00:37:52,776 [John Lanza]
Mm.
00:37:52,886 [Ashley Whillans]
– i.e., Goldfish crackers, right? [laughing]
00:37:56,766 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:37:56,856 [Ashley Whillans]
So money might not mean anything to a two to three-year-old, but Goldfish crackers, those are precious and valuable. So thinking, again, even instilling this belief of giving up something you really care about, um, to someone else, um, as, as a way to increase your happiness and, um, someone else’s happiness is, is an important part of the equation, I think.
00:38:17,656 [John Lanza]
Yeah, definitely. I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface of, uh, some of the ideas that I wanna talk to you about, but I’m kind of mindful of your time, and I wanna make sure that we get to our fast and fun round questions.
00:38:33,256 [Ashley Whillans]
Perfect.
00:38:33,866 [John Lanza]
Um, before we jump into those, though, ’cause I have my standard fast and fun round questions, I do wanna ask you, um, who was the most influential person in your life when it came- comes to the way that you think about money?
00:38:46,116 [Ashley Whillans]
My mom.
00:38:46,936 [John Lanza]
Okay. And why was that?
00:38:50,776 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, she is both… So I think she, she does a good job of being very deliberate about how she spends her money. So I grew up, um, working-class parents. I’m, uh, the first person in my family to go to college, um, on either side, so there wasn’t always a lot of money around, but she was very careful about not wasting it, wasting her money on trivial things she didn’t want. Whenever she bought something, she put a lot of care and attention into it, um, and that meant that she never felt lacking for money. She always felt like, you know, she was making decisions that were in line exactly with her goals and values. We went on nice vacations. We didn’t go out much for dinner, but when we did, it was really nice. Um, she was really good at saving, and so I think she embodies a lot of these principles that we’re talking about, where she’s thoughtful and considerate, not only in terms of, you know, um, making money to, to, like, save it, but also spend- like, being, being willing to spend money to have nice things and to have happiness-
00:39:49,296 [John Lanza]
Yeah
00:39:49,346 [Ashley Whillans]
… but being very careful about the ways in which she did that.
00:39:52,446 [John Lanza]
Yeah.
00:39:52,456 [Ashley Whillans]
And also, they always were making contributions to charity throughout my life. Um, two of my cousins, uh, my same-age cousins, ha- who are now passed away, had muscular dystrophy. Um, and they were very generous to places that help- had helped my cousins growing up, and so watching them be… not make a lot of money, but make really good financial decisions-
00:40:12,776 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm
00:40:12,996 [Ashley Whillans]
… in ways that maximized their savings but also their happiness, I think, uh, were, were very, um, strong signals and, and, and, uh, a, a good role model to me.
00:40:23,876 [John Lanza]
Yeah. No, that’s an interesting story. That’s, uh… Thank you for sharing.
00:40:28,896 [John Lanza]
So let me ask you, Ashley, so now, now we’ll enter into the fast and fun round questions-
00:40:32,746 [Ashley Whillans]
Uh
00:40:32,746 [John Lanza]
… if you’re ready for those. [laughing]
00:40:34,846 [Ashley Whillans]
Sure am.
00:40:34,876 [John Lanza]
Okay.
00:40:35,256 [Ashley Whillans]
No time to prepare in advance, but, but we’ll go with it, right?
00:40:38,016 [John Lanza]
[laughing] So here we go. The- I think, I think, I think you’re, uh, you’re, um, you’re equipped to deal with these questions, so.
00:40:44,276 [Ashley Whillans]
Okay, perfect.
00:40:45,156 [John Lanza]
What does the term money empowered, something we discussed a little bit, um, earlier, what does that mean to you?
00:40:52,216 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, it means
00:40:55,396 [Ashley Whillans]
feeling like… It, it means that money doesn’t run you, that you can use money as a tool to get what you want.
00:41:01,956 [John Lanza]
Yep. I like that. That makes sense. So normally, I ask this question: What’s the best investment of time or money you’ve ever spent on your kids? But you don’t have kids, so I’m gonna ask, what’s the best investment of time or money- this is from the Money and Happiness researcher, so this, I think, is [laughing] really interesting. What is the best investment of time or money you’ve ever spent on yourself?
00:41:24,596 [Ashley Whillans]
Mm. Um, I spend an outrageous amount on rent so I can walk to the office, and in grad school, I commuted an hour and a half each way. I’m- every time I pay my rent, I would pay more [laughing] to live walking distance to the office so I don’t have to commute. It was the best, uh, investment of money I’ve ever spent.
00:41:44,816 [John Lanza]
I love that. There’s this term that, uh, Debbie Millman, who hosts a podcast called Design Matters, she calls it her non-negotiable.
00:41:53,086 [Ashley Whillans]
Yep.
00:41:53,156 [John Lanza]
And, um, you know, I, have you ever heard that term?
00:41:56,236 [Ashley Whillans]
Yep.
00:41:56,656 [John Lanza]
Yeah, and-
00:41:57,366 [Ashley Whillans]
I think I taught it in class earlier today.
00:41:59,396 [John Lanza]
[laughing] And mine is in, and mine is exercise, and it sounds like- you know, hers was living in New York, and yours now sounds like may- may, uh, you may have another non-negotiable, but that sounds like right up there with one of your possible non-negotiables, and that’s smart.
00:42:13,286 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, but being walking distance to work, I will never not do that ever again.
00:42:15,776 [John Lanza]
I love that. Okay, if you could transmit a message that everyone would see, so it’s, you know, on every billboard, it’s skywritten, wherever it is, what would that message say?
00:42:29,496 [Ashley Whillans]
I would say… Oh, it, it, it has to be short and snappy if it’s gonna be on billboards. [laughing] Oh, man, this one’s tough!
00:42:37,086 [John Lanza]
[laughing]
00:42:37,096 [Ashley Whillans]
Okay, I would say, uh, “Focus less on earning money than what your gut tells you.”
00:42:43,856 [John Lanza]
Mm. I like that. Good advice. That was, that was very impressive, good advice, uh, right off the cuff…. So what is the one, um, I wouldn’t say parent, so what’s the one money smarts book, other than Happy Money, uh, that you go back to or that you gift the most often? And, you know, it doesn’t even have to necessarily be money smarts, but related to this whole idea of understanding happiness and money, what is that one book?
00:43:13,280 [Ashley Whillans]
So, so it’s not a book, but it’s something that my editor at HBR recently did, which I’m currently obsessed with. It wasn’t my idea, it was his idea. Really good idea. So instead of just accounting for how we spend our money, thinking about how the decisions we make about our time have a, a monetary equivalent. So we call it accounting for time.
00:43:32,640 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm.
00:43:33,060 [Ashley Whillans]
Um, and I’ve been sending that to all of the financially-minded people in my life who are like, “Yeah, happiness, whatever.” And you’re like, “No,” but, like, if you went from not socializing with friends and family at all to socializing with friends and family every day, that’s the happiness equivalent of making $102,000 more of income each and every year. So I feel like by putting a dollar value on happiness changes that result of m- changing your mindset from, uh, money to time or being a little bit more financially generous, putting an actual numerical value on the happiness benefits has, has converted even the most skeptical of people who are, um, not- don’t really buy into this i- idea of moving the needle in terms of happiness. So I think accounting for our time and our money, um, and thinking about the outcomes, not just in terms of happiness, but happiness dollars, has been something I’ve been advocating for recently.
00:44:28,460 [John Lanza]
Yeah, that’s a big wow. So where that… I- i- is that… How, how do we find that number? ‘Cause I, that sounds like something I need to be sending around as well. [chuckles]
00:44:37,120 [Ashley Whillans]
Yeah, so, um, it’s in my… I published recently a Big Ideas feature on time poverty and unhappiness in HBR-
00:44:45,260 [John Lanza]
Mm-hmm
00:44:45,300 [Ashley Whillans]
… and it’s one of- it’s the third article in that series, and it’s called Accounting for Time. And again, it really was my editor’s idea, and, and I h- think it helps us get around, but should we really care about happiness? When you put it in a dollar value-
00:44:59,480 [John Lanza]
[laughs]
00:44:59,760 [Ashley Whillans]
… You go, “Whoa! Like, I should really care about happiness. Look at all the happiness dollars I’m missing out on.” So-
00:45:04,540 [John Lanza]
Yeah
00:45:04,700 [Ashley Whillans]
… that’s one, where you can find it is, is on hbr.org.
00:45:08,520 [John Lanza]
I love that. And, and HBR, for those who don’t know, is Harvard Business Review. I don’t know if we said that or not, but, uh, if we did, then I’m being redundant. But, um, that is gr- uh, wow, I’m, I’m excited to take a look at that. So okay, well, Ashley, how can people find you on social media and/or the web, to the extent that you want them to find you? [laughs]
00:45:28,800 [Ashley Whillans]
I, I, I like having conversations about these topics. You can send me an email, and we can find a time to chat. I’m writing a book on happier time, actually, as a plug, so I’m interested in hearing how people have navigated decisions around money and time in their own personal life. I’m, like, fascinated by this topic. Obviously, could talk for many more hours on it. Um, and so you can find me, um, through my Harvard Business School faculty website. I also have a website, awhillan.com, um, A-W-H-I-L-L-A-N, like Nancy, S, like Sam, uh, dot com. Um, and you can find me there. I’m on Twitter. I’m a pretty easy person to find. I think if you Google my name, you could, you could find me, find my email, and we could have a, have a, uh, informative and enlightening conversation. I know I’d learn a lot.
00:46:12,840 [John Lanza]
I can, I can attest to that because I heard you on the HBR Idea Cast and got in contact with you ’cause I knew you’d be a terrific guest, and we were up and running pretty quickly. So, uh, she is easy to find. I will make sure all that material is in the show notes. And Ashley, this has been wonderful. I feel like I have about a hundred other questions that I want to ask you, so I’ll probably [chuckles] have to have you come on the show again, if you’ll, uh, if you’ll be able to, to get on the show again. But I appreciate you coming on. This has been enlightening, to say the least.
00:46:46,380 [Ashley Whillans]
It’s been wonderful chatting with you, too, and I, I want more tips on the shared jar of yours.
00:46:50,720 [John Lanza]
[laughs] Well, that sounds good. Uh, thanks, Ashley.
00:46:54,600 [Ashley Whillans]
Thank you so much. Take care.
00:46:56,740 [John Lanza]
I’m trying something new out in this episode, including some quick reflections on our conversation. I’m sure if you’ve listened to this podcast, you picked up on Ashley talking about, um, kids earning money and the importance of that and taking ownership of money. You probably started thinking about kind of chores and that little bit of debate. Uh, I’ve- I didn’t find at the time that it was, um, warranted to kind of go, go down that rabbit hole, uh, but I’ve, I’ve found that an allowance not tied to chores does accomplish what Ashley was getting at, which is spending with more thoughtfulness. Um, you know, using… When it’s your money, you’re going to be more mindful of it. And the allowance really does work out to be their money, and they are much more thoughtful about spending it. It is possible that perhaps they’re even more careful about earned money. It’s something we’d have to look into. Uh, if you want to read more about kind of chores and responsibility and allowance, I’ll include my blog post about it in the show notes. Uh, maybe that’s something for a future episode as well. Another really interesting takeaway from this conversation, which I really enjoyed, was this idea of accounting for time, uh, that we talked about near the end of our conversation. You know, this idea that socializing with friends every day is the happiness equivalent of making $102,000, just kind of another interesting way to highlight the importance of time well spent. And finally, I just want to leave you something from the terrific book, Happy Money, um, to which Ashley contributed, and that is, before you spend the next $5 as you usually would, you know, stop and ask yourself, “Is this happy money? Am I spending this money in the way that will give me the biggest happiness bang for my buck?” And, you know, ask our, ask our kids to do the same, you know, even with a dollar, and, uh, let me know how it goes. [upbeat music] I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Art of Allowance podcast. Please subscribe to our show on whatever platform you listen to. That will help me have more conversations like this with experts and parents interested in helping you raise your own money-smart child. You can find out more about our movement at themoneymammals.com. The Money Mammals is our program to get kids excited about money smarts when they’re young. You can also get a copy of my new book, The Art of Allowance, as well as some great free resources right there on the site. Of course, please consult with a financial or investment professional before engaging in any decisions that might affect your own financial well-being. And until next time, I wish you and your family well on your own money smart journey. [upbeat music]