Here’s a link to my January contribution to Positive Psychology New Daily . Research just out suggests that how you spend your money affects your well-being, and that you’d be better off  (psychologically-speaking) by considering experiential purchases rather than material ones.  There are several reasons for this, for example, people tend to make unfavorable comparisons when they buy material goods, and the positive feeling you might get from buying them wears off very quickly. With experiential purchases, the feel-good factor lasts far longer.

Fortunately, if you’re a shopaholic, you may be able to fool youself into thinking about material purchases as if they were experiences, and in this way derive some longer-lasting benefit from them!

Image courtesy of Lauren Close