About time to reopen my blog after almost a whole year’s pause! Terrible really how school work totally absorbs me, leaving little time for other pursuits in life. Luckily, it’s another long – and well-earned – summer holiday now, and I will soon embark on an exciting adventure, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tick off a distant destination in my bucket list.

I love travelling, and mostly spend my extra euros on a ticket that will take me somewhere outside Finland. I’ve often wondered what it is that made me this way since my two brothers are very happy to stay safely in their familiar homeland. Funny really! One decisive factor certainly is my passion for learning languages. I am proud and happy to say that hubby and I have also managed to instill the same wanderlust in our only daughter – who, by the way, is currently in Morocco, doing a two-month research project for her Master’s dissertation at the University of Edinburgh.

Of late, our mantra has been: “experiences, not things.” Interestingly, I found scientific proof of spending your money on travelling making most people happier than purchasing possessions. In 2014, Cornell University researchers Thomas Gilovich and Amit Kumar, published some of their findings in a paper titled We’ll always have Paris: The Hedonic Payoff from Experiential and Material Investments. They looked extensively into how purchasing experiences (i.e. spending your money on doing) and purchasing things (i.e. spending on having) affect people’s feelings of well-being and happiness. While, initially, both seemed to have a similar positive effect, it was the experiential purchases, such as travelling, concerts, movies or eating out, that tended to yield a more enduring feeling of satisfaction and happiness.

Research has found several reasons for this. Firstly, there is the anticipation and planning of an experience, which seemed to be very important. I can definitely relate to this. For weeks now, I have been doing background reading, getting ready to go and  dreaming of my trip ahead. For me, the anticipation is sometimes almost as rewarding as the actual experience!

Secondly, there is the social aspect of experiences. These sorts of purchases are mostly enjoyed in the company of others, social interaction being an essential part of it all. On the contrary, material purchases, often offer solitary moments of enjoyment. Moreover, there are the memories and stories that will live on long after the experience, sometimes for the rest of your life. I will probably bore everyone with my endless stories of this trip afterwards, as I’ve done after each trip I’ve ever ventured on. People want to share their fascinating memories and learning experiences, and even negative incidents easily turn into hilarious stories afterwards. However, this is not the case with a disappointing material purchases – you’d probably rather forget all about them, get rid of them, or, at least, not talk about them that much.

Another finding seems to indicate that material purchases are easier to compare with what others have, often leading to disappointments when you realise that your neighbour, or “the Joneses”, have something better than what you just invested in. This will often result in so-called ‘buyer’s remorse’, and reduce the long-term satisfaction with a material purchase. In the case of experiential consumption, feelings of regret are directed more towards inaction, ie. wishing you hadn’t missed a wonderful opportunity.

All of us are likely to regret the planes we did not get on far more, and for far longer, than the clothing, jewellery, gadgets, or furniture we did not buy. (Gilovich and Kumar)

Finnish poet Pentti Saaritsa has described the excitement of travel beautifully in one of this poems. He writes how nothing warms you up like tomorrow’s travel ticket in your pocket, or how your familiar coat suddenly turns into the fairy tale invisibly cloak. He also urges us to set off on a trip whenever we can. And this is why, I’ll be leaving on that jet plane again in only two days’ time!