Instead of going to New Zealand I would buy happiness

Out of curiosity (and due to hearing about other people’s trips to New Zealand) I decided to do a quick check on the prices for a flight to and from New Zealand as well as a single room in a hotel for 2 weeks. I almost got a heart attack from seeing those prices but oh well, I didn’t plan on going there in the first place.

Anyways let’s have a look at how expensive this would be, shall we? A quick and admittedly not very thorough google search showed me some offers for around 1500–1800€ for a flight to and from New Zealand. If I would want to stay in Auckland there seem to be no hotel rooms for less than 100 € per night so I would probably end up paying 3000€ for a two week trip to New Zealand.

One thing I would love to do is to buy happiness.

Now for a lot of people that might be a reasonable investment and one could argue that 2 weeks of vacation on the other end of the world isn’t going to be cheap anyways. Remember that you haven’t calculated prices for food, museum or other tours and will probably have to pay another couple hundred bucks for that too. Let’s say that amounts to 500 €.

So overall we would end up paying 3500€ for an “all-inklusive” trip to New Zealand. To me that sounds ridiculous as I absolutely can’t imagine paying that much for a vacation. And even if being given the money or opportunity, I wouldn’t want anyone to spend that much as I wouldn’t pay more than a few hundred Euro for a 2 week trip no matter where it would lead me. I simply think that I could spend the money on so many things that would have a better or longer lasting effect. I could buy something for myself, invest in the stock market or do something else that would lead reaping bigger benefits.

“Happiness is the only thing that doubles when divided “ — Albert Schweitzer

Now how can I possibly buy happiness and maybe even divide it so that it doubles? How the concept of happiness and being happy is defined is very subjective. Some people are happy being surrounded by friends and family, for others there is no greater joy than playing games and even others love reading a good book and that makes them happy.

I‘m not going to judge anything instead I’m going to tell you the one universal thing that has been found to make everyone happy.

Several studies have shown that giving a gift or spending money on someone else is increasing your happiness. If people in a team at work are given money to either spend on themselves or to spend on the group, the teamperformance is increasing dramatically when they spend the money on the group. So the simply solution to buying happiness is to share and give. With 3500€ you could give a lot of happiness however I and probably a lot of you too don’t have 3500€ they could simply spend on someone else.

But what if there is a way to share happiness and that isn’t expensive? There is!

You could for example invite a stranger or a homeless person to a meal or a coffee. And believe me that this will have a longer lasting impact on that persons life, your own and even other people’s than tossing some coins at people who are begging in the streets. Rather than letting them sit there help them up and have a chat with them over a coffee. You never know what stories other people have and you will never know if you don’t try!

To end this post I would like to invite you to share and divide happiness by doing an unexpected act of kindness for someone else and thereby recieving one of the greatest gifts yourself — the feeling of joy and happiness. Go ahead and buy yourself your own piece of happiness :)