For a while there I was probably spending at least twice what I used to spend when I was a University student, even after adjusting for inflation.
But I wasn’t twice as happy. What’s going on there?
Psychologists refer to this as hedonic adaptation, where we get used to positive life changes and return to a stable level of happiness.
Interestingly it works both ways, our happiness also adapts to negative things.
“We’re usually wrong about how intense an event will feel, and how long the feeling will last, for both good and bad things. We typically over predict.”
Dan Gilbert, social psychologist (source)
We can use that knowledge to our advantage when trying to save more.
One of the challenges in starting a savings plan is the fear of missing out and the fear of not being as happy if we lower our lifestyle.
Turns out that ‘pain’ will be fleeting and soon you won’t notice the difference.
Plus there are plenty of things that we can do to minimise the impact, such as cutting the forgettable spending and swapping our spending from items to experiences.
Spending less and saving more won’t be as bad as you probably think it will be, and today is a great day to start.