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" It&amp;#039;s one of our oldest, most enduring clich\u00E9s: Money can&amp;#039;t buy happiness. We all know what it means \u2014 that true happiness comes from things that can&amp;#039;t be found in any store, like love, friendship, and gratitude. But new research shows that, contrary to that common wisdom, money can buy you happiness \u2014 if you know where to spend it. And the bright news in these gloomy economic times is that joy can be affordable on any budget.  The golden rule: Devote your dollars to things that further your goals and beliefs, says Leaf Van Boven, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder who, along with other researchers, has been teasing out the links between money and happiness. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s now very clear that nurturing the things that you value \u2014 whether that&amp;#039;s becoming more cultured or redesigning your garden \u2014 is what makes people happier,&amp;quot; says Van Boven. It&amp;#039;s not that material goods are perpetually disappointing, he adds. But when you&amp;#039;re intent on acquiring them, you tend to compare your possessions to other people&amp;#039;s. As a result, you gain only the feeling of wanting more. Purchases that support your own values, however, are more satisfying because they help to boost your feelings of self-worth. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean retail therapy won&amp;#039;t ever give you a quick pick-me-up. But in order to get the most bliss for your buck, you have to spend your cash thoughtfully. Here are three fresh ways to rework your wish list.  1. Load Up on Your Memory Bank One of the best ways to invest in happiness is to focus on doing rather than owning, reports Van Boven. When he asked 1,279 Americans of varying income levels to name both an experience and a material possession they had purchased to cheer themselves up, 57 percent said they got more happiness from things they had done \u2014 taking a vacation, riding a bike, strolling through a museum, eating a pretzel with a friend \u2014 than from stuff they had bought. (By contrast, 34 percent were made happier by their purchases; the other 9 percent were on the fence.) It&amp;#039;s not only that those activities are fun while we&amp;#039;re doing them; it&amp;#039;s that when they&amp;#039;re over and they morph into memories, our brains tend to filter out the nuisances we encountered during the good times \u2014 the hassle of packing a suitcase, searching for a parking spot, or waiting for a table. Instead we hang on to the beautiful sunset or to how much fun it was to teach a child to swim. Constantly replaying those happy scenes strengthens their neural pathways in our brains; what doesn&amp;#039;t get rehearsed over and over is trimmed and eventually cut out entirely, says Van Boven. As our minds wash away the irritants \u2014 the pain, the annoyances, the fear \u2014 the memories are perpetually cleansed and gradually grow even better and brighter, giving us a fresh dose of joy every time we revisit them. Julie Rosenfeld, 53, a fund-raiser and mom of two in Key Biscayne, FL, has set her financial priorities to create happy memories. She isn&amp;#039;t interested in replacing the television she bought in 1988. Instead, she saves her money so she can buy airplane tickets and travel to new places. The jaunts, she says, are exciting stress relievers \u2014 even well after they&amp;#039;re over and she&amp;#039;s back at work: &amp;quot;I recently spent five days in Paris with my husband, walking down old streets steeped in history. Thinking back on that during an otherwise difficult day relaxes me.&amp;quot; Next: Know where to save and where to splurge. Sure, she had to arrange for her parents to babysit the children, and spent days in advance cooking and freezing meals, not to mention making lists of the kids&amp;#039; after-school schedules. And if Rosenfeld had returned home afterward and told her friends over and over about all the pre-trip preparations, perhaps that would have been what stood out in her memory. But instead she raves about the saut\u00E9ed veal and the views of the Eiffel Tower, so it&amp;#039;s those aspects of the vacation that are mentally reinforced for her and that, ultimately, she&amp;#039;ll remember for months and years to come.  Material things, on the other hand, quickly lose their luster. You may spend hours fantasizing about buying a silk scarf, several days shopping for it, and perhaps even some time enjoying it \u2014 but not much. Your brain quickly adjusts to the fact that the scarf is folded in your drawer, and before long, you&amp;#039;re so used to its being there, you can barely remember when it wasn&amp;#039;t. Once the object of your obsession, now the scarf blends into the background and becomes as normal to you as hot water, Internet access, or automatic-drip coffee. Sure, you&amp;#039;d be miserable if suddenly you found yourself without any one of those givens of modern life. But the human brain is built to adapt to its surroundings, which is why you don&amp;#039;t wake up each day and smile at the thought of high-speed wireless.  There are some experiences, of course, that rely on your having material things in order to engage in the activity. You can&amp;#039;t ski without a pair of ski boots, for example. True, says Van Boven, so when you&amp;#039;re facing that kind of purchase \u2014 bikes, ski boots, a set of watercolor paints \u2014 check yourself by asking why, exactly, you can&amp;#039;t live without it. Are you trying to impress other people, or achieve a goal you&amp;#039;ve set for yourself? If it&amp;#039;s your soul that&amp;#039;s driving you to open your wallet, then go ahead and spend.  2. Splurge on Mini-Treats  It may sound counterintuitive, but researchers have found that over time, small, inexpensive indulgences have virtually the same emotional impact as big, pricey ones \u2014 making the little things a much better buy.  You may get a slightly bigger initial hit of pleasure from a new sofa than from a new pair of sandals, explains Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., author of The How of Happiness and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. But your emotional response to both is actually pretty similar. What&amp;#039;s more, while you&amp;#039;d expect the satisfaction of the sandals to fade quickly, surprisingly the excitement over the sofa doesn&amp;#039;t last much longer. So you&amp;#039;ll get more satisfaction over time if you allow yourself a small low-cost or even free indulgence each day, Lyubomirsky says, rather than a single large splurge once in a while. That&amp;#039;s backed up by research on lottery jackpot winners and people of average income done by Richard Tunney, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham. His findings: It was the frequent treats of chocolate bars or bottles of wine with takeout dinners that made both groups happy \u2014 not the pricier purchases of artwork, designer luggage, or CD players. Here&amp;#039;s how it works: Say you have $40 and you put it all toward a blouse. On the satisfaction scale, you record a 10 and your burst of pleasure lasts two days. You&amp;#039;re back to baseline happiness in no time. Now, say you pick up a pair of flip-flops for $7 \u2014 registering a 3. The next day, you take a walk with a friend \u2014 it&amp;#039;s free and clocks in at 4 satisfaction points. Midweek, you splurge on calling an old college classmate in London for $10 \u2014 giving you 6 points. With 13 points, you&amp;#039;ve beaten the blouse already, and you still have more than half your money left.  Next: Enjoy the simple things in life. Kristen Kupperman, 38, a mother of three in Highland Park, IL, indulges in a simple luxury each day before breakfast. She wakes up at 4:45 (yes, that&amp;#039;s a.m.) and reserves for herself two hours of quiet, uninterrupted alone time, which she uses to immerse herself in the newspaper. The cost: 68 cents a morning. &amp;quot;Finding out what&amp;#039;s going on in the world improves everything that happens after breakfast,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Even if the stories aren&amp;#039;t upbeat, I love using my brain and also the information to help my family. In one article I learned how to protect my son, who has food allergies, from mislabeled products. Sure, the $250 I spend on the paper every year could buy a couple of nice J. Crew sweaters, but that could never compare to the pleasure of nurturing myself each day, or holding an adult conversation at night when my husband gets home.&amp;quot; 3. Get a Lift from Giving With the failing economy sucking up everyone&amp;#039;s life savings, donating your cash might seem misguided when there are more pressing goals like feeding your family. But our stores of happiness are stockpiled higher when we spend money on other people, says Michael Norton, Ph.D., an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. In 2007, he and two colleagues from the University of British Columbia visited a Boston company about to give out profit-sharing bonuses that ranged from $3,000 to $8,000. The researchers asked each employee recipient about his or her happiness level before the checks were distributed and again after the money was spent. The workers who used their bonuses for their own needs were less happy than those who did things like take a friend out to dinner or buy a gift for a sibling \u2014 basically, spending the money in a way that enhanced a relationship. &amp;quot;The dollar amount of the bonus had no impact on their happiness,&amp;quot; says Norton. &amp;quot;What did matter: The more they spent on other people, the better they felt.&amp;quot;  Basically, Norton and his colleagues&amp;#039; work built on what previous research has found: The strongest sources of happiness are the people in our lives. &amp;quot;Research has shown that social support is one of the most important predictors of whether people are happy,&amp;quot; says Norton. &amp;quot;Spending money on other people enhances your social relationships in a very cost-effective way.&amp;quot; Researchers aren&amp;#039;t entirely clear as to why \u2014 perhaps it&amp;#039;s that generosity is the opening serve in a volley of warm thoughts that bounce back and forth. But MRI studies have shown that providing for other people activates the brain&amp;#039;s ventral striatum, the region that lights up in response to pleasurable experiences such as seeing an attractive person or winning a prize, says Norton.  Giving to people you know may result in the biggest emotional boost. Colleen Lake, 50, a single mom of two in Stratham, NH, learned this lesson eight years ago when a young, enthusiastic sales rep stopped by her design firm. A relationship developed, and Lake learned that her new friend, also a single mom, had left her abusive husband to start over \u2014 both emotionally and financially. When the woman canceled a meeting because of car trouble, Lake knew instantly that the unexpected expense would be too great a setback for her new friend. Though far from rich herself, Lake called the repair shop, gave the mechanic her credit card number, and paid for what turned out to be a set of new tires. &amp;quot;I felt supersonic,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It put me in a place that money can&amp;#039;t buy \u2014 $600 for tires meant the world to her. There isn&amp;#039;t anything I could have bought for myself that could have given me the same feeling.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/wellness/advice/a16433/how-to-be-happy/>