When I sat down to write Your Money: The Missing Manual, I knew I wanted to start with a chapter on happiness. (Well, to be fair, I was going to conclude the book with this chapter; my editor suggested moving it to the beginning, which was a stroke of genius.) In particular, I wanted to make the point that money doesn’t buy happiness. Because we all know that’s true, right?
Well, not so much, as it turns out.
Can Money Buy Happiness?
As I wrote the chapter, I found that I had trouble locating data to support my hypothesis. There were plenty of people (including me) who loudly proclaimed that money and happiness were unrelated, and their arguments were persuasive, but none of these folks ever offered numbers to support their case.
In fact, the more I read, the more I realized they were wrong. And so was I. The numbers actually show the opposite. Money does buy happiness; researchers have found a strong correlation between increased wealth and increased contentment. In their book Happiness, Ed Diener and Robert-Biswas Diener write: “Rich people and nations are happier than their poor counterparts; don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
But the authors don’t just make the claim — Diener and his son had the numbers to back up their position. Though it’s a widely-held belief, it’s a myth that happiness and money are unrelated.
Sometimes, as in the case of this money/happiness stuff, money myths are just plain wrong. Other times they sprout from a grain of truth.
Note: Here’s the thing: Though the correlation between money and happiness is strong, except for when it comes to boosting people from poverty, increased wealth has only a small impact on well-being. To put it another way, more money will make you happier, but unless you’re poor, it won’t make you much happier.
Do People Spend More When Using Credit?
Financial guru Dave Ramsey often cites a Dun and Bradstreet study that purportedly reveals people spend more with credit than with cash. I’d always accepted his claim as true, and hadn’t bothered to double-check it. But when I was researching the credit chapter for my book, I had to do more than just take things on faith. I had to find actual sources.
Nobody I know has been able to track down this mythical Dun and Bradstreet study. Even Dun and Bradstreet themselves have been unable to locate it. GRS reader Nicole (with the assistance of her trusty librarian Wendi) contacted the company and received this response: “After doing some research with D&B, it turns out that someone made up the statement, and also made up the part where D&B actually said that.”
In other words, the study doesn’t exist.
So why do Dave Ramsey and a host of others cite it? Who knows? It’s tough to trace the origin of urban legends, but that didn’t stopped Nicole and Wendi from digging further. They kept searching for the source of the D&B myth. Eventually, they succeeded.
Turns out, this “fact” doesn’t come from a study at all. Instead, it’s from a short (739 word) article in the March/April 1993 issue (vol42, no2) of D&B Reports (which is no longer published). The article, written by Robert J. Klein, a founding editor of Money magazine, isn’t available on the web, but I was recently able to read a copy.
It doesn’t say what people (including Dave Ramsey) claim it says. Here’s an excerpt:
Well-run businesses borrow money to finance plant, equipment and research. They do not borrow to pay operating expenses. Families should do the same. They should borrow to buy a house to live in, a washer and dryer to keep house more efficiently, a car for transportation to work, a college education for the kids. They should borrow to refinance existing debts at lower rates. They may even borrow to start or expand a family business. On principal, though, they should never borrow to pay for living expenses.
Sure, the article advocates against overuse of credit, but it doesn’t say anything about people spending more with credit than without.
My point isn’t that Dave Ramsey is wrong about this idea. My point is that he’s citing a bogus study, and then hundreds (or thousands) of others are subsequently accepting what he says as gospel. My point is this: It always pays to question what you hear, and to do your own research. (You should even question me. I do my best to provide accurate information, but I’m only human.)
Note: You can actually find a number of real studies to support the claim that people tend to spend more with credit than with cash. (For example, here’s a 2008 article from the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied that contains research into the effect of payment type on consumer behavior
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Jun 17 2010
