According to the Los Angeles Times article, “How to buy happiness” by Elizabeth Dunn and Micheal Norton, our happiness can increase depending on how we spend our money. The article began by making us readers think on what would we do if we woke up the following day finding one million dollars under our mattress and asking us what would we do with it. Many people start thinking about buying a new home, cars and other material items that they believe will make them happy or bring them happiness, however in reality materialistic things in addition to thinking about yourself will make you happy temporarily. While spending your money on making memories and on others to make them happy makes you satisfied overall, and what does satisfaction bring you? Happiness of course! One example that supports this is an experiment that was done on a college campus. They gave the students Starbucks gift cards in which they were split among three groups: one group of students were told to use the gift card on themselves, another group was told to pass their gift card to someone else, and the last group was told to use the gift card to buy something for someone else while hanging out with that person at a Starbucks. Results were that those who treated someone else at Starbucks were happiest out of everyone. The authors had a good point with this article stating that spending even just a few dollars on someone else provides more happiness than using cash to treat yourself because I completely agree. I feel that buying memories has a bigger impact on your happiness and that the littlest thing can be the biggest in most cases.

So I asked myself, “What would I do if I found one million dollars under my mattress” and the first thing that popped in my mind was buying myself certain things, but then I looked at the bigger picture and how far would I get with that and how would it impact in my life and my mind automatically changed. I would much rather not have much, spend that on others around me so that I can see their joy cause in all reality there’s nothing better then making others happy.