Were Your Happiest Moments Expensive? Were They Free?

We spend a lot of money because we have to (on housing, groceries, gas, utilities, etc.), and a lot more trying to have fun. We eat out, we buy expensive cars, and pay a lot for hotels when we go on vacation.

Are you happiest when you spend money?

Does eating out genuinely make you happy? Or do you eat out to save time and because you don’t want to make yourself dinner?

We Prefer To Host Than Eat Out

Lauren and I have an agreement that we will never eat out because we are too lazy to make a meal. We don’t feel good about paying a premium for food when we’re lazy, and when we’re feeling lazy, we probably aren’t in the best mood anyway. We want to save our meals for special occasions or eating out with friends when we know we’ll have a good time. Eating out should be for celebrating, not for saving time on a random Tuesday night.

We are happiest when we’re hanging out with friends, so instead of going out for a $30-$40 meal, we’re going to host a taco night for a bunch of friends. We get great company and I’m 100% sure that we’ll have a better time going up and down our kitchen table creating our own tacos (I’m a hard shell guy) than the alternative of going to a restaurant (and likely over-eating their likely less healthy food).

Some of our best weekends involve hanging out with friends on Friday night and Saturday and then going to the beach and making a day of it. Rarely do we feel like we made the most of the weekend when we watch a movie or go to a bar.

What Activities Make You Happiest?

We definitely spend money on things we don’t need, and we spent a lot on our honeymoon, which was worth every penny, but there are plenty of things that we spend money on that aren’t truly worth it. $70 for cable and Internet? That’s insane as it rots our brains and doesn’t make us happy in the long-term, but we still shell out the money willingly each month.

It comes down to what we each value, and nobody can make that decision for us. So while eating out isn’t worth it for us, it might be for you since it saves time on a busy night and gets the family to sit at a table without watching TV. And allows for more time with the family that is usually spent cooking. Make your own decisions, just make sure you’re doing what you decide for the right reasons!

How We Learned Our Lesson

The perfect example of this is the time we spent $200 on Cirque Du Soleil tickets but had more fun spending $200 playing craps. While we expected that going to a show would be really fun, the experience of gambling was way more fun than we expected, so it was completely worth it to us (and we know how we’ll be spending our money the next time we go to Vegas)!

Are your happiest moments cheap or expensive?