The Fun Things in Life Are Giving Us Buyer’s Remorse

livemint.com:

As the cost of having fun goes up, so do the odds that you’ll feel let down. Isa Jones paid $375 for a ticket to a local music festival, more than twice what she remembers paying more than a decade ago. “It’s like my happy place," she said, justifying the expense.

Midway through the three-day festival last month, the 33-year-old copywriter from Austin, Texas, felt she wasn’t really getting $375 worth of fun. It was more like $200 of fun, she said. “The price keeps going up but nothing about the experience improves," she said.

And, she couldn’t help but think of ways she could have squeezed more pleasure out of that sum—using it to pay for a few days of skiing, for one. “My brain is putting everything in those terms right now whenever I spend money," she said. The cost of admissions and fees for entertainment rose faster than the cost of many staple goods last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That has helped raise standards for the amount of fun we expect for our money—and triggered quick disappointment when our experiences don’t live up to the price. Someone who scores cheap flights to Europe may give the trip five stars before the plane even boards. Someone who spends half their paycheck on playoff tickets may get cranky about it by halftime.

And people are spending for now. Corie Barry, Best Buy’s CEO, said at a conference last month that “experiences are really where people are willing to pay" and that this was dragging on demand for expensive electronics. Studies on money and happiness tell us that paying for experiences tends to bring us greater pleasures than buying stuff, because those experiences can deliver payoffs before, during and after they happen.