Dopamine is also released when people gets likes on Facebook. Which results in people posting many things just to get likes. It makes them feel accepted and release dopamine and they feel good. So they keep doing it.
However, it's like a drug, when you get used to it, you need more to make you feel happy. So if you used to get 10 Likes, now you might need 100 Likes to feel happy.
So let's look at saving. You save $10 when you were young. You got pretty happy, then $50, then $100, then $1,000. By the time you reach $50,000, you start feeling cold to these amounts. The next ,lies tone you set for yourself is $100,000, then $500k, $1 million. As the numbers get bigger, the time it takes to get "high" gets longer. It takes so long to get your injection of dopamine.
Next let's look at spending. Your friend buys a Hermes bag, she gets a shot of dopamine, feels happy, then she posts it on Facebook. Another shot of dopamine, then she brings it to office. Her friends all exclaim about how jealous they are that she has such a luxurious bag. Another shot of the drug. Woohoo... One action, so much "high". It's so easy to want to do it again. But guess what, maybe you need something bigger next time, cos buying something cheaper won't have the same effect on herself or the Facebook audience or her colleagues. So... Well you get the picture.
The thing is, it's so easy to get "high" buying stuff. You just need to spend, and you can do it regularly, at anytime you want. It's so easy for the brain to request for the drug. That's why it's called retail therapy. Cos on a bad day, spending makes one happy. You'll get a load of that wonderful drug.
Looking back at saving again... It may take 1 year to save $25k. That's one shot of dopamine. And the saving community doesn't share this on Facebook. Like... no one's gonna post "Woohoo saved my fist $25k today" with a picture of their bank statement. So no other supply of that wonderful drug.
If the next milestone is $100k, then... Another 3 years... It's just not that fun. The brain doesn't like it. Also, it doesn't help of you set cheap milestones. Cos the brain knows you're cheating yourself.
Imagine, you save $100k, and you tell yourself that you will be happy at $110k... That just doesn't cut it. The brain doesn't work that way. It's more likely you'd think, "another $10k... It's good, but no big deal. I'll need another $50k more to feel something."
The dopamine caused by AUM is the same as the release by getting a bag. You need a bigger stimulus to get the same "high". And since saving takes long, you probably don't get high as much as just spending.
Which is why the brain isn't really wired to save. It wants to feel happy and saving just takes too long. Now, that's not to say that there's no other ways to get high. There's plenty of ways, but the act of saving itself isn't going to make one high and keep calling for more, cos it's not easy to get the release of dopamine from savings. The easier way is to just spend.
For me, I like to get my dopamine from food and travel. Yes, I eat cheaply on normal days. That's our rule. But on weekends, we go out and try good value nice stuff. It must be nice and it must be good value. So it's not as easy to find as just fancy stuff where we can just pay for it. It makes us keep our eyes open for the good deals that come along.
Next, we like short trips. As previously mentioned, our travel budget for the year is $6,000 and we allocate it to 4 trips so it's probably something like,
Taiwan - $1,800
Japan - $3,000
SEA x 2 - $1,200 (Penang, Bangkok, Batam, etc)
This really keeps us entertained cos we get our dopamine planning for the trip, anticipating the trip, going for the trip, and telling stories after the trip, and by the time all that is over, the next time is being prepped up so we get a constant flow of that wonderful drug.
So I suppose the important lesson today is, we probably need to pay some money to get our fix of dopamine. I suppose that's normal. The most efficient way is to make the money spent worth it. Don't get the dopamine from simple purchases that will just fade away quickly, but rather spend wisely to make the dopamine experience last as long as possible. Simple material purchases just expire so quickly and it's just inefficient and wasteful buying more and more stuff just to make the brain happy.
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