How to Money · Friday, July 17, 2026
The hosts propose that treating purchases, whether of items or experiences, as rare occasions can heighten satisfaction and appreciation. They argue that regular indulgence in something enjoyable, like daily coffee or frequent travel, diminishes its specialness over time due to hedonic adaptation. Making an experience or item a deliberate splurge maintains its impact and prevents it from becoming mundane.
“But once we've quieted all that noise out there, right, we've put to rest all the messaging telling us what to buy, I think it's time to get a little more introspective to identify your craft beer equivalent. We briefly mentioned this at the beginning of every interview, But we want to find out, for individuals who we're talking to, what is your craft beer equivalent, What is the thing that you are intentionally spending money on now in order to basically prove to yourself that is not just about deferring happiness and enjoyment and leading a life of deprivation now. And so for some this will be easy because you already know yourself pretty well. But for others, this you know, honestly, it might take some time. It might take some trial and error because identifying the spending that move the needle the most for you, like that might not be the most intuitive process. And so I want to say that, first of all, it's okay to make some mistakes, in particular mistakes that don't cost you a ton of money, because the vital part of spending more on quality is determining the areas of spending that matter the most to you. You know that keep this in mind, like this is your hard earned money and you're not spending it to impress other people. It's okay to make some mistakes, to make some errors, but we want there to be I guess smaller price tags associated with those mistakes, with those areas of spending that didn't bring you the most joy. Necessarily before you're spending out the nose, don't buy a Briythan and then be like, oh crap, no, I guess I don't really like electric. Maybe start with a leaf. Yeah, but it's just hard to know, right If your craft beer equivalent is travel, if you haven't gone on any sort of trip, don't start with like the four week long international trip. But maybe start with like visiting your local state park, or start with a local city that you can visit and spend some time. And it's good to go ahead and just dip your toe in the waters first to kind of ease on into it, and then you know, after you try that purchase out, then do just a little bit of reflecting, maybe a little bit of soul searching, to see if it's moving the needle for you.”
“But similarly, it makes me think of every Monday, you and I we go to our local little coffee shop, a little stand over there and we order a coffee. We enjoy that that barista made coffee way more when we get once a week, and as opposed to imagine if we went over there every single day. First of all, just the financial irresponsibility, we lose our job, as how to my host, we'd lose our street cred if we were doing that. But I don't think we would enjoy it nearly as much. It would just kind of it would become again the new normal. There's just something about the novelty that I think that makes us appreciate the purchase even more.”
“So yeah, but it's really important for me to have a down jacket so I can stay warm in the winter. I spend a lot of time outside, yeah, and on the bike riding. So yeah, those are the kind of things that like, they're going to be different for each of us as individuals, but they're important for us to think through exactly.”