The Happiness Treadmill
Why Your Purchases Stop Making You Happy (And What to Do About It)
You buy something you've wanted for months. For a few days, maybe weeks, you're genuinely happier. Then the excitement fades. The new car becomes just your car. The designer handbag becomes just a bag. The upgraded apartment becomes just where you live.
Welcome to hedonic adaptation, the psychological process that explains why most purchases fail to deliver lasting happiness, and why people earning $150,000 can be just as unsatisfied as those earning $50,000.
Understanding hedonic adaptation isn't about becoming a minimalist monk. It's about becoming a strategic spender who gets more happiness per dollar while building wealth. Let me show you how.
What Is Hedonic Adaptation?
According to trusty Wikipedia, hedonic adaptation is "the supposition that there is a happiness 'set point', whereby humans generally maintain a constant level of happiness throughout their lives, despite events they experience. The process of hedonic adaptation is conceptualized as a treadmill, since no matter how hard one tries to be happier, one will remain in the same place."
Wow, that doesn’t sound good. Here's how it works in practice:
Week 1: You buy a new phone. Dopamine hits. You feel great.
Month 1: The phone is nice, but the excitement has worn off. It's just your phone now.
Month 6: You barely notice it anymore. You're already eyeing the next upgrade.
Month 12: You feel like you "need" the newer model to recapture that original excitement.
This isn't a character flaw. It's human psychology. The happiness that comes from positive changes "erodes via two key pathways: diminishing positive emotions and rising aspirations" according to the Hedonic Adaptation Prevention (HAP) model.
The problem isn't that you adapted. The problem is not understanding which purchases are more adaptation-resistant than others.
Let that sink in for a moment. Humans can’t buy an item and become happy forever. We will always want more. It’s our nature and there is nothing we can do about that. Our best bet is to focus our spending where it can create happiness for longer and avoid spending where we quickly adapt.
Why This Matters for Your Money
Most people respond to hedonic adaptation by buying more stuff. When the new car stops making them happy, they upgrade the house. When the house feels normal, they renovate the kitchen. When that stops working, they plan an expensive vacation.
This creates the lifestyle inflation treadmill: you need increasingly expensive purchases to achieve the same temporary happiness boost.
But research reveals something crucial: not all purchases adapt at the same rate. Some types of spending provide more lasting satisfaction than others.
A Personal Example: My Suit Obsession
I learned about hedonic adaptation the hard way through my suit-buying journey.
It started innocently enough. I purchased my first suit at Men's Wearhouse for job interviews. It served its purpose, but I knew it wasn't high quality.
Later in my career, I upgraded to a Brooks Brothers suit because I'd learned that Men's Wearhouse suits were inferior. The Brooks Brothers suit felt like a major improvement with better fabric, a better cut, and more prestige.
But that wasn't enough. I eventually purchased a used Kiton suit because I'd researched that Kiton was arguably the finest suit maker in the world. This was the ultimate upgrade: an $8,000 suit that I bought for around $500 used.
The Kiton suit made me happy exactly one time: the first time I wore it. After that? It was just another suit hanging in my closet. No one knew the label. No one commented on the superior construction. It was purely a purchase that made me feel like I had something exclusive.
During the pandemic, I sold all my suits on eBay for pennies on the dollar. The Kiton suit that once made me feel sophisticated? Gone for $300.
The lesson: Each suit upgrade provided a brief happiness boost, followed by complete adaptation. I was chasing status and exclusivity, not solving any real problem. The expensive suits didn't make me more successful, more attractive, or happier in any lasting way. They just fed my ego temporarily before becoming invisible to me again.
Random note: In 2014, my boss purchased five black suits at Macy’s during a sale. He owned five white shirts and one pair of black shoes. He looked the exact same every single day. This man made well over $1M per year in salary and not one person ever questioned his Macy’s suits.
The Categories That Resist Adaptation
Experiences Over Things
Research consistently shows that "experiential purchases—those made with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience—made them happier than material purchases".
Why experiences last longer:
Examples of experience spending:
Travel and vacations
Concerts and entertainment
Dining experiences with friends
Classes and workshops
Outdoor activities
Examples of material spending:
Cars and electronics
Clothing and accessories
Furniture and home goods
Gadgets and collectibles
The key insight: You can reinterpret a mediocre vacation as "an adventure" years later. You can't reinterpret a mediocre handbag as anything other than an expensive mistake.
Variety Beats Routine
Recent research shows that "variety in hedonic spending would be associated with greater well-being" and that "hedonic spending variety was uniquely associated with well-being, even after controlling for total hedonic spending".
Why variety works: Varied spending should "reset" the adaptation process by providing a steady stream of new stimuli to attract attention and elicit positive emotions.
Practical application:
Instead of always going to the same expensive restaurant, try different types of cuisine at modest places
Rather than buying multiple similar items (like several expensive watches), diversify your experiences
Rotate through different hobbies and activities rather than expensive equipment for one pursuit
Social Connection Spending
Purchases that bring you closer to others tend to resist adaptation because relationships provide ongoing benefits that objects cannot.
Examples:
Hosting dinner parties
Group travel with friends
Activities you do with family
Gifts that strengthen relationships
Time-Saving Services
Money spent to buy back your time often provides lasting benefits because it gives you the most valuable resource: freedom to choose how you spend your hours.
Examples:
Tax preparation (if your return is complicated)
Durable clothing
Reliable transportation
Quality tools that work efficiently
Repairs (plumbing, electrical, oil changes) - oil changes aren’t hard, but once you add the cost of disposal, you’ll find that it’s often the same cost to outsource it.
The Categories That Adapt Quickly
Status Signaling Purchases
Expensive items bought primarily to impress others lose their impact quickly because:
Others stop noticing
You get used to having them
New status symbols appear constantly
Common examples:
Luxury cars (beyond reliable transportation needs)
Designer clothing and accessories
High-end electronics for showing off
Expensive watches and jewelry
Lifestyle Inflation Items
Upgrades that become your new normal adapt fastest because they reset your expectations upward.
Examples:
Moving to an expensive apartment for amenities you'll soon take for granted
Upgrading your daily coffee from $2 to $8
First-class flights for routine travel
Premium subscriptions you forget you're paying for
Impulse and Emotional Purchases
Items bought to solve emotional problems or fill psychological voids adapt quickly because they don't address the underlying issues.
Examples:
Retail “clothing haul” therapy purchases
Luxury gadgets bought on impulse
Expensive comfort items during stress
Purchases made while comparing yourself to others
How to Apply This Knowledge
The Adaptation Test
Before any significant purchase, ask:
Am I buying this for the experience or the object? (Experiences tend to last longer)
Will this create variety in my life or just upgrade something I already have? (Variety resists adaptation better)
Will this bring me closer to people I care about? (Social benefits compound over time)
Am I buying this to solve an emotional problem? (If yes, address the emotion differently)
The Three-Month Rule
When you want something expensive, wait three months. If you still want it after that time, buy it consciously. You'll be surprised how many "must-have" items you forget about completely.
The Values Alignment Check
Research suggests people benefit from achieving intrinsic goals over extrinsic ones. Purchases aligned with your core values (relationships, personal growth, health) tend to provide more lasting satisfaction than those focused on external validation.
Focus on Purchase Quality, Not Quantity
Instead of buying more things, focus on making your existing purchases more meaningful:
Savor experiences before, during, and after
Share purchases with others when possible
Choose fewer, higher-quality experiences over many mediocre ones
The Bottom Line
Hedonic adaptation isn't the enemy. Understanding that most purchases stop making you happy helps you spend strategically on the categories that provide lasting benefits.
The goal isn't to eliminate all spending. It's to understand which purchases will still make you happy months or years later, and which will just contribute to the lifestyle inflation treadmill.
This approach serves two purposes: You get more happiness per dollar spent, and you avoid the endless upgrade cycle that prevents wealth building.
Your future self will thank you for spending money on experiences, relationships, and freedom rather than on impressing strangers with objects that quickly become invisible to you.
Here's to spending on what actually matters,
Max
The research insight: When it comes to happiness from spending, "the positive boost from a recent purchase may quickly wear off due to hedonic adaptation" unless you choose the right categories. Choose wisely.