"The nice things are worth it"

Some of what you're keeping up with is things. The kitchen, the car, the coat, the bag. And here you'd say the case is different, because these are good things, and having good things is a pleasure, and the pleasure is worth the money.

I'd separate the thing you wanted from the thing you matched, because they're bought with the same card and they're not the same purchase.

Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich, in 2003, found across surveys and experiments that people got more happiness from purchases of experiences than from purchases of things. An earlier book in this series on buying when low uses this finding, and it applies here in a specific way. The kitchen you bought because next door's is newer is a thing. The dinner with the five friends is an experience. If the money were being spent for happiness, it would go on the second, and the kitchen suggests the money is being spent for something else.

There's a finding that goes further, and it's uncomfortable. Jordi Quoidbach, Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues, in 2010, found that wealthier adults reported a lower ability to savour ordinary pleasures, and that this undercut the happiness their money might otherwise have bought them. Then they showed people a picture of money, a reminder of wealth, and found it produced the same effect. People reminded of wealth spent less time eating a piece of chocolate and enjoyed it less. Access to the best things seemed to blunt the small ones.

Put those together and the kitchen looks like this. It was bought to match, so it's a thing rather than an experience. It was bought in a frame of comparison with next door, so it's bought as a reminder of position, which is a reminder of wealth, which the research suggests blunts the enjoyment of the kitchen itself. What you get is a room that's newer than next door's for about a year, until next door does theirs, and a cup of tea in it that tastes exactly as it did in the old one.

I'm not against nice things. The coat you saw and wanted and saved for and wear every day is a nice thing and it's yours. The coat you bought because the coats at the school gate are that brand is a different object with the same label. The method in chapter 22 is about telling them apart, and the test is simple. Would you have wanted this if nobody were looking?