Buying Things Can Be Experiences

A friend of mine, an individual much more wise than myself, once stated that "It's much better to spend your money experiencing things than buying things." Or something along those lines. I remember the sentiment, not the quote.

But that has a few issues. I'm 15, I don't have a job, and I can't drive by myself. So how am I going to go do anything if I can't go do anything? I mean, I could save up, but do you know how hard it is to save up 500 dollars to go somewhere?

But what can I do? Well, you can also have good memories buying gifts for people. I love buying gifts for people. I am generally happy, and buying stuff for myself will make me happier, but if I buy things for other people, not only am I making them happier, but I'm also showing them that I care, which in turn makes me happier.

The biggest gift I ever bought anyone was in 2017 when my friend wanted a game console but wasn't allowed to get a 360, so I got him a Wii. I got 4 Wii games, 4 GameCube games, 3 Virtual Console games, and anything else you'd need. It costs me probably around 300 dollars that I saved up for 4 months to get. I spent hours a day thinking about how happy he would be to get it. In the end I threw in a DS because I had a spare, and I think that may have helped. I put everything together one night. It took me hours to put the box together. Luckily I consider myself to be pretty good at putting boxes together. I gave it to him on Friday so he had the weekend to play around with it. But we had play practice that night, so I got there and he was super stoked to ask me about it and he was like "Are you sure you want me to have it?" and I was like "Well what am I gonna do with it?" I had so much fun doing that.

But would it have been as special if I had told him about it beforehand? No, it wouldn't. It would just be like "Oh cool now I have a Wii." But the experience of opening a big gift from someone you're close to really brings out a feeling of gratitude that you never really feel. Imagine if someone said they were gonna buy me a bunch of records and then they did. Would I feel special? Nah. Now imagine I get a box on my front door and it's from a friend. I open it and it has all my favorite albums.

What a great gift!

I would really feel loved. I would feel like my friends appreciate me a lot. And that's a feeling I really want to spread to others. So giving people the happiness that comes from getting a good gift is an experience for me in making them feel good. See how it works?

I'm working on buying another big gift right now. I can't tell you what it is, but I can confirm it's bigger and better than a Wii.