Time, not material goods, raises Happiness.

A friend shared a recent article by Helen Briggs from the BBC News. "More time increases happiness", a study says. I would like to share the article with you.

In an experiment, individuals reported greater happiness if they used $40 to save time, such as paying for chores to be done, rather that spending the money on material goods.

Psychologist say stress over a lack of time causes lower well-being and contributes to anxiety and insomnia.

Yet, they say even the very wealthy are ofter reluctant to pay people to do the jobs they dislike.

"In a series of surveys we find that people who spend money to buy themselves more free time are happier, that is they have higher life satification," said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Rising incomes in many countries has led to a new phenomenon. From Germany to the US, people report "time famine", where they get stressed over the daily demands on their time.

Psychologist in the US, Canada and the Netherlands set out to test whether money can increase happiness levels by freeing up time.

More than 6,000 adults, including 800 millionaires, were asked questions about how much money they spent on buying time.

The researchers found that fewer than a third of individuals spent money to buy themselves time each month.

Those who did reported greater life satification than the others.

The researchers then devised a two week experiment among 60 working adults in Canada.

On one weekend, participants were asked to spend $40 on a purchase that would save them time. They did things like buying lunches to be delivered to work, paying neighborhood children to run errands for them, or paying for cleaning services.

On the other weekend, they were told to spend the $40 on material goods. Material purchases included wine, clothes and books.

The research, published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found time saving compared with material purchases increase happiness by reducing feelings of time stress.

"Money can in fact buy time. And it buys time pretty effectively," said Professor Dunn, who worked with colleagues at Harvard Business School and others.

"And so my take home message is, "think about it, is there something you hate doing that fills you with dread and could you pay somebody else to do that for you? If so, then science says, that's pretty good use of money."

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