Can happiness be bought, and how much does it cost?

Finally. Sunny days have arrived. People everywhere are wearing less and smiling more. A bit of sunshine certainly does wonders for our happiness. But what does money do for our happiness levels? 

Does money make you happy?

Generally, the research shows that - above a certain level of income - having more money doesn’t make people any happier. Having more friends and better relationships does. But there is a link between financial health and mental wellbeing.

And a lack of money often causes unhappiness. 

So can we spend money in a way that will boost our happiness levels? 

It seems that we can, in these ways:

•      Spend money on experiences rather than material goods and you’ll be smiling more. Happy times leave positive memory traces that we can call up when we’re feeling down; they also connect us to other people which is critical to our happiness. Just going outside for 20 minutes a day has been shown to boost positive mood.
•      Spend money on other people and you’ll feel happier. Yes, even happier than if you spent it on yourself. Treating a friend to breakfast at a local brasserie and having a good chat will bring more joy than another pair of shoes. Being more socially involved has been shown to be worth up to £85,000 extra income. Or spend money on a stranger by paying it forward and see how good that feels.
•      Spend money now that will bring future returns. Most people consume now and pay later. Pay now, consume later and life will seem a whole lot better, spiced up with the anticipation of the joy to come. The brain releases happy chemicals when we are anticipating happy times ahead so max out on lots of those. Even if you can't afford a holiday, just planning a break from work will make you feel happier.
•        Spend on things you love now and again. If something is a special treat rather than part of the fabric of your life, you’ll feel happier if you indulge yourself occasionally. We all like a little luxury now and again.
•             Spend money in ways that brings you more quality time. If your precious spare time is spent cleaning the house, spend money on a cleaner not on a better car. Big house, long commute? A shorter commute and smaller house could be the answer.Or just consider getting rid of your TV and instantly giving yourself more time.

COMING LATER THIS YEAR: In conjunction with Action for Happiness we at Do Something Different are launching a Do Happiness programme, an online programme to boost and spread happiness. Watch this space for more info!

Small changes you can make for a big difference

One of my favourite quotes is

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”.

I think it was H D Thoreau who muttered those wise words. And it got me thinking.  

Thinking about how much life gets wasted on meaningless self-lobotomising activities. 

If you add up the hours you’ve spent watching mind-numbing TV, or waiting in for tradesmen, playing Angry Birds or even sleeping, it would add up to years, even decades of your life.

OK, we’ve all got to sleep and personally I love my bed as much as the next woman (or should I say man?). But I worked out that if I made a few small changes to my life the impact could be enormous.

For example, did you know that:

1. If you get up 15 minutes earlier every day you will gain ninety one extra hours of waking life in one year. That’s days and days of extra time!
2. If you save £1 a day every day for two years, you'll be able to travel anywhere in the world.
3. If you write one hundred words a day in two years you will have a full-length novel.
4. If you show real interest in everyone you meet every day, in two months you could have 60 new friends.
5.  If you over-pay on your mortgage by £20 pounds a month you’ll pay off your mortgage 20 months earlier  - and save £5515 in interest alone. (based on 100,000 mortgage over 25 years at 5% interest)
6. If you do one extra press-up every day you'll double your fitness level in 3 months.
7. If you photograph one small thing every day, after a year you'll have boosted your levels of awareness - and have an awesome photojournal.
   
8. If you donate £1.25 a week to Oxfam you will buy 288 buckets of pure, clean drinkable buckets of water a year for a family.
9. If you cut out one can of fizzy drink every day you'll lose 10 pounds in 6 months (without making any other changes).
10.  If you cut out one hour of TV from your life you would have an extra 7 hours free time a week, or the equivalent of two full days extra every month.

It all adds up doesn’t it? Small changes equal big difference. That’s exactly the philosophy beind our Do Something Different behaviour change technique. People make one small change regularly and they tell us a big shift soon happens in their life.

Today I’ve been talking on the radio about me-time. I was supporting a campaign by Palmolive to encourage women to claim back me-time. Unlike blokes, not many women have a shed to retreat to. So the idea is that we can pamper ourselves for 20 minutes a day in the shower (with their yummy Ayurituelsshower gels) and restore our health and well-being. Scented candles, nice music, petals and a glass of fizz are optional extras of course. But think about it, if you have a pampering experience for 20 minutes in the shower every day, you’ll save the cost of going to a spa…

HAVE YOU ever changed one small thing and found it's added up to a big difference?

Counting the cost of fast fashion

This fascinating article touches on fashion psychology and was originally published in The Conversation

By Alice Payne, Queensland University of Technology

There’s a polyester mullet skirt gracing a derrière near you. It’s short at the front, long at the back, and it’s also known as the hi-lo skirt.  Like fads that preceded it, the mullet skirt has a short fashion life, and although it will remain potentially wearable for years, it’s likely to soon be heading to the charity shop or to landfill.

The mullet skirt may not last more than a couple of months as a fad, but the fast-fashion trend has shown considerably more longevity.  With Spanish brand Zara compressing lead times to as little as 13 days, and the UK’s Topshop releasing 300 new styles a week, fashion trends are being captured and sold far quicker than ever before.

Catwalk styles can become high street fashion within weeks. AAP

In Australia, although Zara and Topshop only arrived in 2011, many local retailers have been following an accelerated fashion cycle since the early 2000s. Valleygirl releases 65 new styles per week, Supre has daily deliveries, and the mid-market Witchery boasts 400 new styles per month.

Fast fashion has enabled a democratic engagement with the luxury of constant novelty, once only the domain of the very wealthy. Now high fashion trends are instantly accessible online, and the physical garments are for sale at prices which have never been lower.

However, the garment’s price tag does not acknowledge the environmental and social cost of overconsumption.

In the UK, some 30 kilograms of textile products, per person, per year go to landfill. What isn’t sent to landfill goes to charity. A single Smith Family sorting centre in New South Wales sorts 10000 tonnes of donated clothing each year. Much of this will be sent to developing countries, a trade that can be disruptive to local textile industries.

Cotton requires a large amount of water to grow – but often ends in landfill. AAP

The two most popular fibres for fashion apparel – cotton and polyester – each have considerable ecological impacts in production. Conventional cotton alone accounts for one quarter of global pesticide use, linked to poisonings and air and groundwater contamination. In addition, cotton requires a global average of 11,000 litres of water per kilogram, to produce.

With a world population of seven billion, and a projected nine billion by 2050, food security and water security will become increasingly pressing policy concerns. The volatility of cotton prices in 2010/11 is possibly a foretaste of this, with cotton prices rising to their highest level in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.

The launch of Spanish retailer Zara in Australia has seen lead times compressed to a mere 13 days. AAP

Australian fast-fashion retailers face additional short-term challenges. In 2011, bricks-and-mortar retail was at its lowest ebb in Australia since 1962, and across the fast fashion market, clothing was reduced up to 70%. Local labels are affected by the rising fibre prices (not only cotton but polyester of cotton quality) and rising Chinese manufacturing costs. The forthcoming carbon price may also lead to rises in the cost of freight and raw materials. In addition, a greater number of consumers are choosing to buy clothing online from cheaper overseas e-tailers.

Australian designers and retailers can adapt to these challenges through examining the garment life cycle to identify points of intervention. For example, more efficient use of resources would see disposable faddish items such as the mullet skirt collected at end-of-life for closed-loop recycling, in which its polyester can become feedstock for new textiles. (See Kate Fletcher and Matchilda Tham’s Lifetimes project, or Patagonia’s Common Threads program.)

Crucially, fast fashion is not merely fast material throughput of garments, but a sophisticated global image and information system which, to some degree, is weightless. As fashion is intangible, it is not necessarily tethered to the purchase of new clothing. An example is The Uniform Project, in which blogger Sheena Matheiken wore the same dress for a year, styled in 365 different ways.  With this perspective, a fast-fashion company’s role may evolve into that of a service provider, not simply a retailer. These services may include styling advice, alterations, clothing libraries or collection of the garment at end-of-life.




In Australia, Supre and Sportsgirl have followed the lead of Topshop and American Apparel in offering a small selection of vintage clothing alongside their new stock.

There is no contradiction in fast-fashion retailers selling second-hand clothing, as the speed of trends mean that styles come in and out of fashion so frequently that some version of “vintage” style is always in style. Within the context of fast fashion as ‘post-brand’, second-hand styles simply become additional grist for the mill, as consumers will mix and remix the product (of whatever provenance) in their personal, restless search for novelty and individuality.

Fast-fashion principles also drive the success of online marketplaces such as eBay, in which second-hand clothing can be circulated again and again, revalourised by individual consumers. Similarly, the Salvos charity stores in Australia and Oxfam in the UK, now sell second-hand fashion online, grouped into ‘lookbooks’, complete with fashion shoots.

While the Rococo excess of a new frock a week may be unsustainable, a different fast fashion – one that relies less on overconsumption of new garments and more on the inventive reuse of existing materials – can emerge.
Alice Payne does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
          Read the original article.
       

What that 'red dress' symbolises: The psychology of fashion.

The dress sends many signals that explain why this image went viral. (Image: Reuters)

The image above, currently circulating on the internet, shouts fashion psychology more than people realise.

It’s of a young woman in a red dress being sprayed with tear gas by a policeman during the Istanbul riots. I have just come back from Istanbul (where I work in the fashion department at Bilgi University) and I was struck by the multitude of messages in this simple, momentary image. This is what fashion psychology can tell us:

Red and white outfit. Red and white flag.

First it’s not just a woman in a dress. It’s a woman in a red dress. And she’s carrying a white shoulder bag. This colour combination mimics that found on the Turkish flag. So this image will have a more powerful, albeit subliminal, impact on Turkish people at this time.

The woman's outfit echoes the Turkish flag:
more than mere coincidence?

Red for fertility

Secondly, the red dress has more resonance than any other colour. As well as being the colour of passion and love, red is the symbol of female fertility. In many species redness conveys that the female is ready to mate. So the image packs another punch; this young, fertile female is the mother of the next generation, of the future of Turkey.

Flared waist and fertility

Look at the style of the dress too. It isn’t a shift or a smock. It flares from the waist. This emphasises the women’s waist-to-hip ratio, which is about 0.7. That's the ratio that, on women, has been shown to correlate strongly with fertility.

Had she worn a blue dress, or a t-shirt and jeans, this image would not have been so powerful. Nor would it, I suspect have gone viral around the globe.

Dress choice is shaped by unconscious forces

This woman was largely unaware of the power of what she was wearing. Just as most of us are when we reach into our closets every day.  When she chose her red dress and grabbed her white bag that morning, it could have been a mere coincidence. But unconscious forces may have been at work too. We don't always understand why we wear what we wear, but our choices are rarely accidental. And they will be psychologically motivated. 

The masked man in black

And what about the guy firing tear gas at her? Research shows that his black uniform will have made him more likely to behave aggressively. His masked face will have reduced his sense of personal accountability. It will have lowered his threshold for expressing inhibited behaviours. By hiding behind his anonymity he was able to unleash his aggression on her. Was he drawn to her because of what she was wearing? It's possible. Although we do know from the indiscriminate firing of tear gas at protestors that she certainly wasn’t singled out for this treatment.

More than meets the eye

Yet the image stands out not just because of the appalling actions it depicts. The strong visual imagery reaches deep within us too. We look at it and we process the action in the photograph at a conscious level. But unconsciously the signals in the characters' clothing also have intensely powerful emotional resonance for us.

It's tempting to dismiss fashion as mere fluff. Until, that is, we start to decode its many meanings and marvel at what it reveals.

When money has a male face

When Winston Churchill was accused of being drunk by Bessie Braddock he is alleged to have replied,  “And you, Bessie, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly”.

What a charmer. I bet Bessie wasn’t one of Winston’s greatest fans. Nor, were she still alive, would be Elizabeth Fry. For as the only female historical figure to feature on an English banknote, she has just been bumped off the £5 note by the former PM.

Quick quiz then. Do you know which leading figures feature on the following English bank notes?

1. The £10 note

2. The £20 note

3. The £50 note (old style)

4. The £50 note (new style)

Scroll down for the answers*.

Currently the £5 pound note depicts Elizabeth Fry reading to prisoners in Newgate Prison. From 2016 she will be replaced by Winston Churchill, giving every note a male face.

Feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez has attacked the Bank of England for failing to eliminate gender discrimination under the Equalities act. Her solicitors have written to the Bank threatening court action and they have two weeks in which to respond. It’ll be interesting to see how they wiggle out of this.

Is this further confirmation that the money world is dominated by men? 

Which female figure would you like to see on an English bank note? I'm sure Maggie Thatcher might prove a popular though controversial figure, and I think Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton is a strong contender. 

*

The £10 note shows Charles Darwin, a hummingbird and HMS Beagle

The £20 note has Adam Smith, with an illustration of 'The division of labour in pin manufacturing'

The old style £50 notes feature Sir John Houblon and his house in Threadneedle Street. The new style £50 notes show Matthew Boulton and James Watt, with steam engine and Boulton's Soho.

“Now what…?”

Simonne on how to make sure your future's a dream ...not a nightmare.

We love hearing about how Sheconomics changes lives. An inspiring review on Amazon recently told how it transformed one business woman's life. She cleared her debts and felt huge excitement about being back in control financially. 

Often clients are in crisis when they call up Simonne at Wise Monkey. She helps them plan their ‘debt free day’ and says it’s positively exhilarating when that day arrives and they suddenly look out at the expansive horizon and new possibilities.

But then, frequently, the next question is where do I go from here?

A little financial planning could help you achieve your big dream.

In answer to this question, Simonne has three suggestions:

Step 1) Build a contingency fund
When money is no longer going into debt repayments it can be all too tempting to rush out and spend it. Start to build an emergency reserve now so you don't plunge back into debt. Enough to live off for three months is ideal, saved somewhere accessible (e.g. in a cash ISA).

Build this fund by arranging a monthly direct debit to go out soon after you get paid.Then the money is automatically saved each month, before you can get your hands on it and spend it.

Step 2) Take a long view
Next look to that horizon and see how your financial future looks.

If you have an employee’s pension scheme review it regularly, especially the contribution rate. Sometimes the employer will match contributions up to a maximum limit. Simonne found that clients who were paying 1% of their salary into a pension pot, and the employer likewise, could get matched funding up to 8%. So by finding that extra 7% (as little as 4.2% after tax for higher rate taxpayers), they could be putting 14% more into their future.

In fact Simonne found one client for whom an extra £60 per month would result in having £238 per month invested (counting in the added contributions from her employer and top-ups from tax/national insurance savings)! Fortunately all companies are being forced to pay into pension schemes for their staff over the next few years through auto-enrolment. So check this out if you’re eligible.

Some people reduce their contributions during an expensive period in life, like buying a house or having a baby, then simply forget to increase them again.

And self-employed people, under the current rules, have to finance more of their future for themselves. Many of the self-employed hope their business will be their pension, but that can be risky. Starting to make small amounts of savings, with the power of compound interest, can make a big difference.

Simonne says it’s all about having a strategy and not necessarily at any extra cost. With some careful strategic planning now you can make a massive difference to your financial future.

Step 3) Mind the gap

Most people's financial strategy is to drift along, put a bit of money aside when they can and hope for the best. But doing some simple maths could take your future planning a step further: 

A = Assess where you’ll be a a future date. Maybe the mortgage will be paid off and the kids might even be off your hands? Work out how much income you'll need per month in today’s terms.
B = Then simply check out what state pension you'll get, and any company pension. And add in any other income, or circumstances, such as a property downgrade for instance.
Calculate A – B and you've got your shortfall

Once you know your shortfall online pension calculators show you what you would need to be saving to generate enough to provide the income you identified at A.

Pensions are boring and the future's a long way off, right? 

If that's how you feel, think of it instead as a gift to your future self. 

‘Know tomorrow comes’ is the 7^th Law of Sheconomics. That needn’t be all doom and gloom. See it as a gift to the woman you’ll be in 10, 20,30 years time. Look after her, make sure she’s ok, and she’ll be immensely grateful to you. The steps you take now could dramatically effect whether her life is a dream .... or a nightmare.

What can be more exciting than knowing the dream life you want in the future ... and planning how to get there?