Briefing highlights
- How money can buy happiness
- Mondelez lures away McCain chief
- Markets at a glance: Dow tops 22,000
- Canadian dollar loses ground
- Apple rises after earnings report
- Cineplex plunges on latest results
- Whither Vancouver housing market?
- Trump nears decision on China trade
- Tim Hortons traffic slows
But it actually can buy you happiness, despite what we've been told all these years, a new study says.
The key is using the money to "buy time," American, Canadian and Dutch researchers found.
"Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity," said the study published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a journal.
"We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness."
Important in all this is that money is spent on services that save you time, rather than material goods. As in, you might be happier paying someone to clean your house than buying a vacuum.
(That's my comparison, not theirs. I use it because it just so happens that I bought a vacuum last week, got little joy from the purchase and absolutely none from using it. But I can attest to their findings, that I would have been happier paying some else to clean the family-room carpet.
The researchers – Ashley Whillans and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School, Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia, Paul Smeets of Maastricht University and René Bekkers of Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit – conducted several studies in four countries to find that buying time is linked to "greater life satisfaction."
Theirs is an academic paper, rather than a guide to joy, so it's chI ock full of complex formulas and such.
But as an example of how it all worked, one of the experiments involved working adults in Vancouver spending $40 for something time-saving on one weekend, and a similar amount on a material purchase the next.
Without going into the numbers, these researchers have without question hit on something that could serve as a guide for us all.
"To establish causality, we show that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a time-saving purchase than on a material purchase," they said.
"This research reveals a previously unexamined route from wealth to well-being: spending money to buy free time."
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McCain chief heads to Mondelez
Mondelez International has lured away the chief of Canada's McCain Foods to be its new CEO.
Dirk Van de Put will succeed Irene Rosenfeld, who's leaving the post in November.
Mondelez is a giant in the food business, with revenue of about $26-billion (U.S.) and big brands such as Oreo and Trident gum.
McCain, in turn, named Max Koeune to take over the top spot.
He has been chief financial officer since 2012.
"Max's appointment shows first hand the cultivation of our own talent and the importance of clear succession planning," said Mr. Van de Put.
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Markets at a glance
The Dow Jones industrial average has topped 22,000.
The Canadian dollar is losing ground.
Apple Inc. shares are the rise after Tuesday's late earnings report.
And Cineplex Inc. is bombing at the box office, tumbling sharply after its latest results.