The saying that time is non-refundable, unlike money, tends to get nodded along to and then quietly ignored the next time a schedule fills up. Two studies that put real money behind the question, rather than just asking people to agree with a nice sentiment, suggest treating time as the scarcer resource isn’t just poetic, it measurably changes how happy people are.
The clearest evidence comes from a 2017 study by Ashley Whillans, Elizabeth Dunn, Paul Smeets, Rene Bekkers, and Michael Norton, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Across large samples spanning the United States, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands, totaling 6,271 people, the researchers found that people who spent money on time-saving purchases, paying someone to clean the house or mow the lawn, for instance, reported significantly greater life satisfaction, and this held up even after accounting for income, meaning it wasn’t simply that wealthier people were happier. To move beyond correlation, the researchers ran a field experiment with 60 working adults, randomly assigning each person to spend $40 on a time-saving purchase one weekend and $40 on a material purchase another weekend. Participants reported significantly greater happiness after the time-saving purchase than after the material one, establishing a real causal link rather than just an association. Despite this, the researchers found people rarely act on it, nearly half of a sample of 850 millionaires reported spending no money at all on outsourcing tasks they disliked.
A second study helps show that this pattern isn’t limited to what people do with a windfall, it shows up in how people say they’d choose between time and money more broadly. In a 2016 study by Hal Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner, and Uri Barnea, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the researchers pooled five studies covering 4,415 adults, asking people directly whether they’d rather have more time or more money. People who chose time reported significantly greater happiness than those who chose money, a difference that held up even after statistically controlling for how much time and money each person actually had, meaning the preference itself, not just one’s actual resources, predicted happiness. Despite the benefit, most people still chose money over time, 64 percent picked money across the pooled samples, though that flipped in an in-person intercept sample, where 55 percent chose time. A follow-up experiment even found that simply writing about wanting more time, rather than more money, produced a measurable boost in reported happiness.
Together, these two studies suggest that treating time as the truly non-refundable resource isn’t just a nice sentiment, it’s backed by real behavioral and psychological data. Whillans and colleagues’ research shows that spending money specifically to protect time causes a measurable happiness gain, distinct from simply having more money. Hershfield, Mogilner, and Barnea’s research shows that even the stated preference for time over money predicts greater happiness, independent of how much of either a person actually has. Between the two, valuing time over money looks less like a philosophical stance and more like a specific, evidence-backed lever people mostly aren’t pulling.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Whillans and colleagues’ field experiment involved a relatively small sample of 60 working adults spending a modest $40, and while the causal effect was real, it’s not yet clear how the pattern scales with larger amounts of money or more significant time-saving purchases. Hershfield, Mogilner, and Barnea’s research relies on stated preference rather than observed behavior in most of its studies, and people don’t always act in line with what they say would make them happier.
Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely useful nudge for anyone who’s ever said time matters more than money without changing how they actually spend either. The data suggests that impulse is correct, and that acting on it, even in small ways, produces a real, measurable difference in how happy a person feels.