How does prioritizing time or money shape major life decisions and subsequent well-being? In a preregistered longitudinal study of approximately 1000 graduating university students, respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically rewarding activities and were happier 1 year after graduation. These results remained significant controlling for baseline happiness and potential confounds, such as materialism and socioeconomic status, and when using alternative model specifications. These findings extend previous research by showing that the tendency to value time over money is predictive not only of daily consumer choices but also of major life decisions. In addition, this research uncovers a previously unidentified mechanism—the pursuit of intrinsically motivated activities—that underlies the previously observed association between valuing time and happiness. This work sheds new light on whether, when, and how valuing time shapes happiness.

INTRODUCTION

Many North Americans feel increasingly pressed for time (1) and report worrying about not having enough money (2). In representative surveys, a large proportion of Americans (41%) report that they do not have enough time to do all the things that they want to do. A large proportion of respondents also report that unexpected expenses are a primary source of worry (43%) (2). Although people desire to have more time and money, there are few opportunities to gain both. Instead, people are often forced to make trade-offs between these valuable resources. For example, people frequently confront difficult decisions such as whether to work more hours and make more money (versus spending more time with their children), to live in a more expensive apartment closer to work (versus spending more time stuck in traffic each day), or to pay someone else to complete disliked tasks on their behalf (versus completing disliked tasks on their own). Each day and across many years, the decisions people make about having more free time at the expense of having less money may hold critical implications for subjective well-being (SWB).

Although wealth offers the potential for people to spend their time in happier ways, such as by living in a more expensive apartment closer to the office, survey data suggest that wealthier individuals often spend more of their time engaging in activities that are less enjoyable, such as commuting and shopping (3). Relatedly, research suggests that rising incomes are linked to an increased sense of time scarcity. Across diverse cross-cultural contexts such as Europe, Asia, and America, people who earn more money report feeling more pressed for time (4). In a large-scale survey of more than 30,000 working adults living in the United States, respondents were asked to report their income as well as their feelings of time stress over the course of three consecutive years. Specifically, respondents reported how often they felt rushed and how often they felt pressed for time (5). Controlling for individual and job-related characteristics, such as the number of hours worked each year, when respondents’ income increased so too did their feelings of time stress.

This research suggests that giving up discretionary income to have more free time might promote happiness. Consistent with this idea, spending money on time-saving purchases—such as spending money to outsource cooking, shopping, and house cleaning—is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction (6). In an experimental study, working adults reported greater end-of-day happiness after being assigned to spend a $40 payment on a time-saving (versus material) purchase (6). This research provides initial evidence that giving up money to have free time promotes well-being, at least for individuals with additional income at their disposal. While people who lack discretionary income or are struggling to make ends meet are unlikely to confront the question of whether to give up money to have more time, a large proportion of people living in developing countries have a nontrivial amount of discretionary income that they could spend in these ways (7). This research fits with a growing literature showing that how people spend their money may be at least as important for happiness as how much money they make (8, 9). While past research has focused almost exclusively on how people spend money, other trade-offs that do not involve spending (such as working fewer hours for less money) might also shape SWB.

Researchers have started to explore this possibility by examining whether broadly prioritizing time over money in the context of everyday life is associated with greater SWB (10–13). To this end, researchers have developed the Resource Orientation Measure (ROM) (13). The ROM is a single-item measure that asks individuals whether they value time more than money or money more than time. The simple, single-item format of this measure minimizes participant burden while simultaneously allowing researchers to understand people’s broad preferences to prioritize time over money (versus focusing on specific spending decisions).

Previous research has found evidence that this single-item measure demonstrates strong psychometric properties (13). Demonstrating discriminant validity, participants’ responses to the ROM are distinct from materialism, material striving, socioeconomic status (SES), social desirability, conscientiousness, and current feelings of time and material affluence (13). Demonstrating test-retest reliability, participants’ responses to the ROM are consistent over a 3-month period (13), during which time stable constructs should show no true change (14). These findings provide initial evidence that participants’ responses to the ROM represent a chronic orientation that is relatively stable across time. Demonstrating construct validity, participants’ responses to the ROM predict hypothetical consumer decisions, such as whether respondents choose a more expensive direct flight versus a cheaper indirect flight. Responses to the ROM also predict in-the-moment decision-making, such as whether individuals choose a housecleaning voucher versus a cash prize in a lottery (13).

Most critically for the current investigation, participants’ responses to the ROM are reliably linked to SWB. Across six studies (n = 4690), individuals who broadly prioritized time (versus money) on the ROM felt more satisfied with their lives and reported more frequent positive emotions and less frequent negative emotions (13). These results held without controls and when controlling for materialism and material striving and other potentially related variables, such as age, number of children living at home, household income, number of hours worked, and conscientiousness. The effects of prioritizing time over money also held controlling for how pressed for time and money respondents felt in the moment.

Moreover, these findings are robust across samples: Valuing time has been associated with higher well-being in studies of college students, working adults recruited from Canada, and nationally representative samples of working Americans (13). Attesting to the reliability of these results, these findings have also been conceptually replicated in an independent investigation. Across six studies of Americans (n = 4413), respondents were asked whether they would rather have more time or more money (10). In these studies, individuals who reported that they would prefer to have more time (versus more money) reported greater life satisfaction, greater positive affect, and lower negative affect. Once again, these effects held without controls and when controlling for demographic characteristics, as well as for the amount of discretionary time and money that individuals had available.

Previous research suggests that the tendency to prioritize time over money is a generalizable, replicable, and previously unrecognized correlate of SWB. However, almost nothing is known about why this association exists. Scholars have argued that this association may occur because people who value time over money make better decisions about how to spend their time (e.g., by spending more time socializing) (12). It is also possible that there is a third variable that explains these associations. Going beyond cross-sectional data, which have not yet explored possible underlying mechanisms, we tracked individuals before and after a major life transition: graduation from college. We expected that respondents who valued time would emerge from this major life transition happier than respondents who valued money.

We further theorized that individuals who valued time (versus money) would be more likely to pursue intrinsically motivated activities in the year following graduation. Money is a quintessential source of extrinsic motivation (15), whereas valuing time is linked to greater interest in activities that are associated with intrinsic motivation, such as social and prosocial activities (11, 12). Pursuing intrinsically motivated goals, in turn, puts people on a long-term trajectory of increased well-being (16). In one study, for example, students who successfully strove toward more intrinsically motivated goals during their freshman year were more likely to experience sustained changes in well-being over the course of college compared to students who strove toward more extrinsically motivated goals (16). This research suggests that intrinsic motivation could partially explain why people’s chronic time orientations are associated with higher levels of well-being.

As stated above, to detect the long-term effect of individuals’ time and money orientations on major life decisions and well-being, it is important to study people who are facing critical junctures in their lives. To this end, we recruited over a thousand graduating college students and examined how students’ initial proclivity to value time over money predicted their SWB and career choices a year after graduation. We deliberately focused on career selection because it is one of the most critical decisions that people face in their lifetime (17) and is a powerful predictor of SWB (18). SWB refers to a person’s evaluation of how happy they are and includes both global cognitive assessments of the quality of one’s life, as well as measures of emotional experiences (19). SWB is typically defined as high life satisfaction, high feelings of positive affect, and low feelings of negative affect (20).