Money buys happiness depending on what you buy and where you live: UBC study [Video]

If you have extra cash lying around, what should you buy? For anyone analyzing their budget for the new year, researchers have a framework that might help get the most satisfaction out of spending.

A new psychology study out of the University of British Columbia aims to answer the age-old question whether money can buy happiness, and researchers found results may vary based on what you buy and where you live.

“This is a very groundbreaking study because for the first time we were looking at a wide variety of spending categories across many nations,” Dr. Säde Stenlund, researcher and “happiness physician” told CTV Morning Live Friday.

The study, authored by Stenlund and published in Communications Psychology, looks at the spending choices of 200 participants across seven countries and how happy different purchases made them.

Subjects in Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia were given $10,000 …