Everybody loves going on vacation and here’s why: it makes for good conversations. Really. The short term gain of increased happiness from a vacation is very short indeed, just a few days. However, the benefit of a vacation can keep giving through your social life as you relive (and share) your experience.

To make your vacation really happy be sure to make the first few days the most fun and go someplace that is interesting instead of the beach.

In terms of happiness-per-dollar-spent, vacations are the right idea in general. A lot of past research has suggested that experiences in general provide more happiness than material goods. That’s partly because — excited new owners of the latest iPhone who won’t shut up notwithstanding — humans generally have more of a tendency to talk about experiences than mere stuff. “When one buys an experience, they seem to be buying themselves a story as well,” said Dr. Amit Kumar, a social psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business who studies the relationship between money and happiness. “So one way vacations continue to provide hedonic benefits even after they’ve long since passed is because they live on in the stories we tell.”

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