Index-Card Advice: Spend on Experiences (Like Tours) Rather than Stuff

New York TImes financial advice columnist Ron Lieber, in his column yesterday surveying index-card summaries of financial advice, cited two index cards, including his own, that stressed the importance (as he put it) of Experiences>Stuff.

That dovetails with my own goals--I don't covet a fancy TV or nifty furniture, but I do seek to travel more. And it of course fits with my work as a tour guide, especially the kinds of tours I lead.

No, these are not "experiential tours" in which someone learns how to make a pizza or brew beer. But they are experiences that most people would not find on their own, which introduce them to layers of New York and Brooklyn and individual neighborhoods.

My Australian clients the other day, who said they always stay in Manhattan but hardly ever get to Brooklyn, wanted a look at Jewish Crown Heights, having heard so much about the Lubavitch Hasidic movement.

​That turned into a longer visit to more of Crown Heights, and pieces of adjacent Prospect Heights and Park Slope, with the elements comprising an experience they appreciated but didn't even know they had wanted.