What does science tell us is the best way to fiddle away spare cash? You may have heard of research findings that beyond a certain level of income, the amount of extra happiness we get from extra cash tends to flatten out. But how we spend our surplus cash is the real game changer, and science now knows which habits are the most strongly correlated with happiness. This episode of the Bloomberg Good Money dives deeper (watch, runtime: 6:40).

Set your eyes on the (social) prize: Marital and social relationships are “by far” the biggest predictor of sustained human happiness, according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Can we buy good relationships? Not quite, but we can certainly spend to nourish and build valuable ones.

Buy more experiences, fewer things: A decade-old study by Cornell researchers found that, on average, buying things for ourselves doesn’t do much for our happiness. But buying experiences which we can anticipate, live through, share with others, and reminisce over can go a long way.