Forget candlelit, home-cooked dinners—these days, love just might blossom more over a DoorDash-delivered meal. That’s because spending money to eliminate a time-consuming chore like cooking can significantly predict improvements in a couple’s relationship, research by Harvard Business School Professor Ashley Whillans shows.
“Usually, we think about trading time for money by working more hours,” says Whillans, “but it’s also possible to trade money to save time on doing chores.”
Based on her research, spending money to nix household drudgery is a worthwhile investment, since couples reported feeling happier in their relationships when they bought time-saving services, such as housekeeping and meal deliveries. In addition, the boost from those purchases increased when dual-income couples were under more stress.
The results suggest that outsourcing unpleasant tasks helps alleviate the pressures working partners often feel to get everything done. After all, job and family demands constrain the amount of time couples can spend together, and chores can create tension. In fact, previous research shows that discussing household duties is the most frequent source of conflict for couples who live together.
Whillans, the Volpert Family Associate Professor of Business Administration, cowrote the article, “Buying (Quality) Time Predicts Relationship Satisfaction,” with Jessica Pow, a former research associate at HBS, and Joe Gladstone, a professor at the University of Colorado–Boulder. The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in April.
How buying time benefits relationships
The researchers analyzed data from seven studies with nearly 40,000 participants to determine how often people made time-saving purchases and how those purchases affected their relationships. The team collected data from a variety of sources, including the 11-year UK Household Longitudinal Study, daily diary entries of participants who logged their purchases and how they spent their time, and multiple surveys of people in committed relationships. The results showed:
Buying time may relieve stress. The benefits of time-saving purchases intensify as a couple’s stress level increases.
Sharing the time matters. Time-saving purchases are more beneficial when couples spend the extra quality time together.
The benefits may be cumulative. Couples that buy time-savers may accumulate relationship improvements over time.
Making the most of the extra time
The researchers found that it didn’t matter how much money couples spent, nor did it matter if they bought products or services—for example, whether they spent cash on a house cleaner vs. a Roomba. It also didn’t matter if they paid for a practical service like Instacart or a fun treat like gourmet takeout—they still reported greater relationship satisfaction if they spent money to save time.
What did matter was the number of hours saved and how the couple used the windfall of free time they gained, with those spending quality time together reporting higher relationship satisfaction. In one survey, nearly 43% of respondents reported making time-saving purchases with their partners in the previous week, saving about 18 hours on average.
Based on the studies, Whillans and her colleagues suggested ways for couples to get the most out of their time-saving purchases:
Arrange for a regular schedule of purchases
Couples who purchased time-savers more consistently benefited from them more, says Whillans, who notes it takes energy to set up each service, especially during stressful times when people need them most. “It takes effort to hire an additional childcare provider or get a grocery delivery, and it's hard to do in the moment when you are often overwhelmed,” she says. “The most effective households set up a system of tasks to outsource and revisit it often.”
Agree on the purchases
The researchers found it wasn’t as important who in the relationship benefited from the time-saving strategy, as long as the couple made the decision together. “It may be that it saves one person more time because that person is doing more of the chores in the first place,” Whillans says. “The more important thing seemed to be that the couple was agreeing on the purchase they were going to make.”
Spend the time you save together
The biggest predictor of improvements to relationship well-being, Whillans found, was how couples used the free time they captured. It wasn’t enough to save time on grocery shopping or housecleaning and then retreat into separate rooms. “It’s really about using that time to improve your connection,” Whillans says.
Figure out what quality time means for you
The key factor in capturing benefits from purchases was “quality time” spent together. “What really predicts the perception of ‘quality time’ is the positive mood experienced when spending time together and feeling supported by your partner,” Whillans says. The specific activities a couple took part in, however, didn’t seem to matter. For some couples, quality time means kayaking or going to a favorite brunch spot, while for others, it might mean watching movies on the couch or simply chatting in the kitchen.
You want to think strategically about outsourcing things that take up a lot of time and impede your ability to have quality time together.
Couples should think about the idea of time-saving purchases as a joint puzzle-solving exercise. “You want to think strategically about outsourcing things that take up a lot of time and impede your ability to have quality time together,” Whillans says, “and then intentionally earmark that to invest in activities that bring you joy and help you feel supported by one another.”
How companies can help
As a caveat, Whillans recognizes that not everyone has the disposable income to invest in time-saving purchases. The team suggests that companies consider playing a role in supporting their employees, especially when they’re under increased stress due to a seasonal uptick in sales or are working late nights to meet tight project deadlines, for example. Businesses could provide vouchers for grocery delivery, housecleaning, and yardwork as part of a benefits package—not just for the individual satisfaction of the employee, but also to keep their relationships healthy.
“Employees may have to travel for a quarterly in-person meeting or company retreat,” Whillans says. “An employer could provide a stipend for time-saving services as a recognition that if an employee is in person at a company retreat, someone else may be doing a lot of unpaid labor at home. An employer can think not only about how they can support their employees in the workplace, but also how they can support their relationships at home as well.”
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