Hedonic adaptation is the devil. You'd hope/intuit that spending more resources would make you happier, but that's just not the way it works. That said, you can use knowledge of this quirk of human psychology to make you richer and more secure compared to your higher-consuming self, not sacrificing any long term contentment or satisfaction to do it. Here's a more in-depth review of the topic[1].

[1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic-ad...