nourishing obscurity

Through a combination of unsustainable aspirations in the average person and the tightening of the screws by the credit lenders over a couple of decades, resulting in home and automobile prices reaching ridiculous levels, leaving aside the crisis for one moment – we are where we are.

Bankratedotcom takes a look at the difference between those who do have money and those who will forever aspire themselves into debt.

Yes, people with very high incomes, high levels of wealth are more likely to drive status automobiles. But in sheer numbers, the largest consumer segment for pricey cars, vodkas and homes is not the millionaire population, it is the aspirationals. These are people who think they are acting rich via their adoption of prestige brands, but in most cases they are only acting like each other.

Why do these people act this way? In large part, they are trying to imitate economically successful people. They take their cues from Hollywood and the advertising industry. The problem is that most aspirationals know few, if any, really wealthy to emulate.

Would they still continue to drive prestige makes of cars if they knew that the No. 1 make of automobile among millionaires is the Toyota? Along these lines, would they still crave living in a $1 million home when they find out that nearly three times more millionaires live in homes valued at under $300,000 than live in those valued at $1 million or more?

These sorts of articles have been around a long time and that’s because they speak only the truth.  With shopping the new god in place of the old one and shopping centres the Shrines of Glitz, particularly around piped musak time, spending what we simply don’t have becomes almost an obsession and that bit of plastic or eight gets a real hammering.

Living within one’s means does not have to lead to being a scrooge and it can be the difference between staying afloat and … not.  By far the greatest task is to simply say to oneself, “I can’t.  I don’t have the money.”  Forget that femme fatale, forget the new car, forget the dinner out.  When you do go out, go out for a coffee and cake somewhere instead.

Even if you can do that, the problem is then your partner and quite frankly, one is usually either a spender or a saver.  Spenders know how to find savers but it’s better for a saver to wait for a fellow saver.  Trouble is, they’re like hen’s teeth to find.

My parents were both savers – they were of that generation.  I was half and half but having hooked up with a real spender, the die was cast.  No matter how much a saver splashes out, a spender will always think it’s meanspirited and it’s not the basis for a sustainable relationship.

A woman once asked me how much I thought was quite a lot of money and I answered, “Maybe $300 000, S200 000.”  It was way over my needs for the future anyway.  She answered, “That’s chickenfeed.”

Now that answer would have been fine if she was earning that in a year, had a store of wealth and knew the value of money but she didn’t.  She was just one of those aspirationals who talked at work about people they knew who had vast sums of money and she knew the price of precious stones and all the elite brands but didn’t actually now how to stop spending the moderate amount she did have.

In case Moggs or Alison is reading, I hasten to add that I know men that way as well.

On the other hand, the role model for me was my stepfather and until a particular crash out of his control occurred, he was not badly off.  He drove a nationally made middle level car, not unlike the Toyota drivers above, he had almost all meals at home and helped prepare them too but irregularly, say thrice in two weeks, he’d take my mother out and really splash out.

He’d do the same at the works Christmas party and was known for his generosity.  Let’s just say it was applied generosity.  He advised me never to have a bankcard or to keep one for real emergencies only and to pay off over and above the limit if it was possible.   He had fine original paintings on the walls at home and knew the value of things, as distinct from their price.  To him, auctions were a fool’s paradise.

My attitude is, as was said above, half and half.  If the money’s there, then half goes away and the other half is for oiling the wheels of life with one’s partner.  If the money’s not there, then it’s not there and I’m going to rein in the spending and if that loses the partner, so be it.  When things pick up, it starts again.

Many of you might be like that too.

Filed under: Society & human issues