We Aren't Marketing Slaves...

When it comes to reasons why people chose spending themselves into oblivion over saving and investing, you often hear two compelling and popular excuses er, suggestions :

The first falls along the line of the "Livin' La Vida Loca" and appeals to the younger crowd. The premise is that you shouldn't be saving in your 20s because you have "your whole life" to save. Furthermore, you shouldn't save because Life Isn't about Money, and You Can't Take it With You. I actually can respect this argument because the person has at least established that they don't care about long-term goals (money-wise at least). But it's a bit of a strawman argument--just because you save for the future doesn't mean you can't "have fun." and when you think about it, you don't really have to spend a lot of money to have fun anyway.

It's the second, more academic argument I have a problem with: the Addiction argument. It's the one that bases our tendency to spend all of what we make (and beyond) on the premise that we are "bombarded" with marketing, and as a result, are conditioned to spend, spend, spend. We see rich people on TV, our neighbors next door, our friends' possessions, and we want what they want. So we are "conditioned" to continually purchase things against our will and our budgets suffer as a result.

The problem with both of these arguments is that they seem to encourage people to shirk their own personal responsibility--the La Vida Loca argument suggests that you shouldn't worry about the future because "anything can happen," and the second argument basically says you can't help yourself--that we are slaves to marketing. Both eventually lead to dependence on the Government later in life, an entity will of course, turn to citizens to subsidize the results of these behaviors through higher tax rates to fund entitlement programs.

The solution? Well, I don't see tax rates going down in the future, no matter what the talking heads and politicians on TV say. Programs like Medicare and Social Security will probably be around and will claim a larger share of our nation's production. So, if you still can, it's probably best to divert some of your funds into a Roth IRA, which taxes the money before you invest it, so that upon retirement you can withdraw the funds completely tax free. Also, learn as much about planning your financial future as early as you can. However, don't become obsessed with your financial planning--or you may do more damage than good. Many times people dedicate large amounts of their day with their eye on their fund and may move it around with every market fluctuation and will lose out over the long term.

Finally--remember you are a human being and not a machine. You have control over your purchasing decisions, and as a grown up are equipped with the ability to reason. You have power over still and moving images encouraging you to buy things. You are not a slave with uncontrollable buying habits and if you think you are, its time to re-think that and simply dedicate yourself to bring your buying power and decisions back under control. Now, if you'll excuse me, I will get off this dusty soapbox and watch the ad-supported, corporate sponsored Lakers-Celtics basketball game in peace.