Gremlins R Us
He who dies with the most toys wins. This sentiment is usually attributed to men. I’m not sure why, but it applies to anybody who has been listening to the Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life Gremlin.
In our very consumer-focused, advertisement driven, marketing molded world, “better” has come to mean “more”. People think that their lives will be better if they can just figure out how to have more – more big screen TVs, more shoes, more money.
Ya know what, based on my experience, more STUFF doesn’t make us more HAPPY. Nope. In fact, I’ve seen an inverse relationship. It seems the more UNHAPPY we are, the more STUFF we need, as if it is a balm to soothe our sense of what’s missing.
If more made us happy, then lottery winners, people who inherited, and people with the highest income would be the happiest in our land. Not so. Studies have shown that those who suddenly come into “more” are often worse off five years later.
According to a study by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, “The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory.
So why this obsession with accumulating STUFF? Why the drive to have the latest phone, the newest in fashion, the shiniest car? It may simply be that we’ve stopped measuring the richness of our lives by the things we take for granted, that other people would die for. Things like clean air, an abundance of water, healthy food, good health, the availability of education, meaningful work, and freedom of religion and speech, to name just the most obvious.
When Barbara Walters interviewed billionaire David Geffen and asked, ‘O.K., David, now that you’re a billionaire, are you happy?’ his response was ‘Barbara, anybody who believes money makes you happy doesn’t have money.’
Bill McKibben’s recent book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Community and a Durable Future explores the idea that the foundation of our economic assumptions must be re-evaluated and re-tooled. While our civilization has conditioned us to believe that more is better, it ain’t so. However, many of us are willing to go deeper into debt every day to prove how well we’re doing.
We have substituted consumerism for what people really want: love and community, a sense of belonging, worthwhile effort, happiness. The work of overcoming our rampant consumer addiction can only be done inside ourselves. Nobody else can fix this for us. We need, individually, to fix it for ourselves.
How?
Move from being Impulsive to Thoughtful. Stop choosing short term gratification over our long-term benefits. Saving for retirement might be boring, but it’s going to be really important when you finally do stop working and are looking for a way to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly.
Stop Rationalizing. You can always find a “good reason” to scratch your acquisition itch. We are the masters of rationalization. We’re saving so much on an item, we just have to buy it. People take this to the extreme buying things they don’t need, don’t want, and can’t use, just because they’re focusing on how much they are saving. (Hey, if you’re spending you’re not saving.) Or we decide that buying “quality” is worth going into debt. Really? Or we focus on some extraneous issue: since I am fat, I need to spend more money on clothes so people won’t think I’m ashamed of my body. Hmmm. We apply this rationalization to why we need to buy a certain car, acquire a bigger house, or wear brand names. It isn’t about meeting needs. It’s about the Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life Gremlin weaving its magic spell.
Undo Your Illusions. People confuse the medium for happiness with the actual results, the most famous example being money. Even though money itself doesn’t make people happier, we continue to work harder to get more money. More is better. But it isn’t. Sometimes more is just more.
Alan Krueger and Daniel Kahneman study found a weaker-than-expected correlation between income and happiness. Looking at a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey on how people with various levels of income spend their time, they discovered that women who make over $100,000 a year spend 19.6% of their time having fun, while those who make less than $20,000, spend 33.5% of their time kicking back or socializing.
The Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life Gremlin is misleading us to work for more money even when happier pursuits would ultimately do us more good.
How are you going to conquer the Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life Gremlin? Books, websites, gurus on “simplification” abound, and the message is trickling down slowly. Very slowly. And perhaps now that we’re having to spend significantly more of our income on NEEDS — fuel for our cars, fuel for our bodies — we’ll move back to focusing on what’s really important, and not on the STUFF.
Tomorrow’s Gremlin: The I-Work-Hard-So-I-Deserve-It Gremlin
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Tags: psychology of money, shopping
August 6th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Thank you Gail… thank you for putting it so eloquently.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I am always mindful of Wordsworth - “getting and spending we lay waste our powers” - two centuries ago. Not much has changed, except of course for the advent of consumer credit.
I would like to see more of the study that compares high income women and low income women, for a couple of reasons. High income women often have careers that bring them great pleasure - some of my best moments have occurred when I was on the clock - and yes, I have had the blessing of not one but two careers I enjoy. The other is that many low income women are that because they can’t find work or enough work to keep them going. The default then becomes “kicking back”, not because they choose leisure, but because they can’t choose work. I’m not saying the study is wrong - only that I would like to see more information about it. If I had a choice between 20 grand a year and one third of my time for fun and 100 grand a year at something I enjoyed and 19 percent of my time for fun, I’ll go with 100 grand. It’s not the stuff - it’s being able to visit family in other provinces, saving to travel, the money to enjoy my favourite hobby, not to mention the roof over my head that isn’t ostenacious. Twenty grand doesn’t buy a roof anymore.
But as for the rest of it - wowzer. Stuff is heavy - I always ask myself - is it cute? Does it need dusting? Do I have one? If the answer to any of the above is yes, I don’t need it.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Brilliant post and such a good reminder to all of us saving, that we shouldn’t expect money to make us happy! I’ve read studies which show once you have enough to live comfortably - feed & house your family, have enough in savings for a rainy day (say 6 months income, and ability to pay into a pension and have the yearly vacation, even a minor holiday i.e. a week @ a cottage, then you are no happier being able to afford 10x that! BTW I think I read the happiness number was people earning 50K (Cdn) - now obviously if you are pretty in debt 50k won’t go far, nor will it necessarily in Toronto, where 75k may be more realistic!
For me it’s pretty simple: no debt, 6 months income saved in emergency account, 15% of my income saved into retirement pension (plus employer top up) and a yearly holiday and I’m perfectly content. I don’t need stuff, expensive beauty treatments, new clothes each month, to eat out or order in. I don’t need an SUV or expensive hobbies or luxury weekends away with friends.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
i think that as people we have very primal needs that need to be met. with civilization etc we don’t need to hunt, shelter is kind of a given for most. so without any turmoil and strive to survive, we die off inside. i think that’s what happens to lotto winners once they come off the high. they’ve quit their jobs, can have anything they want without earning it, and there is no passion, no primal need for survival.
not that we all have to be in crisis all the time, but there must be a goal or a long term need to plan and survive.
August 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I agree with most of your post Gail, but I don’t entirely blame the marketing and commercial community. I think you (and the study authors) have missed one very important area.
I think a lot of this has to go back to our childhood and how our parents allowed us to spend and/or buy. When I was a child, my parents did not buy eveything I wanted (and saw) in a store. I don’t remember 99% of what I wanted when I was a kid. As people grew older and they were told “no” time and time again, they probably thought, when I grow up, I am going to buy whatever I want, whenever I want - and I am going to do the same for my kids. I have seen kids in stores who demand their parents buy them anything and eveything they touch. Kids don’t appreciate anything if it is always handed to them and later they don’t have to work for it.
Gail, I like how you are teaching parents to say “we have $1 - choose one item”. Kids can’t have everything they want - a lot of kids don’t have what they need.
Great post
August 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Beautifully written, Gail. Thank you for such a thoughtful post.
“I am more and more inclined to reduce my baggage, to lop off superfluities. I become more and more in love with simple things - a small house, a tent on the shore. The show and spendour of great houses and elaborate furnishings oppress me, impose upon me. They fix the attention on false values, they set up a false standard of beauty. They stand between me and the real feeders of thought and character”
John Burroughs, “The Gospel of Nature” 1900
August 6th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I know more than a few people with this gremlin. I am in the process of buying a house and as much as I would love to have a brand new flat panel TV there is no chance you will see me buying one since my parents are giving me a perfectly fine 27″ standard television. It isn’t fancy but it also isn’t costing me a dime. I remember as a kid my grandmother telling me that “we may not have a lot of money but we are rich in love”. I to the having more and being less happy concept (or at the least no more happy than anyone else) it isn’t totally suprising. I also frequent the MSN money site and more than a few of contributors mention the idea that as you make more money you also feel like you don’t make enough because you naturally adjust to the change in income. I have been very carefull when I get raises to decide where the additional money went. My first raise coincided with me being elgible for a 401K so that raise started going towards my retirement and I have is set up as a % so that my contribution increases each time my pay increases. When ever I want the big ticket item I price the item along with anything that will need to be purchased with it and start saving.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Fully agree - sometimes having less can mean a better life. I’ve been working on decluttering my junk, and I can tell you than it most cases, I’m better off without the particular toy / object of desire.
Now when I’m in a store, I ask myself:
* Do I need this?
* Do I have the money for it?
* Is the total cost of purchasing it cheaper than the cost of renting it? (Factoring in that each purchase needs to be stored, maintained, dusted… etc etc.)
* Could I find a similar item used for less?
Just thinking a purchase over, 9 times out of 10, means I don’t buy it.
Like Gail, I think that “Your Money or Your Life” was the most important book I’ve read. It literally changed everything about how I deal with money.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I totally agree with Gail’s blog. I am realizing how stuff clutters my life and wastes my money. However, my husband does not feel the same way. He feels he never got the stuff he wanted while he was growing up and now is compensating for himself and our children by buying things we don’t need. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to talk to your partner about this when they don’t want to hear it? I have forwarded him some of Gail’s blogs about how stuff doesn’t make you happy and peer pressure to “keep up with the Joneses”, but when I try to talk to him about them later he says he just skimmed it but didn’t really read it and doesn’t remember what they were about.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
By exposing it to daylight, my “Having-More-Means-A-Better-Life” Gremlin has died a death.
This essay by Paul Graham always brings a smile
[http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html]
as it reminds me of what little value our stuff really has. Quote:
“In fact, worse than worthless, because once you’ve accumulated a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the other way around. I know of one couple who couldn’t retire to the town they preferred because they couldn’t afford a place there big enough for all their stuff. Their house isn’t theirs; it’s their stuff’s.”