Journeyer’s Chronicles

When did everyone become so entrapped by consumerism? When did “wants” like the latest mobile phone, massive houses, new clothes every season, big, new cars and expensive birthday parties become needs, on a par with food, shelter and adequate medical care? Our family hasn’t been immuned to this epidemic. We’ve jumped on the bandwagon ourselves.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with working to give your family the best you can afford. But I think sometimes we forget or are misled about what is actually best and what we can really afford. The media has done a great job of convincing us of what we “need”. It seems a lot of people are going into debt to provide these false needs and then are having trouble affording the real ones. The Simple Dollar has an interesting series reviewing the book Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture. It discusses how even as children we are exposed to consumerism. This moulds our habits and beliefs for adult life.

On the weekend there was an article in The Age newspaper entitled Price battlers forced to back to the simpler life. I envisaged a story about people really doing it tough and cutting back to the bare bones in order to get by. Instead it cites families that no longer eat out so often, or buy mince instead of lamb, and poor David Jones department store suffering in their furniture and electrical departments.

I’m not sure when dining out a couple of times a week or regularly updating to the latest and greatest electrical items became de rigueur for middle class families. Now that the financial “good times” of the past few years are slowing down or even reversing, the debt that we built as consumers is starting to bite back for many people.

So what can we do about it? Well, as the people in the newspaper article were doing, we can start by eating at home more often and buying cheaper cuts of meat. Rising grocery prices aren’t a new phenomenon, despite what the media would have us believe. We visited my parents this weekend for Mother’s Day. While enjoying my breakfast in bed, I found an old homekeeping book in the bookshelf. We guessed the book, called Food, Wine & Cookery, was probably written around 1965, although it had no dates in it. I was suprised to see in the menu planning section that economical buying

may not seem possible nowadays when costs seem to climb higher each week.

Remember this was in 1965.

I don’t often watch commercial TV. When I do I can’t believe the number and insistence of the ads. Maybe turning of the TV for a while could help. Perhaps we could take the lead from our parents and grandparents and save for the wants rather than charging them. We could even try to get by with what we have and be happy with it. Instead of taking the family on a grand island holiday (as lovely as that sounds), go camping in a nearby national park instead. In short, living a simpler life.

It’s not easy to get off the consumerism bandwagon. I know. We’re trying ourselves. But being conscious of what the outside influences are, and taking it one step at a time it can be done.

What are your experiences with the consumerism juggernaut?