Living for show without any dough

Here we go again with another bout of suburban gas, and grocery hysteria. Forget common sense, sensible monetary planning, or doing any form of personal inventory on our spending practices. The media trumpets a jingle, and we all drum along, angry victims, expecting the government to step in and rescue us from inflation and our own irrational behaviour.

Let’s be real, and let’s just grow up. Isn’t it time to make ourselves accountable, as we would our children when it comes to realistic lifestyle choices and the everyday purchases we make?

The only reason the masses of suburban middleclass bristle at the higher price of necessities, is it reduces the amount of money left over for the non-necessities. Some continue to follow foolhardy spending practices for unnecessary indulgences of ego, style, and entitlements.

How can people spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on jet fuel for a chic holiday, and then complain about spending a few cents per litre more on gas at home? We know gas goes up every year in the summer, as faithfully as tax time rolls around. A more startling example of suburban double standards; whining about spending a few cents more on grocery items, then dropping hundreds of dollars a month eating out for lunch, after work cocktails, and family pizza night.

The math is basic and obvious. We teach money management skills to our children, yet are grossly hypocritical in our money modelling practices. Children see this, and learn that’s okay, to play today, pay tomorrow. Mom and Dad can’t balance the books, why should I?

Food, gas, and electricity are needs, essential to most of us. Do we realistically stop and take inventory of the extravagant lifestyle we try to attain; the imported marble countertops, spa weekends, grandiose homes, new cars, gym memberships, dog groomers, and E-phones/gadgets. All are unnecessary wants, which are now affecting necessary needs.

The numbers are real; we can’t have everything we want. For some reason people think they have the entitled right to spend, and spend large. Maybe they conveniently and egotistically bought the sales pitch that you can have it, you can have now, and you really deserve it. The banks, credit card companies, and advertisers want you happily behaving materialistic and for some, narcissistic. It has become an easy sell to the many people who find their self-worth in material possessions, as opposed to their professional, social, and family associations.

Restraint, common sense, and living consciously below one's means is considered more prudent by professional credit counsellors for the long run, than those, who for whatever personal reason, are running a gauntlet of heavy personal debt. And the sad coping mechanism for so many suburbanites; following, without thinking, the media hype. With the subsequent blaming of government, big oil, and taxes, people escape preforming any self-scrutiny. Some just blindly continue to make unrealistic decisions in a world filled with material temptations.

Considering the consequences to our families, children, and marriages, the façade of “Living for show without any dough” has become mainstream transparent, and quite frankly, financially reckless, unfashionable, and very, very, irresponsible.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.