Tag Archives: materialism

Everything Free Day

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Two weeks ago Megan McArdle reviewed a few books on consumption. Early in the review she reveals she recently bought a $1,500 food processor. Who knew one could drop 1.5 large on a food processor?

The Saturday morning after Black Friday my betrothed filled me in on the L.A. shopper who pepper-sprayed several other X-box shopper-competitors before fleeing the scene. The good news is I don’t think anyone was trampled to death in Toys R’ Us this year. On Black Friday I subscribed to consumerreports.org in the a.m. and then spent a chunk of the p.m. shopping for new kitchen appliances at home in my pepper spray-free environment.

I spent part of Thanksgiving Day shopping too. Well, kind of. While watching Ndamukong Suh stomp on a Packer o-lineman, I blew through 90% of the 90 lbs. of newspaper ad inserts. Took everything the labradude had to drag that bad boy to the front door. Who knew Wal-Mart sells decent looking jeans for $10? And a decent Timex Ironman-brand watch for $10? Maybe they won’t stop stomping their suppliers until they can sell everything for $10 or less.

Remember the crazy shopping spree marketing prizes in the 70’s or 80’s? Some lucky winner would get an hour in a grocery store and they’d sprint up and down the aisle frantically loading a few baskets with a little of everything? And we’d watch imagining how much faster we’d go or how we’d be more strategic and target the most expensive goods that take up the least space.

What if Black Friday was “National Reduce Inventory” day and everything was free? Nothing sold out, no servers crashed, perfect availability. What would you have brought home? What about those you live with? Where/how would you have stored everything? How would those new possessions have changed your life? Would you be much happier?

At minimum, I would have ordered a few new kitchen appliances and brought home some of Costco’s most expensive vino, a new bicycle computer, and a McArdle food processor in a new Seal Gray 2012 Porsche 911. Initially at least, I would have been much happier. Among other ripple effects though, I’d have to work more hours to pay for more expensive car insurance and maintenance costs and over the course of a few weeks, months, and years, I probably wouldn’t be any happier at all.

I don’t assume what’s true for me is true for you, but I’m learning the things that make me happiest—friendship, good health, film, literature, exercising in natural settings, writing this blog, helping others—can’t be purchased in a store or ordered on-line. I could spend tons of time and energy shopping in stores and on-line at this time of year, brag about my good bargains, but not improve the quality of my life.

If there’s ever a time of the year for reflecting on this dynamic it’s now. The thrill of even great purchases quickly fades so invest time and energy in the people and things that bring lasting joy.

Related Graham Hill TED Talk titled “Less Stuff, More Happiness”.

How to Increase Your Living Space Without Spending a Dollar

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By decluttering of course.

Jane E. Brody reviews a new book by Robin Zasio titled “The Hoarder in You: How To Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life.” Brody says it’s the best self-help work she’s read in her 46 years as a health and science writer. That should help sales.

After that endorsement, I was disappointed by Zasio’s advice, which I’d describe as decluttering orthodoxy based on Brody’s highlights.

Here’s the gist of it. If you’re familiar with the decluttering literature skip ahead a paragraph. 1A) Tackle just one project at a time—a closet, garage, room, dresser drawer, file cabinet—and stick with it until it’s done. 1B) To create positive momentum, work from the easiest project to the most challenging. 2) Schedule time for decluttering—an hour a weekday or weekend day for example—until done. 3A) Use three containers labelled “Keep,” “Donate,” and “Discard”. 3B) Brody adds her own advice here. To force yourself to decide among the three, be careful not to add a fourth “Undecided” container.

Simple, huh? So why do I predict, six months after finishing Zasio’s book, that the majority of her readers will still live clutter-riddled lives? Because no matter how faithfully one implements that logical plan, there’s still a cultural, even spiritual element to our tendency to buy far more than we need.

Every day, all day, we’re subjected to a one-two punch of extremely sophisticated and ubiquitous advertising that plays on our insecurities and to what sociologists refer to as “relative deprivation” or wanting what others wealthier (or more in debt) than us have. Regardless of whether we have the three containers labelled correctly, we want what we see advertised and and we want what our next-door neighbors have. Until we figure out how to resist those two things, our “stuff” will continue to overwhelm us.

I’m not immune to the one-two punch. I owned a Porsche once, an incredible machine, but I sold it (at a loss of course) because I felt self-conscious in it. Weird, I know. Most Porsche owners want you looking at them at the light or getting out of it at the restaurant. I was the opposite. I didn’t like pulling into the church or school parking lot. Insufficient swagger I guess. But then after reading Irvine, and getting fired up about Stoicism, I learned Stoics aren’t supposed to care about what others think of them. There’s something to work on. With that in mind, maybe I should give it another shot. The new 2012 911 looks damn nice. An exercise in applied Stoicism?

Xmas 12?

I Am the 1%

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Not based on my five figure salary, my Kirkland Signature wardrobe, my penchant for water at restaurants, or my municipal golf courses of choice.

I am the “one percent” based upon health, meaningful work, beautiful surroundings, good friends, and a loving family.

Turning fiddy in a few months. My peers are showing varying degrees of wear and tear. Their setbacks help me appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to afford healthy food, to have time to exercise daily, to have access to quality medical care, and to feel younger than I am.

My work matters. How fortunate to get paid to help young people write, teach, and think through what they believe and how they want to live their adult lives. And remarkably, every seven years I get the ultimate gift, time to press pause and read, think, write, rest, renew.

Half the year I get to cycle in unbelievably beautiful mountain settings, swim in an idyllic next-door lake, and run on wooded trails and sleepy residential streets. In the summer it’s almost never hot or humid and there are no bugs that would prevent one from eating outside. There are no hurricanes and hardly any lightening, but I reserve the right to amend this post if I someday survive the overdue Shake.

I often climb the mountains, swim the lake, and run the trails with excellent friends. Fitness fellowship.

My extended family is a blessing. My wife and daughters especially so. Apart from one very bad leg, they’re healthy and happy. My Better Half and I just returned from visiting First Born at Leafy Midwest Liberal Arts College. Most nineteen year-old college students would be semi-embarrassed by visiting parents, but for some reasons ours was off-the-charts warm, inviting, and appreciative the whole time. Even invited her Spanish teaching mom to her Spanish class and took us to great student a cappella and modern dance concerts.

When we first arrived on campus, Spanish teaching mom went to meet her at the Language Building. I read in the “Libe”. At the appointed time I headed across campus to meet up with them. Turned a corner and there she was walking by herself to a piano lesson. Cue the killer off-the-ground hug.

We stayed in a room in this house which a woman left to the college with an unusual condition—that it always be available as a student hang out with the necessary ingredients to bake cookies.

Home Base

The suggested donation for staying there was $30/night. We had twin beds in a smallish room. The first hints of winter crept in through the window next to my bed. I could whizz while simultaneously brushing my teeth in the tiny bathroom.

But looks can be deceiving. No one would suspect that inside this humble house, in one of the modest rooms, a One Percenter slept contentedly.

Marriage Red Flag

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My nomination for a SLP personal finance journalism award—given to the author of a particularly succinct, lucid, and provocative personal finance article. From Rachel Emma Silverman in the Wall Street Journal (10/17/11):

If you care too much about money, your marriage may suffer.

A new study by scholars at Brigham Young University and Provo, Utah and William Paterson University, Wayne, N.J.. looked at more than 1,700 married couples across the U.S. to determine how their attitudes toward money affected their marriages.

Couples who said money wasn’t important to them scored about 10% to 15% better on measures of relationship quality, such as marriage stability, than couples where both or one spouse were materialistic.

Also, couples in which both partners said they valued lots of money—about 20% of the couples in the study—fared worse than couples who were mismatched and just had one materialist in the marriage.

“Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” says Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study. “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

In the study, published recently in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, participants completed a questionnaire which evaluated their relationship and asked, among other things, how much they value “having money and lots of things.”

Dr. Carroll says the research team had expected that disparate couples, those with different ways of viewing money, would have worse relationships. They found, though, that it was “materialism itself that’s creating much of the difficulty,” even when couples have plenty of money, he says.

Materialism might cause spouses to make poor financial decisions, such as overspending and running up debt, which can strain relationships. What’s more, materialistic spouses may pay less attention to their relationships and give their marriage lower priority than other concerns.

In other words, marry someone who values “having money and lots of things” at your own risk.

Seigels—You Disgust Me

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Subtitle: Thank goodness for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

A friend, in his early 40’s, was dating a multimillionaire C.E.O. He bragged to me that her kids didn’t even have to put their dishes in the dishwasher because that’s what the live-in maid was for. The full-time maid, he explained, enabled the mom and school-aged children to spend more quality time together. I’m calling bullshit.

I used to show some of my students an excellent education documentary about three third grade classrooms—one in the US, one in Germany, and one in Japan. There were no janitors at the Japanese school because educators there believe that students benefit from cleaning the school themselves at the end of each day. “Cleaning,” one school director explained, “creates a kind and gentle spirit.”

Over the years, I’ve noticed that my young adult and adult students who grew up on farms in Montana and eastern Washington are especially hard workers.

Many college bound high school students, following their Type-A parents’ lead, are excused from household chores on account of homework, after school sports, and related college application padding activities.

Ron’s Rule: Any adolescent that’s too busy to put her own dishes in the dishwasher and help around the house in a few different ways every week is too busy. This is what I’m talkin’ about.

My advice. Let the help go, slow down, and give your kids a chance of creating not just a kind and gentle spirit, but genuine respect for maids, janitors, dishwashers, and other manual laborers. The cost of excusing our young people from cleaning their toilets, making their beds, and doing their dishes is a debilitating arrogance.

Which takes us to the Siegels of Orlando, FL. Remember: italics means I’m quoting, underlined text denotes sarcasm, and everything else is my normal, slightly less-sarcastic voice.

Excerpts from a 10/22/11 Wall Street Journal article by Robert Frank. Adapted from “The High-Beta Rich: How the Manic Wealthy Will Take Us to the Next Boom, Bubble, and Bust,” by Crown Business:

The Siegels’ dream home, called “Versailles,” after its French inspiration, is still a work in progress. Its steel-and-wood frame rises from the tropical suburbs of Orlando, Fla., like a skeleton from the Jurassic age of real estate. Ms. Siegel shows off the future bowling alley, indoor relaxing pools, five kitchens, 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms, two elevators, two movie theaters (one for kids and one for adults, each modeled after a French opera theater), 20-car garage and wine cellar built for 20,000 bottles. 

At 90,000 square feet, the Siegels’ Versailles is believed to be the largest private home in America. The Siegels’ home is so big that they bought 10 Segways to get around—one for each of their eight children. After touring the house, Ms. Siegel walks out to the deck, with its Olympic-size pool, future rock grotto, three hot tubs and 80-foot waterfall overlooking Lake Butler. Her eyes well up with tears.

I’m tearing up in sadness for you Jacqueline.

Versailles was supposed to be done by now. The Siegels were supposed to be living their dream life—throwing charity balls and getting spa treatments downstairs after a long flight on their Gulfstream.

I have a dream to one day throw charity balls, get spa treatments at home, and own a Gulfstream. That’s some inspiring shit.

The home was the culmination of David Siegel’s Horatio Alger story, from TV repairman to chief executive and owner of America’s largest time-share company, Westgate Resorts, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and $200 million in profits.

Yet today, Versailles sits half-finished and up for sale. The privately owned Westgate Resorts was battered by the 2008 credit crunch and real-estate crash. It had about $1 billion in debt—much of it co-signed by the Siegels.

The banks that had loans on Versailles gave the Siegels an ultimatum: Either pay off the loans or sell the house. So it’s now on the market for $75 million, or $100 million if the buyer wants it finished.

Today the Siegels have to make do in their current 26,000-square-foot mansion.

Before 2008, Mr. Siegel’s company, Westgate, was earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the family. The Siegels poured $50 million into Versailles, which seemed reasonable at the time. When friends asked David why he wanted to build the largest home in America, he had a simple answer: “Because I can.”

“I was cocky and I didn’t care what the house would cost because I couldn’t spend all the money I was making,” Mr. Siegel says.

Plus two points for honesty, minus twenty for volunteering to share all these details in a national newspaper. No sense of embarrassment. Stupefying.

Ms. Siegel has started a nonprofit called ThriftMart, a mega thrift-store that sells donated clothes—many from her own closet—and other items for $1.

That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

She (Jacqueline) does miss the Gulfstream. After they defaulted on the $8 million jet loan, the banks seized the plane. The Siegels can use it only occasionally, with the banks’ permission.

Recently, the family boarded a commercial flight for a vacation, making for some confusion. One of the kids looked around the crowded cabin and asked, “Mom, what are all these strangers doing on our plane?”

What a legacy—eight f-ed up kids.

Redefining the Good Life

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Wednesday, August 17th, 8a.m. Looking out my home office window at blue sky and the Black Hills. One of the best starts to a day imaginable.

5:45a trail run with the boys. 49 degrees. Semi-dark on the first loop, then dawn for reals, and a second foot-loose and fancy-free one. Can’t remember much of what we talked about–Danos b-day, the Seattle tunnel vote, Black Swan, Rick Perry wanting to use drones on the border, the eleventh grade 6’5″, 270 lb defensive tackle at Tumwater HS.

Near the end, I decided to treat the labradude to a pre-breakfast trip to the lake. He LOVES fetching in the water, but in the late afternoon he has to contend with fishing lines and swimmers. His walking partner has been at camp so he’s under-exercised. Off we went, ring tucked in the back of my shorts, three-quarters of a mile downhill to the lake.

Perfect. No-one in sight. Unleash him, pop the ring in his mouth, and he Usain Bolts it to the lake’s edge. A razor thin layer of wispy fog rests listlessly three-four feet above the water. Seventh or eighth throw goes a little farther than normal and he can’t pick it out, so he just kind of paces the shoreline, perplexed. Gradually, it drifts farther offshore. Now it’s in the low 50’s and my sweat has dried, but what can I do but strip down to the running shorts and retrieve it myself. We swim after it side-by-side, my head down, his up (note to self: become world famous by teaching Mdawg to swim with his head in the water, breathing to the side).

Shirt, sweatshirt, socks, shoes back on, I prep for the final throw, the one where once he’s got it I book up the gravel road, knowing he’ll close the gap in a blink of the eye. He’s paying such good attention, he gets to run home without the leash. Buries me on the last hill, ring still in his mouth. I pry it loose and he fetches the paper. Towel him off and he charges in the house to find his momma.

Even though I’m probably less materialistic than average, I’m still susceptible to the fallacy that our consumer culture is based upon: If I just owned x and y and z, I’d be tons happier. My x, y, and z shift over time, but are often a nice car, a house on the lake or sound, and/or a new bicycle.

Lots of research shows a positive correlation between individuals’ and countries’ economic security and happiness or what is sometimes referred to as “subjective well-being”. But there’s a tipping point, a point of diminishing returns where more economic security doesn’t lead to any more happiness. Maybe the simplest way to put it is members of the (shrinking) middle class evaluate their life situations more positively than members of the lower, but upper classers don’t report much if any more satisfaction than middle classers.

Found a nice house with amazing views of the sound a few months ago and got real close to making an offer. It’s about eight miles out of town, eleven from the start and end of our regular weekday morning runs. We still may end up moving into that hood, but that will mean a twenty-two mile roundtrip every Saturday to reconnect with the boys. That will also mean a different kind of start to the weekdays. Running with just my thoughts. Yikes.

Sure I could make new running friends, but the boys and I run at the exact same pace, their conservative politics are a constant source of entertainment, no one can bust balls as well, and now we have a history that can’t be replicated.

This morning I was reminded that it’s friendships, community, and nature that bring the greatest joy. And good health. No question about it, take my friends, my doggie, and my lake away and replace them with a nice new car, house, and bike and I won’t be nearly as happy. The only question is how long will this insight stick?

 

Two Worlds

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One world is inhabited by 73-year-old Richard Stoker, his wife Jane, his dogs, and his new neighbors in their Miami, FL luxury condominium development.

Stoker was featured in a recent  WSJ article on an increasing number of investors purchasing homes with cash in the belief prices have bottomed out.

“The prices were just irresistible,” Stoker said. “Florida’s been hit pretty hard.”

The article continues:

To pay the $1.8 million, $1.2 million and $1 million prices on the condos, Mr. Stoker and his wife, Jane, cashed out of some financial investments and sold a Roy Lichtenstein painting and an Alexander Calder mobile. Since mid-October, Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach, the development Mr. Stoker bought into, has sold 35 units, with a third of the buyers from overseas and many others retiring from the Northeast. . . . The Stokers have a home in Potomac, Md., but spend most of the year in Florida. Mr. Stoker doesn’t plan to rent out any of his new properties, saying he and his wife will live in one with two dogs, his son might live in another and the third will house an older dog and guests.

What are we to make of Stoker and his world? We don’t have many details, but in 2011 America, here’s what I think I’m supposed to conclude. “Good on you. Probably worked hard your whole life and played by the rules. Enjoy the spoils of your labors.” Besides, who knows, maybe he’s an inspiring philanthropist who has given similar amounts of money to good causes.

But I’m tired of the status quo, so instead of giving him a pass and congratulating him, I have some questions.

What kind of person agrees to participate in an article like that under their own free will? What kind of person admits to the world that they bought a $1m condo for their dog? Why are there only two socially acceptable responses to conspicuous consumption in the U.S.—laissez faire nonchalance or awe? Why aren’t we embarrassed for the Stokers of the world when they publicly flaunt their wealth? Why don’t we freeze them out?

2011 Resolution

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Resist manic materialism.

I have no one really to blame because I chose to watch MSNBC while preparing for the 2011 cycling season one morning last week.  It was the morning after 20 inches of snow fell throughout the Northeastern U.S. Business analysts worried “How will the conditions affect retailers since post Christmas shoppers will stay home?”

Does everything always have to be interpreted through the lens of economics?

I should have switched to the Zen Cable Network, a mythical creation of mine where a slow, beautiful, non-narrated slideshow with acoustic guitar accompaniment was looping. Slow moving shots of young people up and down the seaboard sledding and having snowball fights while parents sipped coffee and talked against the backdrop of translucent, oddly beautiful cities.

Manic materialism is the increasingly common practice of defining as many life activities and events as possible in economic terms. How does this—a winter snow storm, schooling, an art form, food, healthcare—make people more or less wealthy? It’s the result of our collective idolatry, and as a result, it’s our unofficial national religion. No activity is immune from its influence. Every life activity and event is reduced to whether it generates wealth.

And make no mistake about it, wealth is defined one way—materially. How much money do you have, how big is your house, how nice is it on the inside, how luxurious is your car, where do you vacation?

Schooling provides a poignant example. Why are U.S. opinion and business leaders over involved in reform efforts today? For one reason—our international economic competitiveness is slipping. As a result, our relative wealth is declining. That’s why math and science content is routinely privileged at the expense of humanities and social studies education. The business leaders at the education reform table are in essence asking, “How in the hell is an affinity for literature or history going to translate into more money for more people?”

Maybe I errored in using the phrase “our collective idolatry” a few paragraphs ago. Maybe all of us are exceptions, a fringe minority that believes we’re more social, emotional, dare I even say spiritual beings, than economic ones.

In prioritizing close interpersonal relationships, maintaining work-life balance, and consciously living below our means, we provide a viable alternative to manic materialism and threaten the status quo.

What else can and should we do in 2011 to provide a social-emotional-spiritual alternative to manic materialism?

Doesn’t Compute

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In an email I recently received, my father-in-law asked me what I thought of Tiger’s performance. I’m guessing his use of the word “performance” as opposed to “statement” means he wasn’t buying what Tiger was selling.

I thought Tiger was sincere, but who knows, talk is cheap, and as he acknowledged, only time will tell. The question of whether he was sincere is not the most interesting one, nor is the question of what he does or doesn’t owe the public, nor the related one of why didn’t he allow questions.

For me there’s one interesting, actually troubling aspect of the whole Tiger melodrama, and one interesting aspect of his performance or statement.

The disconcerting aspect is the opportunity costs of our fascination with celebrities. In your circle of friends, what’s the ratio of “Tiger talk” to “education, foreign policy, health care, or economic talk”? We are a People magazine people and the quality of our democracy suffers as a result.

The interesting aspect of his statement was how pained he appeared to be, how unhappy I’m guessing he is, and his paragraph on Buddhism. We are a materialistic people. Here’s a guy that’s close to being the first billionaire athlete living a complete life of luxury and he’s unhappy. How can someone who’s the best in their field, on the way to being the best ever, with hundreds of millions of dollars, private jets, yachts, houses, Escalades, be unhappy?

Doesn’t compute.

Lots of people think if they had El Tigre money and fame they’d be much more happy than they are. To me, the Tiger story, like a lot of Old Testament ones, is a powerful reminder that money and fame are no substitute for a sense of self; a selfless spirituality; honoring your ancestors; a sense that your wife, children, and close friends respect you; a sense that you’re at least as good a person as athlete.

What, if anything, will we learn from the recession?

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I’m not a regular viewer (a necessary qualifier to retain some semblance of masculinity), but I caught an episode of Oprah one night last week. The theme, the recession’s negative impact on people.

I’ll introduce you to a few of the guests, describe what I think the producers wanted me to conclude from the segment, and explain my actual reaction.

Guest one, a 24 year-old woman, had lost her job with an interior decorating company. Not only had she done three internships in college, she had “done everything right” and still ended up standing in an unemployment line. I was supposed to conclude that’s wrong and sad. Sure it’s sad whenever anyone who really wants to work can’t find a job, but even sadder was the subtext: college graduates are entitled to good jobs.

Robert Reich, whose contributions were underwhelming, was the talking head putting the individual stories into the broader context of a changing economy. With respect to guest one, even I might have done a better job framing her experience.

Here’s the takeaway for her, the other student in the news lately who has sued her college because she can’t find a job, and anyone who thinks a college degree entitles them to a good job. A new day has dawned. Sizeable student loans and a college diploma guarantee little. Increasingly, businesses are more productive with fewer people. Profit margins are shrinking; consequently, the race to eliminate jobs is accelerating. You’re competing with more people for fewer jobs, not just your college classmates, but elderly people who are finding they have to continue working, and highly motivated, ambitious peers from across the globe.  Good grades and the perceived prestige of your institution mean little absent the following: a genuine curiosity; a strong work ethic; well developed communication, critical thinking, team, and problem solving skills; cross cultural knowledge and skills; integrity, and resilience.

Guest two was a couple that had been living large. The X had a successful hair salon and the Y was a successful realtor before both lost their jobs. As their financial situation worsened, their well-to-do friends quit associating with them. It was clear by Oprah’s sadness, that I was supposed to feel similarly, but I didn’t. Oprah kept asking superficial questions like, “So they don’t invite you to their dinner parties anymore?” To which unemployed couple sadly replied, “No they don’t.” Audience members shook their heads in dismay.

I did my best to set aside the obvious irony of one of the wealthier people in the world exploring the sadness of downward mobility, and wondered why and the hell didn’t she ask them why they pursued friendships based upon superficial signs of material wealth in the first place. This was a sad segment, but not at all in the way the producers intended. What was most sad was the couple’s utter lack of self-awareness. They never said what might have made it a socially redeeming case study. “The recession has been an important wake up call. It opened our eyes to the limits of consumerism and materialism, neither of which form a meaningful foundation for friendship.”

In fairness, one of the other segments did convey a “silver lining, now we know what’s most important” moral, but I couldn’t help but wonder how long the guest’s commitment to frugality and meaningful relationships will continue once the recession ends.

Guest three was a former Denver newscaster who was making 250k at the time of his dismissal. He had taken a 30k/year job working as a vet’s assistance because he had always had a genuine love of animals so his resilience was noteworthy. But again, I couldn’t give the producers the “my how sad” reaction they seemingly wanted because he acknowledged making a whole lot of money for the last 10 years of his 30 year career. Oprah and RR seemingly had it on cruise control and couldn’t bring themselves to ask him and his wife the obvious question, “Why didn’t you live more simply and save more of it?”

Have I lost my mind, criticizing Harpo Productions? I will now be entering the witness protection program.