To live a budget lifestyle, you need to be aware of your financial choices. You need to be aware of your unconscious and conscious decisions to spend money and you need to be aware of how people close to you want you to spend your money.
Advertisers are perfectly aware of the messages they are bombarding you on a daily basis. These messages are tailored to do one thing: persuade you to spend money in the way they want you to. Marketing and advertising executives spend their days discovering new and innovative ways for you to spend money on their products and services. That’s the whole point of advertising and marketing! What’s more, advertising and marketing has been around since the beginning of time and we’ve been doing our own form of advertising and marketing even if we don’t realize it. Think about finding a love partner – you need to market and advertise yourself. Every single successful business uses top-notch marketing and advertising teams to sell their products and services. Even if you’re going to a job interview, you’re going to be marketing yourself as the best option for the hiring company. The only difference is that many companies have million-dollar marketing and advertising teams working for them!
You’re going to need to be able to consciously sift through the many messages you receive regularly and then ignore the messages trying to persuade to buy a product or service you don’t really need. One of these negative messages you’re going to have to block out are “jealousy messages”. This is where that phrase “Keeping Up With the Joneses” rears its ugly head. Who cares about the Joneses? The truth is that most people look at the neighbor’s new Hummer and they feel like they have to get one too. They go to a friend’s home and they notice their friend has a jet ski, so they need to get one too.
Where does that impulse to spend and spend come from? One of the biggest culprits is from television, specifically television shows. Researchers have found that most television shows (with the general exception of comedy sitcoms) are set in the world of the upper class. The average income person watching these shows feels an urge to get some of those items featured in the show. Maybe you’re watching one of these MTV reality shows with uber-rich people driving their $200,000 cars and Armani clothes. Maybe you’re looking at an ultra-sleek living room in a television show, you look at your own living room and you start feeling inadequate. The research showed that the homes that had the highest rates of viewing these shows had the lowest rates of saving money. Possibly these households spend all their cash on consumer goods and don’t have money left over to save? Food for thought.
Television commercials are another big culprit. Commercials are designed to make you feel like you absolutely need to have items that the typical household can’t afford. Commercials cause the average household to compare their lives not with others in the same economic bracket but instead with those at the very highest income levels.
I’ll tell you right now the absolutely easiest way to disconnect from this pressure. Here’s a step-by-step for you:
1. Get up from your couch. Put your beer/soda down at the coffee table.
2. Walk over to the television.
3. Unplug television.
4. Pick up television.
5. Walk to window with television.
6. Open window.
7. Throw television out the window.
Ok, maybe you don’t have to throw your television out the window… you could just unplug the television. Or you could just watch the occasional movie, not watch television, and read a good book instead (and yes, you can actually learn from books! Unlike television, which is generally mindless entertainment….). You could meet with friends and have a good time. You could take a walk with a loved one.
The bottom-line is to not put yourself in situations to get tempted! Think about it this way, if you’re trying to lose weight, would it be prudent for you to have brownies and ice cream in the refrigerator? I know some are going to think my suggestions are ridiculous. Some might think there’s no way they can reduce the time they spend with their “best friend” – the television. I would prefer you eliminate it from your life, but if you can at least limit your watching to a little bit a day or week it’s best. Even better, try to only watch educational channels, like Discovery Channel. I personally do my best to watch educational and enlightening seminars on DVD that I’ve rented from Netflix so I can learn something. Of course, I love watching comedy movies as well. It’s all about moderation and remembering that life isn’t just about distraction – it’s about living your life to the fullest!
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This is one of the best advice I have come across since the start of the year! I really needed that… thank you.