The Latte Factor

Imagine going to church/synagogue/temple and hearing the cleric tell you that you should go on sinning. That it's really OK, that you don't need to clean up your life, that the world won't end.

Now imagine a marketer telling you that you really don't need to keep on buying with reckless abandon, that you should give second thought to the idea of sacrificing your pleasures, that you should save your money.That's what I'm telling you right now.

I know, I know...I've been chastised before by surprised students who think that a marketer would never actually tell someone to not spend money. After all, isn't consumption our raison d'etre? Aren't we born to shop?

Well, the longer I play this game, the more my conscience tries to take the steering wheel. The more I try to plan for retirement (I'm 47), the more I try to reign in those little indulgent expenditures. And the more I look at all that junk littering my house, the more I just want to host the Mother of all Garage Sales and declare a ban on all non-essential purchases.

So if you're among the crowd spending $4 per day for your fix at Starbucks, think about how much money you could save if you just brewed a pot of Folger's at home and toted one of those nice stainless steel cylinders to school or work. Think about it in these terms: 5 days a week times 50 weeks (I'll give you a little vacation time). That's 250 lattes X $4 = $1000.

Would an extra $83 per month help out at the gas pump?

A few years ago I kept a spending log for an entire year. I recorded every single purchase, from an incidental gumball all the way to computers. It was a sobering experience. After just a couple of months my spending habits changed, for I had become more aware of just how free-spending I was.

I concluded that, while I had earned about $1 million in my adult life, I was well on my way to spending the second million. (And if you think $1 million is a lot of money, think again. Spread out over many years, it comes out to a modest $50K per year...not exactly enough money to play with the big boys.)

My wife and I are becoming real cheapskates. Maybe it's the fact that we have two young kids. Maybe it's the fact that I can almost see 65 from here. Maybe it's the high price of gasoline.

Or maybe I'm just finally growing up, figuring out that my parents and grandparents (the masters of frugality) were on to something.And so we're not ashamed to use coupons at restaurants, not embarrassed to order water with lemon (unless the Happy Hour specials are too cheap to resist, that is), and not worried about what others might think when we carry a stack of styrofoam containers out to the car containing tomorrow's lunch.

Marketing is a fine subject, no doubt. I'm glad I followed this path. I also realize that the job of all marketers is to help people decide they cannot live without something, and that they need to waste no time in running to the store. The problem is simply knowing when to say "Enough's enough!"

But it's not easy. Just last week in Colorado I had the opportunity to buy a nice new road bike, a $4200 titanium model being cleared out for a paltry $2800. Yeah, some of you might think it's still too much, but for hard-core sports fanatics, we all know it's possible to drop a lot of dough for your passion. It was all I could do to say no (never mind that I had visions of the doghouse...).

I know I'm not perfect, but I'm trying. Like most Americans, I am blessed with more than I need...yet I always want more. Perhaps it's just the human condition: slavery to one's possessions.

And that's a latte to think about.

Dr "I Just Hope I Still Have the Energy to Play Hard When I Retire" Gerlich