Note : This is just a perspective on consumption and my thoughts along with mistakes over the period of years. It’s not a financial advice and by no means a personal attack.

Credits : Thanks to Kanmani Chandra Rajan for her insightful feedback and discussion without which this post would not be possible

Few days back I came across a WhatsApp story on consumption being one of the causes of environmental hazards that we face today along the fact that we continue to damage even with the effects being understood and demonstrated. So I took some time today to write about my own experience through the course of the years as a series.

Lives are built on consumption

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing - George Orwell, Animal Farm

If you think about the society we live in general it’s built upon consumption as a fundamental premise. Let’s take this blog for example. You are consuming the post with some expectations to gain value out of it which I hope you do. To add to that I would like to add some value of comments being present for every post and hence I have added Disqus which in turn consumes your data to derive value out of their ads. The ads themselves are built out of the premise that you will eventually consume the product that they are advertising so that they can consume something which in turn you might be producing to a consumer market.

Well, if that is little mind numbing then it’s one of the simple cases of lives being built upon consumption. I produce something so that you can consume it and I get something out of it to consume even more. It’s a full circle without going into the obvious debatable aspects like socialism etc. Essentially you have to consume something but let’s discuss some factors through where it might go wrong.

Lifestyle inflation

What are some of the biggest mistakes people can make in their 20s? - AskReddit

  • Living a lifestyle you can’t afford. (48k points)
  • Confusing being able to make minimum payment with being able to afford something. (37k points)

So each of us start our careers through a job where we are paid for the work we do. Well to be honest underpaid for the value we produce because how else profits could be made. At some point as we progress through our career where we gain some experience and add more value which gives us some leverage to increase our pay too proportionately. So you have little more money to spend then and hence you could invest some part of it in make your life better let’s say in affording a better house and so on. You are content and years move on where you have some more money and you have a family and you might move to a bigger house with better facilities that you can afford and now let’s say you keep doing it every year and for one year due to some misfortune you have additional expenditure or lose your job and you can’t afford to pay bills for a month though you were earning $300k per year. It might seem silly but I hope you know people who earn very decent salary only to be crippled with credit card payments.

So does that mean I should live at sub-inflation rates ? Of course not if there is a point where you can afford something that adds value in terms of time or effort in turn increasing your quality of living then by all means you need to do it for your own well-being. But the fact is that there is a fine line between better standards of living and abusing it where you put a lot of stuff on yourself and if you keep doing it every year in order to keep up with what you earn which some people called catching up with Jones family on the other block instead of realising the vicious circle they are already in.

The itch of missing something

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need - Fight Club

One of the other factors of consumption is in advertisements making ourself feel as if we are missing the experience. A personal example is that I am not into gaming but whenever I see an Ad about Nintendo Switch it sort makes me feel as if I am missing something. Sure gaming is great given the large communities we know but it also tricks me into investing on something with the fact that I might eventually derive value out of which is more like sunk cost fallacy. You might say if you don’t experience stuff at all then how can I know more about whether I am missing something or not. Yes, that makes sense but I guess it will be a better fit if I have been gaming for sometime and need an upgrade or I want to really venture into a hobby with dedicated efforts. I guess it’s more about whether you really want to do it or it’s a slight itch that you can wish to do just for sake of being able to afford it.

I would say it’s more along the lines of trying to buy 200 diapers at sale because they are on 90% offer when you don’t even have a baby. The same could be said about phone flash sales where you are eventually tricked that you are missing out on some experience since you don’t have the latest upgraded phone like great camera quality on Pixel though you never take photos at all but bought a flagship only a year ago with an itch to upgrade. We are consistently built on products that are made to be outdated so that we can keep consuming more because how else could you sell a product. So a lot of the sales are made where people just buy something because they can afford it at that point in time with the futile perspective that it will add value whereas it has added only more liability.

The irony of living in the present

I am pretty sure you have come across this “Live in the present” motto at some point in your life. Well, I am not against the fact of living in the present but there are people who consume today to the maximum as if they are going to die tomorrow which brings me to the blog title finally. I think this is subtle but once you think about it more it’s pretty dangerous. The primary mottos include “Stop fretting about the tomorrow and enjoy today to the maximum”. Well by tomorrow they literally mean tomorrow which is already filled with uncertainty which they substantiate with the fact that present is more certain which needs to be enjoyed instead of worrying more about uncertain future.

I think it’s a clever ploy to make us consume more which makes the already uncertain future more uncertain. This also leads to social pressure where you are often treated up as a frugal jerk who saves for his sixties even that you could never live up to the age. I think it’s more prevalent than it is and it’s also like a pyramid scheme where once you are in you also tend to see others with the same attitude.

Conclusion

Well, that brings me to the end where I hope I have added some of the causes of consumption and I have to admit I have done almost all of the mistakes above at one point or another or been the cause of the mistake. I guess it’s a good time where I could reflect on these over the course of years. I guess this leads me to other part where the consumption has effect on environment which I feel could be written as another post since I have already ranted enough for today :)

Alt + tabs to a YouTube video where the non-skippable ad finished