Many people (myself included) often want items that they can afford, but by buying it they are really hurting their potential savings for the future. I know personally that

Item I Want: A Nintendo Wii
Tactic I’m Using: Realizing I’ll rarely use it

Whenever I think about buying a Wii, I picture playing it with friends and also with relatives during holiday get-togethers. I’ve played with one and really had a lot of fun with the sports games with it, and I can see it being a barrel of laughs with some of my friends and relatives.

In order to avoid buying this item, though, I ask myself how much I would play it in a very honest fashion. The truth is, except for when friends are over, I probably wouldn’t play it much at all. Using that, I start calculating the costs associated with the system, an extra controller, and potentially a few more games (particularly the downloaded ones, which I would enjoy for the retro appeal), and I realize the cost per hour of enjoyment on a pure entertainment project is really quite high.

Item I Want: A Treo 700p
Tactic I’m Using: Unneeded item replacement

This gadget gets my motor running every time I see one. The plethora of features (mostly the PDA-related stuff) really make me want one quite badly, as I can see tons of uses for it, even on a daily basis.

However, I avoid buying this item by using a mixture of my pocket notebook and my current cell phone. The efficiency of using these items makes a Treo into just a replacement for them, and a very expensive one at that. Why would I want to replace a pair of items that do the job quite easily and for little cost with an expensive item that does both? That’s really, really ineffective and doesn’t generate any additional productivity.

Item I Want: A tailor-made suit
Tactic I’m Using: Repeatedly hinting at it as a gift

I’ve wanted a really well-fitting suit for a long time. My body build (very, very broad shoulders makes my body look like an inverted triangle) makes buying suits an adventure and I’d love to own a suit that actually fits well for a lot of occasions.

My current tactic for this is to hint at it as a gift. My parents, in-laws, and wife are currently insinuating that they’re getting together to get me a birthday gift, so I believe (hope) that it is this. I have no qualms about specifically hinting for gifts - they would buy me something anyway, and this way it is know that it will be something I want or like.

Item I Want: A Dance Dance Revolution setup
Tactic I’m Using: Waiting for the right price

This DDR home setup is basically a home aerobics system. I want something highly interactive that can get me in shape, track my progress, give me some clear challenges to meet, and also work on my balance and footwork (because, well, I lack grace).

So how am I not buying it? I set some very low thresholds for what I’m willing to pay for each piece of the setup (the Playstation 2, the mat, the games, and the memory card) and now I’m waiting for opportunities to buy at the low prices I have in mind. When I see a component at that low threshold, I’ll buy that component; otherwise, I’ll save the money.

Item I Want: A KitchenAid Professional 600 Series stand mixer
Tactic I’m Using: I’ll buy it when…

This has been the hardest item to resist buying because of my love for cooking. I have been making do for years with a hand mixer that has been a very sturdy one, but it has made it difficult to mix a lot of things, especially bread doughs and mashed potatoes, and also to mix complex things thoroughly and evenly. A really good KitchenAid will handle that with ease, making it possible for us to make even more foods at home. I’ve also identified some very good prices on the one I’ve been eyeing, a price point I’m comfortable with.

So why haven’t I spent my money yet? I’ve made an agreement with myself that when I reach a specific savings goal this year, I’ll buy this for myself at the end of the year. Thus, not only will I be rewarded with a very healthy start to my investments, I’ll also have something I’ve wanted to own for a long time.

In the last few months, I’ve been interviewed several times as a result of the success of this site. One recent interview, however, really stood out because the interviewer went immediately into questions a lot more interesting than “why do you write about money” and “how popular is your site” (the usual questions, in other words). I thought that the answers might be interesting for all of you. Here’s the meat of that interview, with the earlier “introductory” questions excised out.

What would you consider your greatest achievement in the last few years?

Less than one year ago, I had five figures worth of credit card debt, a large outstanding loan on my primary vehicle, and I barely had enough money to cover the minimum payments on both. I had nothing at all in savings, either.

So what’s the accomplishment? Without increasing my income at all, I currently have zero credit card debt, I own that vehicle free and clear, and I have several thousand dollars in the bank.

Some people might not view that as a great achievement, but it did lead into the creation of The Simple Dollar, which I launched in November 2006 and currently reaches 7,500 visitors a day. It describes what I learned during this process of turning my financial life around, and the success of it is now aiding me to begin saving for some bigger life goals.

What was the key to achieving that success for you? Was there one thing, or were there a number of factors?

The key moment was the birth of my first child, a son, in November 2005. Before he was born, I was reasonably organized in terms of time management, but the management of a lot of other aspects of my life were a complete train wreck.

I remember distinctly one night, when he was about four months old and I realized that my financial situation was a complete nightmare. I was literally wondering whether I could come up with the money to pay for our housing that month. He was very fussy that evening, so I sat in his bedroom with him, held him in my arms, and rocked with him for several hours. He finally fell asleep on my chest and as I sat there in the darkness and felt him breathing against my chest, realizing how utterly helpless he was and how much he depended on me, I broke down completely. I put him in his crib, sat there in his room in the dark, and hit bottom.

I realized I needed to turn things around with my life, and if I didn’t do it now, I would lose everything that had value in my life.

In other words, the key to achieving this success, for me, was finding inspiration, and it was in the form of a baby.

What are the essential habits that you’ve formed to help you achieve your goals?

I could go on about that for hours. Here are the first two things that come to mind:

One, I avoid situations where I would spend money. I used to go to book stores and browse and usually leave with a book or two in hand. I would do similar things in electronic stores and so on. By simply avoiding these temptations as much as possible, I find it much easier to not waste money on such things - or time.

Two, I review my finances weekly, and do a major financial review monthly. This involves several things, such as checking the balance of every account in my name. Each month, I calculate my net worth (sum of all assets minus sum of all debts) and I strive to ensure that it goes up as much as I can possibly make it go up from month to month.

How often do you think about your goals, review them, and take action on them?

I have different regular cycles for the goals, but the key word is regular. For me, evaluating goals and determining further action is something I have to do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis without fail in order to keep moving forward. Whenever I slack off on it, I find myself slipping into bad habits and laziness.

How do you overcome failure? In other words, how do you pick yourself back up if you are struggling, and how do you motivate yourself if your enthusiasm is lagging?

Honestly, I play with my son. It’s really hard to feel too much like a failure when you walk into the house and a toddler who has just learned how to walk yells “Daaa!” and comes running towards you as fast as his legs can carry you. He often makes me feel like I’m the champion of the world by doing little things like building giant towers out of blocks in the living room so that he can knock them over.

Again and again, he reaffirms that I am not a failure in life. I realize parenting isn’t for everyone, but this little child has turned my life around and made me far more productive and positive than I’ve ever been before.

Could you describe your productivity system and any productivity tips you have for people?

My general productivity system is a lot like a simple GTD. I just write anything I have to do on a piece of paper as soon as I think of it and toss it in my “in” box if I’m busy. Then I process my “in” box regularly. Projects are on their own sheet of paper (or collected sheets with paperclips) where the top one is just a list of the tasks for the project. I also have a filing system for long-term storage. Instead of using the figurative “43 folders” of GTD, I just write due dates of things that are upcoming in the upper right and leave them in the inbox until the date comes. That’s it - that’s all I do to keep things going.

In this modern era, we are surrounded by an almost infinite opportunities to spend money - and an almost infinite number of enticements to take up those opportunities. Advertisements trick us into thinking our lives will be better if we just buy this one item. Our neighbors look happy enjoying their latest luxury. Our friends talk about their desires for the latest gadget. Our family hints at a desire for yet another expensive item.

In other words, the compulsions of everyday life convince us to spend money, not save money. Even though we know that we should be spending less than we make, we’re human - we have moments of weakness and we often fall into those moments of weakness and make frivolous purchases. It’s not a matter of deriving joy from not spending money; it’s a matter of staying vigilant in your cause because you want to protect your dreams.

I’ll give you a recent example from my own life. While traveling, I was feeling very lonely: I missed my wife and my son a lot. Still, I had to get ready for a meeting in a few hours, and as I was dressing and looking at myself in the mirror, I just didn’t feel that self-confidence that I usually rely on when I’m in social situations. In other words, I was in a mindset where advertisements are particularly effective.

Wouldn’t you know it, I wound up less than an hour later walking through a shopping mall with a colleague, looking for a place to dine. On the way, I saw a children’s clothing shop where there was an image of a child, almost the same age of my own, wearing an incredibly cute outfit with a sailboat on the front. It took all my willpower not to walk in there. Shortly thereafter, we passed by an upscale chocolatier - and the smell of fresh chocolate made me think of my wife, and again, I had to tell myself not to go in there and buy a box of chocolate to take home to her.

I actually did fall prey to another advertisement. I generally feel more confident when I’m wearing a cologne of some sort - just a dab under my ears. Well, one of the reasons for my lack of confidence is that I could not find my cologne and I left my room without it. I simply felt less confident - and thus when we walked by a shop and I spied a bottle of a cologne I had considered in the past in the window, I wound up purchasing it. I put a bit on in the restroom and although I felt more confident at that moment, I felt guilty later - especially when I discovered that the maid in my hotel room had simply moved my bottle of Acqua di Gio to an odd place and I could have just worn that.

If I can fall prey to such weaknesses, anyone can. Here are ten techniques for keeping up a day-to-day financial vigilance. These techniques won’t always keep you from spending, but they will eliminate a lot of unnecessary purchases from your budget.

1. Keep reminders of your dreams next to your cash and credit cards.
For me, I keep two pictures in my wallet. One is of my son and the other is of my dream home. Whenever I go to make a purchase, I see at least one of these images and it makes me remember that I have very powerful reasons not to spend.

2. Use the ten second rule.
Whenever you are considering a purchase, stop for ten seconds and think about the purchase. Just count to ten and then consider whether or not you should make that purchase. Think about your bigger goals in life and ask yourself if the purchase really fits into that.

3. Keep clean and confident.
The value of personal hygiene is quite high. Keep yourself clean, brush your teeth, bathe regularly, and dress in clean clothes and you’ll feel better about yourself - and less susceptible to the influence of advertising.

4. Don’t take your credit cards or cash with you - or just take enough to buy what you’re going for.
If you have cash in hand or a credit card in your wallet, it’s a lot easier to buy that trinket than if you didn’t have the cash or the credit card with you. If you’re going out to a place where you might potentially spend money that you know you shouldn’t spend, take only the minimal amount of financial resources you need with you.

5. Avoid situations where it’s easy to spend.
If someone suggests going to the mall, suggest going somewhere else instead - invite them over to your home, or go out to a park or a public entertainment like an art museum. Environments centered around spending money are very, very effective at taking money out of your pocket and putting it in someone else’s pocket.

6. Spend more time with people who share similar financial goals.
My best friend (besides my wife, of course) is one of the most financially stable and frugal people I’ve ever met. Doing stuff with him makes it very easy for me to not spend money - a typical afternoon hanging out involves playing board games or watching some random sci-fi television show. If you have a lot of friends, see which ones put you in situations to spend money and which ones are more likely to go along with activities that don’t cost a lot.

7. Explore less financially demanding interests.
I used to have a number of very expensive hobbies. My primary hobbies now are reading (I’m burning through my local library like a madman) and blogging (which eats time but is covering its own expenses and a bit more for the time being). Suddenly, it’s as if I have a ton of money for investing and saving that I simply didn’t have before.

8. Total up your expenditures regularly.
Once a week (or month, whatever works for you), take a look at everything you’ve spent, count everything that wasn’t essential, and total it. You might just gasp at this. Keep that number in mind every time you go to spend money and imagine what that number could be doing if it were invested instead. For me, it’s the difference between a nice house and a very, very nice house.

9. Ask yourself why exactly you want a particular item.
Thinking of buying a flat screen TV? Why? Is there something particularly wrong with your current television? Do you actually need to spend thousands just so your television can be thin? Whenever you evaluate splurges in this light, the compulsion to buy shrinks - and perhaps disappears.

10. Establish a “waiting period” before any nonessential purchase.
If you’re still ready to buy after all of this, wait a period of time before buying. Give yourself twenty four hours before making the purchase. Walk out of the store, go home, and sleep on it. If you still think the purchase is worthwhile the next day, then go forward with the purchase.

It’s scary: according to Money Magazine, 65% of Americans are in a financial situation where they are less than one paycheck away from financial meltdown. In other words, the majority of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck and would be approaching a major crisis in less than a month if one of the family members were suddenly unemployed or injured or a major financial crisis struck.

I used to be on this treadmill, and it was scary (to say the least). I went to work each day with a bit of fear in my stomach, a feeling that if I received a pink slip at work my entire life would sink into an unmitigated disaster. I sat down one day and realized that in order to live and to dream, I needed to find a way to get off this treadmill, but I was addicted to spending.

Yet, after just a few months, I found the treadmill slowing down and I felt myself stepping off of it. Now, I honestly feel as though I could walk away from my job without any serious regrets and be able to leisurely find another position if I so chose. It’s a wonderful feeling that has not only made me personally happier, but also made it much easier to focus on the things that are really important in my life. My stress level has fallen substantially and my family seems a lot happier, too.

Here’s a guide to getting off that treadmill and living a free life again - in just six months.

First of all, set a tangible goal. You are off the treadmill when you are spending less than you bring in and you have at least a weekly paycheck worth of money in a savings account. Eventually, it’s good to have half a year’s worth of salary saved up in a nice emergency fund, but for now, let’s set a goal that can be attained by someone on the paycheck treadmill in a reasonable amount of time.

How can you spend less than you bring in? You can start by putting a little bit each week automatically into a “locked box.” It’s pretty easy: just sign up for an online savings account at HSBC Direct (5.05% APY interest rate) or ING Direct (4.5% APY interest rate, awesome interface, great customer service). Set it up to withdraw a small amount from your checking account each week and forget about it for several months. Depending on how much your weekly withdrawals are, you could suddenly have a very nice buffer against emergencies.

Another technique is to use the ten second rule. Every time you make a purchase of any kind, stop for ten seconds and ask yourself if it’s really worth buying. Quite often, you’ll find yourself putting the item back on the shelf. For some people, a “24 hour rule” works better, but the concept is the same: think before you buy.

Just doing these two things is enough to set you in the right direction. If you’re ready to take another step, try out the one month challenge as a way to really take a fresh look at what you’re buying. Spend that month carefully considering each item you buy and recording all expenditures, then look through the results and ask yourself whether this stuff is worth the stress of barely staying on the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill.

Give it six months and see where you’re at in that lock box. You’ll probably find more than you think in there; even better, you’ll find ways you never thought of to get yourself on the right financial track.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I watch the line at the coffee shop extend almost out the door. I used to stop there almost every day for a hot chocolate and a bagel with cream cheese in the morning, something to perk me up just a bit before I went to work. Now I drive on past the place, sipping on my mug of homemade hot chocolate and munching on an English muffin from home with some cream cheese on it.

Every single day, millions of people spend at least $5 on their morning coffee run. $5 per day, for 365 days, adds up to $1,825. An extra $1,825 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $391,662.46 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I watch some of my coworkers go out to eat together. Instead, I slip my brown bag of leftovers out and head off to the lounge to catch up on my reading and perhaps chat with that interesting woman who just finished up the latest Pynchon novel.

Every single weekday, millions of people dine out for lunch at a cost of at least $10 a meal. $10 a day, five days a week, fifty two weeks a year, adds up to $2,600 a year. An extra $2,600 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $557,974.88 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I eye a line of people waiting for some take out food to bring home to their families, handing over $25 for some prepared food so they can drive home, plop it on the table, and make their family believe that food magically appears - that it’s not something you make for yourself. I plan to go home, make an inexpensive and delicious meal for my family that costs less than $15, and take the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Every single day, millions of people take a meal home with them to their families at night; other nights, everyone dines out. That extra $10 a day, 365 days a year, adds up to $3,650. An extra $3,650 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $783,324.93.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I watch the hordes of people jamming the parking lot at Target. Some of them walk out with huge bags of consumer goods, chatting on their Razr phones, and jump into their SUV.

Every single week, millions of people buy $100 worth of consumer goods that they don’t need - or even necessarily want. They see ads, or they see their neighbors having something, and they must have it now. $100 a week, fifty two weeks a year, adds up to $5,200 a year. An extra $5,200 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $1,115,969.76 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I go to sleep at night. But when I glance up at the ceiling just before I close my eyes, listen to my wife’s breathing next to me and my son’s shallow night-time sigh in the baby monitor, I’m glad that I changed things.

Just a few simple changes can make you sleep a lot better at night.

I have a confession to make. The last few months have been the happiest for me in several years. I am convinced that the biggest reason for the turnaround is that I finally have some grasp on my money which I never really had before.

For years, I wondered seriously whether or not I was clinically depressed. I often looked at depression websites and noticed that I matched up with many of the symptoms, but I never bothered to actually address whether or not I was in fact depressed.

It turns out that I wasn’t depressed after all, but that my spirit was being crushed by debt and a fear of money. I was suffocating in debt and it surrounded all my thoughts, but I was too frightened to do anything about it.

Ask yourself these ten questions:

1. Do you buy yourself things as a reward on a regular basis, for such minor events as “payday” or “I got through work without killing anyone day”?
2. Do you realize that you need to change things, but feel too trapped by debt to even know where to start?
3. Do you lie awake at night wondering how you’re going to pay for the essentials in your life?
4. Have you lied to anyone about money in the last month?
5. Do you think to yourself “I shouldn’t be spending this money,” but you do so anyway?
6. Do you read or hear about people that are rich and believe that you’ll never get there without a miracle?
7. Is your first thought after a windfall involve what new things you can buy?
8. Do you owe so much money to various people that you can’t conceive of how to begin paying it off?
9. Do you believe that you will never be out of debt?
10. Do you believe that you will never have “enough” money?

If you answered “yes” to the majority of those questions, there’s a good chance that you feel a general malaise in your life. For me, it coated everything with a sense of sadness and helplessness. I felt as though I was slogging through a swamp flowing backwards and it took all of my effort to merely stay in place.

After a while, things did begin to slip backward and I was nearly swept away by an onslaught of unexpected events. I finally realized that I had to do something to fix things, and so I started as easily as I can.

I started by taking one day at a time. I just woke up each morning and committed myself to not spending money in unnecessary ways. I didn’t worry about saving or investing or anything for a while; I just worried about not spending money.

After a month or two, I suddenly began to realize that my checking account had a lot more money in it. I remember the day that I realized I could make a quadruple payment on my highest interest credit card. When I wrote that check and put it in the mail, I felt as if there was a ray of sunshine on me. It didn’t drive all of the clouds away, but I began to feel the warmth of the sun just behind the clouds.

Two months later, I paid off that high interest card. In the five months since then, I’ve paid off all of my credit cards, my auto loan, and I’ve started investing in a mutual fund.

Once these events started occurring, the clouds lifted from my life. I realized that my worries about money were not only affecting me, but they had been affecting my relationship with others, including my wife and my son. I began to see them in a new light, not one clouded in worry about how I was going to provide for them, but as the beautiful people they are and what they give me each day.

Please, if you answered “yes” to many of those questions, wake up tomorrow morning with a plan for the day, a baby step for turning things around. Don’t worry about saving or investing or anything else, just make little changes so that you’re pulling less money out of your checking account. If you want, keep track of the good choices you made and look at that list when you’re feeling down.

Give it a few months. Keep paying your bills as before and just keep making baby steps. One day, you’ll look at your checking account balance and realize that you have more money than you thought, and you’ll realize that there is hope.

Please note that I am not a medical professional of any kind; do not accept any of this advice as a solution to your potential depression. I’m merely offering reflections on my own life; if you’re concerned about depression, please seek professional counseling and don’t rely on this post for answers.

I’m proud of myself. In the past year, I’ve wanted several expensive items for myself, but I’ve fought off the urge to buy them. The closest thing to a splurge for myself in the past twelve months was my investment in a new laptop when my desktop machine was literally dying.

So, instead of spending thousands of dollars on … stuff … I decided to take a trip through these items that I didn’t buy and consider the financial shape I’d be in if I had purchased all of them.

1. A Nintendo Wii
Now that I have a son, I’m moving rapidly towards what one might call a casual or nostalgic video gamer. This system is basically designed for me; not only are the games simple, yet distinctive and interesting (thanks to the remote), the system allows you to download tons of classic games I remember from my youth. It wouldn’t take me long to blow $600 on this machine, games, and accessories - but it’d be a lot of fun. One drawback: I can easily see myself staying up all night playing Super Mario 64 again… the college memories come flooding back!

2. A Kitchenaid Professional 600 Series stand mixer
I love burning time in the kitchen, but one major problem is that mixing bread dough and other such tasks are very time-consuming with my current hand mixer. I either mess it up entirely or get impatient with the speed of the hand mixer. Thus, whenever I see a KitchenAid stand mixer on display, I stare at it with longing in my eye. Not only would I dump $450 or so on the mixer, I’d also buy a ton of attachments for it, too, meaning I’d be down $700 after buying the thing. But, oh, the breads I would make…

3. A handmade liquor cabinet
Currently, we keep our wines and liquors in one of our kitchen cabinets, a kitchen that’s already too small for its own good. I keep my eye out for liquor cabinets and I’ve only seen one that made me go “Wow.” It was a handmade liquor cabinet built by a Mennonite craftsman that made my jaw drop. Dark, well-finished wood and plenty of interior space made me quiver with desire, but the price tag made me quiver in another way: $1,300.

4. A 42″ LCD TV
We currently have a 32″ tube television that has a slight blue discoloration in the upper left corner. Before, this would have meant that a new television needed to be found immediately, and I would have stepped up to the plate by dropping $2,500 on a 42″ flat panel television, expanding our view while reducing the footprint of our current television. It would be hanging on the wall right now, beaming down at me with high-resolution video goodness. Actually, it would probably be turned off right now, as our television is, which begs the question of why I would have bought it in the first place if the television is rarely on.

5. An “ultimate” Dance Dance Revolution setup
I recently sold off all of my video game consoles and the game I missed the most was DDR. The version I had unfortunately had a very terrible pad for gameplay that didn’t recognize about 20% of the footsteps one would make, making the game incredibly frustrating. After realizing how much I actually missed playing DDR, I longed for a complete DDR setup, which would include a pair of $100 pads, the game itself, a game system, and a memory card, totaling about $500 for everything. At least I wouldn’t have to go to the gym any more… wait… I don’t go to the gym.

6. A Treo 700p
Pure technolust here, I’m afraid. $325 for an incredibly cool cell phone with all sorts of features on it: a full QWERTY keyboard for editing documents, an email client, a 1.3 megapixel camera, an mp3 player, and so on. Wonderful and amazing and pure technolust, as I already have devices that I don’t use all that often that do all of these things. Why rebuy them?

7. A TiVo
There are several television dramas that I would like to follow, so I considered buying a TiVo to make keeping up with Grey’s Anatomy and the like much easier than before. $250 plus an ongoing programming fee would have been my reward for buying a device that would enable me to watch programs that I don’t already watch and don’t make the minimal effort to even try to catch. Why?

8. A Solis Master 5000 espresso/cappuccino maker
I occasionally enjoy a cappuccino in the afternoon at work and have desired a drink at home a few times. In the past, this would have been more than enough to convince me to drop $550 on this exquisite cappuccino/espresso maker. The truth of the matter is that my preferred morning drink is orange juice and I very rarely drink any form of coffee at all.

9. A custom tailored suit
I’m a very large man and I always wanted a suit that fit me properly. I tried to talk myself into visiting a tailor and having a custom suit made instead of actually doing a bit of research; eventually, my wife saved us both a lot of money and got me a quality suit that fit me for a reasonable price, much less than the $500-$1000 a custom-made suit might have cost.

10. A trip to Italy
I’ve always wanted to visit Italy, so early in the year I began to save up the $4,000 I thought that such a trip would take. After debating it, we decided instead to go on a long camping trip along the north shore of Lake Superior instead, which turned out to be an incredibly memorable vacation that cost about 10% of the Italian trip.

So what did I do with that money instead of buying all of this stuff? I paid off more than $10,000 in credit card debt, paid off my entire truck loan, built up a three month financial reserve, and put a little under $4K in a mutual fund.

I might not have some goodies, but I wake up in the morning without worrying about how I would pay the bills that day - and I never will again.

Recently, I came across this article from an older issue of Scientific American entitled Opinions and Social Pressure. I didn’t find the article too interesting until halfway into the second paragraph when the following sentence appeared:

The same epoch that has witnessed the unprecedented technical extension of communication has also brought into existence the deliberate manipulation of opinion and the “engineering of consent.”

With the advent of the internet and the rampant consumerism of today, this statement resonated with me. In essence, this passage refers directly to advertising, which seeks to engineer your desire for an object.

The article went on to discuss humanity’s desire to fit in and the various different ways this desire can be leveraged, culminating with this bit:

Vhen a subject was confronted with only a single individual who contradicted his answers, he \vas swayed little: he continued to answer independently und correctly in nearly all trials. When the opposition was increased to two, the pressure became substantial: minority subjects no\v accepted the wrong answer 13.6 per cent of the time. Under the pressure of a majority of three, the subjects’ errors jumped to 31.8 per cent. But further increases in the size of the majority apparently did not increase the weight of the pressure substantially. Clearly the size of the opposition is important only up to a point.

Disturbance of the majority’s unanimity had a striking effect. In this experiment, the subject was given the support of a truthful partner-either another individual who did not know of the prearranged agreement among the rest of the group, or a person who was instructed to give correct answers throughout.

The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the dissenting individual was reduced to one fourth: that is, subjects answered incorrectly only one fourth as often as under the pressure of a unanimous majority.

The article is fascinating, as it indicates over and over again that our rampant consumerism is due to the effect of advertising working as leverage on some people, then those people working as leverage on others, increasing the cultural desire for more and more physical things.

Even more useful, the article points directly to some potential solutions for fighting off the human desire to “keep up with the Joneses.” Here’s a list of the implied suggestions.

Reduce your exposure to advertising. The best way to do this is *gasp* watch less television, as television is an incredibly effective advertising medium. Advertisements on television are designed to make you feel included in a group if you buy a product; that’s why ads use attractive people, so on some level you’ll believe that you are in that group if you buy the product they’re selling.

Find friends who want to resist the consumerist mentality, or encourage your own friends to resist it. If your common activity is wandering around the mall, you’re constantly being pulled by a social magnet to buy things you don’t need. Suggest staying at home and playing a game or watching movies or just talking about things rather than wandering around in an environment designed to convince you to buy.

Live in a place where the consumerism effect is less. In other words, look for rural or small town living. In most small towns, there is much less rampant consumerism to tempt you, plus the Joneses aren’t living in million dollar houses. A modest house in a rural area fits right in, so you don’t need to completely break yourself just to keep up with the neighbors.

Following any one of these suggestions can reduce the desire to continue the rat race of “keeping up with the Joneses,” which in the end means you’ll have more financial stability and more freedom to do what you want, not just do what the neighbors are doing.