Too Good for Too Long ?

It's beginning to look like it's time to tighten our belts. Last night on the news I heard a Wall Street pundit use the "P" word for the first time __ panic. As we know when fear sets in emotions, not rational thought drives the market and everything else. And as the investment expert pointed out, it's much like a stampeding herd of cattle, it will only stop when it runs out of its fear.

So like many, we are cutting expenses and watching our budget. Although we are Realtors we just began managing rental properties here for example, not only because sales are few but because sellers are getting upset at not getting offers and are flipping their homes into rental to get some cash flow going. We are getting lots of inquiries and the extra income doesn't hurt, either.

Plus we bought one of those clothes lines that fold out into an umbrella shape. They are outdoor gadgets but our plan is to use the umbrella base from the patio set and put this guy in a guest bedroom. Since we have central heat, we'll leave the door open while the laundry dries, adding much needed humidity to the dry air that we all have in winter at the same time.

But my larger point here is wondering if our society has had too much of the good life lately, and I'm thinking beyond the now-infamous easy home loan snakepit. It has also been easy to buy a new car, too. And it seems like an awful lot of people dragging an awful lot of consumable goods from Costco and Target, too. Big screen TV's, easy chairs, and of course an endless stream of laptops, I-pods, and other electronic gadgets.

Things. Stuff. We fill up our garages and mini-storage units because we just can't seem to get enough. My college bag was sociology and I'm coming to think we've been very well trained. Indeed, some of the brightest minds are in the marketing industry, from political strategists to people trying to sell us soap.

I once went to a class on staging a home for example where we were going to learn how to "stage" or fluff up an otherwise dreary home to make it look more appealing to buyers. What an eye-opener in marketing. The lady was an ex-marketing division head from Colgate-Palmolive and she started out with this intriguing question:

"As product development people we are trained to target a certain type of consumer and design a product that group needs or wants. The chosen group was Realtors, so what product do you think our (basically) soap company developed that would attract this group?"

I was the only one who guessed right, and I strutted my way through the rest of the course because I thought it was Febreeze. Odor is one of the worst turn-offs to buyers and I figured a neutralizer like Febreeze would be of interest to people who staged homes for sale.

But the point is not my lucky guess it's that these people are that far out ahead of us in our thinking and desires. They virtually manipulate our buying and spending habits. It's sort of like our particular strain of capitalism has been SO successful that it is in danger of burning itself up.

Perhaps a little consumer restraint might help here. We are a one-car family right now and the only reason we'd buy another one (and it will be a used car this time) is when we each land second jobs to help get through this crunch. I bet we're not the only ones, either.