Skip to main content

Proverbial Cliff

"Ours is a culture of hyperconsumerism.  Not only can and do we buy nearly anything (except for the truly outrageously expensive), but we seem to have come to believe that we can and should have it all and that who we are is dependent on the ability to live in the right neighborhoods, with appropriately sized homes filled with brand-name appliances, with prestige cars parked in the driveway with expensive golf bags and clubs in the trunk and so on.  And so we spend.  We may be spending somewhat less after the 2008 financial crisis, but we are still spending.  Savings may have increased to its highest levels in decades, but the reality is that that is not saying much, since the savings rate has been so abysmally low.

"We seem to become fairly good at generating an income, enjoying (for the moment) a very high stand of living.  But it is fleeting because we have not accumulated wealth--for our retirement, for our children's educations, for emergencies.  What kinds of trade-offs are we making?  In American, the proportion of people who owned boats in 2005 exceeded the proportion who left an estate of $1 million or more in 2007 by a ratio of nearly 5 to 1.  Even more pronounced is the ratio between the number of cell phone subscriptions and the number of household with $1 million or more investments: nearly 60 to 1.  The cold, harsh reality is that most people live well today, but they will pay for it tomorrow when their standard of living falls off the proverbial cliff due to a lack of resources to pay for retirement, healthcare, or even the cost of a trip to visit the grandkids." - Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. in Stop Acting Rich

Hyperconsumerism can hurt our lives.  The legacy it leaves is lots of stuff, lots of debt and low savings.  This also can increase anxiety instead of contentment and peace.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Retrain Brain

"Consider stroke victims.  Medical science has made huge advances in patient survival after even massive stokes, some of which can be attributed to better medications and to the upsurge of trauma units, since stokes are ideally dealt with as soon as possible.  Quick treatment is saving countless lives, compared to the past. "But survival isn't the same as recovery.  No drugs show comparable success in allowing victims to recover from paralysis, the most common effect of a stroke.  ...with stroke patients everything seems to depend on feedback.  In the past they mostly sat in a chair with medical attention, and their course of least resistance was to use the side of the body that was unaffected by their stroke.  Now rehabilitation activly takes the course of most resistance.  If a patient's left hand is paralyzed, for example, the therapist will have her use only that hand to pick up a coffee cup or comb her hair. "At first these tasks a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Endings are natural

"Today may be the enemy of your tomorrow. "In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.  For some people, that is clear and easy to execute.   They end the things that are holding them back.  For others it is more difficult.... "Endings are a natural part of the universe, and your life and business must face them, stagnate, or die.  They are an inherent reality....  There are different kinds of endings and that learning how to tell one form the other will ensure some successes and prevent many failures and much misery, ending substantial pain and turmoil that you or your business may now be encountering." Dr. Henry Cloud in Necessary Endings Most endings are hard to do, hard to walk through and seem not necessary.  However, when we hold on to the situations, people or things when we need to let go of them we can then experie...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accepting a compliment

"Nearly everyone who is asked, 'What is the proper response to a compliment?' replies, 'Say 'thank you.''  But when actually offered a compliment, only a third of people accept it so simply and smoothly, found linguist Robert Herbert of Binghamton University. "The difficulty lies in the fact that a compliment ('What a nice sweater!') has two levels: a gift component (accept or reject) and a content component (agree or disagree).  The addressee is confronted with a  dilemma--how to respond simultaneously to both: 'I must agree with the speaker and thank him for the gift of a compliment while avoiding self-praise.' "Contrary to conventional wisdom, women aren't worse than men at accepting compliments.  It is the gender of the compliment-giver that most influences the response.  Women and men are both more likely to accept a compliment coming from a man than from a woman.  When a man says, 'Nice scarf," a...
Post a Comment
Read more