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Who takes care of your fnancial well-being?
Do you pursue happiness through the "things" and "services" you buy? The answer is most likely "yes" for most of us - at least up to a point. None of us can altogether escape the marketing messages that bombard us as we watch TV, read a newspaper, look over our mail, go to the movies, or simply answer the phone. Credit card offers pour into our mailboxes.We are offered new, low-interest loans to "pay off" debts we still will owe. Sales pitches greet us to buy new vehicles, clothing and sporting goods, computers, electronic gadgets, TVs, and furniture. They are free today, and we can pay tomorrow, or next year, or even the year after that.
Here is where the results of your Life Values Profile can be helpful.With more clarity about your own Life Values, you can learn whether your purchases and other financial habits are in sync with what really matters to you. Take the environment for instance. Do you value a clean environment and the conservation of natural resources but drive a gasguzzling SUV for the fun of it or because all your friends drive SUVs too? If so, you might be experiencing an inner clash of values. Unintended inner conflicts can pile up from habits that override our deeper values. The anticipation of a shopping spree, the impulsive love of a "good deal," or any number of material substitutions can cover up inner needs to love or be loved, to care for the earth, to play or create or imagine, or to work for a better society. In the long run, our "surface decisions" to go shopping for inner joy can lead us to a lot more emptiness than we realize. The "buy today, pay tomorrow" mentality is a part of daily life, and it is ingrained in our culture, our government, businesses, shopping habits, even our travel plans. Famously, after 9/11, President Bush advised us to go shopping as usual.After all, that's been the American way for most - if not all - of our lives.We spend, and our spending, in large measure, drives the economy and maintains what many of us regard as the quality of our life.
As a result, some of us want everything ever made, and we want it now. We want it on sale and in more than one color.We and big business are locked in the cycle of creation and consumption of products and services. We eagerly want, and business gladly produces. Business markets and gives us more credit, and we oblige by buying over time. This dance of consumption, however, is exhausting our resources, sapping our lives, and spoiling our environment. Now, because quite literally there are so many of us, it is threatening our livelihoods and our future financial security. Because we have become so materialistic, we even seem to have neglected those less fortunate than ourselves - to our own detriment. In studies conducted around the world, researchers have correlated people's attitudes toward money with their ethics or values. Some results have suggested that those who had lower expectations of money tended to report having happier and less stressful lives.
Attuning your finances to your Life Values is the key.
Living in tune with your deeper values helps you to:
- Buy only what you can really afford.
- Resist the dance of consumption.
- Ignore the wider culture of revolving credit.
- Become a steward of what you already have.
- Care for the less fortunate if you can.
- Save and plan for your future.
Instead of passively following the crowd, you watch yourself make financial decisions, take back control over your buying habits, spending decisions, and, ultimately, your financial well-being. Chances are excellent that you will be happier too. We shape the marketplace, and the marketplace, in turn, shapes us. When we want what we want NOW, business will break records getting it to us. One woman in a recent study captured this idea perfectly. She said, "Saving is something people are interested in, but in reality, people want to enjoy what they can have right now." What this example of a value tradeoff means is that the urgency to have "stuff" and "pleasure" now may be valued more than the discipline of saving for emergencies or for longer-term life events. The problem comes when business knows our all-too-human predispositions, escalating and easing the way for us to satisfy our never-ending wants - indeed, even creating evermore wants - the newest fashion, the biggest TV, the up-to-theminute computer, the larger house, the faster car, and on and on.
Before you buy your next latte or CD, or even go to your favorite supermarket or movie theatre - let's check out how the marketplace takes charge of anticipating your wants and needs.
How Advertisers and Retailers Target You
Your deepest urges, innermost longings, and lifestyle patterns are of intense interest to market researchers. Big companies budget lavish amounts to learn what motivates you to buy all sorts of products and services. They use market surveys and focus groups, track your Internet shopping habits, accumulate sales register data, and employ increasingly sophisticated techniques to learn about your lifestyle and spending patterns including your health habits, eating patterns, the clothing you buy, the vehicle you drive, and that dream vacation you are longing to take. They collect information on your purchases and the way you pay your bills. They pool information from grocery stores, retailers, insurance companies, health care providers, and financial services companies, to name just a few.
Their research is used to target you with savvy advertising that taps right into your inner motives. Their number one "Power Research" tool is observation of your spending behavior, and chances are good that they know more about the details of your spending habits and lifestyle patterns than you do.We believe it is time for you to do your own Power Research about how you behave, to observe yourself making purchases and other lifestyle and financial decisions.
You know yourself better and understand how your values and attitudes drive your behaviors and habits. Now we will introduce you to tools similar to those used by big advertisers. This combination will help you develop a clear picture of what motivates your financial decision-making activities as you:
- use your unique Life Values Profile to help you gain insight into what you really value in life and why,
- begin to observe your spending habits and payment patterns the same way market researchers do, and
- recall your "Money History".
We want to help you - not advertisers, retailers, financial companies, parents, spouses, partners, children, close friends or casual acquaintances - gain conscious control over how you allocate your hard-won resources. Your Life Values Profile is a crucial step on your way to becoming financially savvy and enjoying the resulting peace of mind, self-esteem, and inner sense of security that financial competence bestows.
See for yourself how you might fare in the following exercise about rational decision making in the context of a routine spending decision. What choice would you be most likely to make? And how can you adjust your thinking to become more active and engaged in your purchasing decisions?