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Proper Spending > Buying and Spending Habits >
Defeating External Influences (1) In today's society, we are continuously tempted with advertising and marketing schemes. Every time we turn on our television, get on the Internet, or page through our favorite magazine, we are offered emotional images that many of us feel we have to live up to as means of fulfilling a successful image. Advertisers go so far as to suggest that if we do not purchase certain brands or logos, we will not be able to achieve our desired "human potential" or social status. Most consumers are victims of credit abuse only if they allow themselves to be. Commercialism causes consumers to victimize themselves through lack of self-control and feeds our competitive instincts. Advertisements distort our perceptions and create irrational needs such as the need to "Keep up with the Jones" that results from our desire to out-do our peers. In the scheme of things, the advertisers are the predators and we are the prey. To successfully get out of debt, we should take measures to remove ourselves from the danger of being preyed upon. Advertisements are often manipulative, misleading, and deceitful in that they have a vested interest in enticing us to purchase the goods that they are marketing to us. Marketers understand that products may not appeal to our true needs so they have to create false needs by creating images that prey on our senses and emotions and "implant" our desire to purchase their products. When we are enticed to make purchases based on our emotions, we often fall into the most destructive spending behavior, impulse buying. We are conditioned to believe that accumulation of possessions is the true standard in evaluating our importance and success and that the standard is judged by how much we spend, rather than how much we can save. |