Some Consumers Rethink Materialistic Lifestyle
Oct. 26, 2002 -- Just four years ago, Jacqueline Wilson and her husband owed over $35,000 on three cars, $11,000 in student loans and $10,000 in credit card debt. That's on top of two mortgages totaling around $200,000.
"I woke up often in the middle of the night, worrying that if I lost my job, we're doomed. If either I or my husband lost our jobs, we'd be doomed," says the 34-year old Delaware-based technical specialist.
Feeling overwhelmed, the Wilsons decided to pay off their bills to get out from under their mounting debt load.
But they didn't just stop there. Growing increasingly disillusioned with marketing messages that encourage non-stop consumption, the couple decided to dramatically scale back their lifestyle.
Jacqueline abandoned her tech consulting work for a steady but lower-paying job with a large company, while her husband left his job to stay home and raise their son. Instead of buying new cars and eating out, the couple now grow their own vegetables, cook meals in, do their own home repairs and even sew some of their clothes.
As a result, most of the couple's debt is now gone and a large chunk of their mortgage has been paid off. And unlike many debt-ridden Americans, Jacqueline is now proud to say that if she lost her job tomorrow, she has enough savings so that her family could live comfortably for a year.
The Wilsons' decision to cut back their consumption is emblematic of many Americans who have become fed up with materialism and are adopting simpler lifestyles, say experts. With the stock market's decline, the collapse of confidence in corporate America and threat of terrorist attacks and impending war looming large on people's minds, experts say many are turning away from consumerism to focus more on family and free time.
Long Hours Not Worth It
For example, the number of Americans who think that working long hours is worth the sacrifice has dropped substantially in the last year and a half, according to a new ABCNEWS.com poll.
In an apparent example of the greater emphasis on family life that's occurred since the Sept.11 terrorist attacks, just 33 percent of those polled today said that working long hours was worth it, a drop from 46 percent in March 2001.
And groups devoted to promoting less materialistic ways of life say they are seeing an increase in membership or in the numbers of people going to their seminars or Web sites for more information on how to step out of the consumerist lifestyle.
Seeds of Simplicity, a non-profit group dedicated to the idea of "voluntary simplicity," has seen its membership increase by 25 percent since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The group, which is a Los Angeles-based program of Cornell University's Center for Religion, Ethics & Social Policy, provides educational material and sponsors "simplicity circles" where people get together in their local communities to discuss ways of simplifying their lives.
The Center for a New American Dream, a Takoma Park, Md.-based group that promotes responsible consumption, has also seen an increase in traffic to its Web site, which provides tips and information about issues like having a less commercial holiday season, reducing junk mail and commercialism.
Money Woes Drive Trend
But even though there has been a surge of interest in information about leading less materialistic lifestyles, these groups admit that many people might be motivated more by necessity than ideology. With layoffs on the rise and the stock market plummeting almost weekly, financial concerns could be one of the main drivers for people to scale back their purchases.
"It remains to be seen whether we're going to see some fundamental shifts in the way people approach materialism," says Eric Brown, communications director for the Center for a New American Dream.
Indeed, recent data shows that many Americans have been cutting back on spending money and trying to pay off their debts.
Household borrowing posted its smallest gain in eight months in August, while retail sales in September — traditionally a big shopping month as consumers gear up for school and cooler weather — fell 1.2 percent, the biggest drop in nearly a year. Wall Street analysts say anxiety about a war with Iraq, the volatile stock market and continued layoffs has kept many consumers on the sidelines.
The Business of Simplicity
One ironic sidebar to this trend is American's craving to get back to basics has inspired a business of simplicity in recent years. Countless books have been published in the last 10 years on the subject, while magazines like Real Simple and Simplycity exhort readers to strip their lives down to the things that really matter.
"You're still buying stuff to control buying stuff," notes James Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and the University of Florida in Gainesville, and author of the recent book Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury.
Still, groups that promote less consumerism say they don't mind this synergy between simplicity and commerce, as long as the word is getting out about their mission.
"It's a free country and if some people want to take the advantage that voluntary simplicity provides and turn it into a profit there's not much we can do, except to point out that there are some higher values bubbling to the surface," says Seeds of Simplicity's program director Carol Holst, which is a non-profit group but does charge a membership fee of $25.
Spreading the Word
And even more exhortations to scale back are on the way. Wanda Urbanska, president of the Simple Living Television Series in Mount Airy, N.C. is about to produce a four-show series for the Public Broadcasting Service called Simple Living. Scheduled to air next year, the shows will offer viewers tips on how to simplify their lives.
Urbanska says PBS was interested in such a series in part because of the popularity of a show called Affluenza, which explored the high social and environmental costs of materialism and overconsumption. The public television network first broadcast Affluenza in 1997 and did a sequel called Escape From Affluenza a year later, which Urbanska hosted.
John de Graaf, one of the producers of Affluenza and author of the book of the same name, is also on a new crusade. He's spearheading a movement to start a holiday called "Tack Back Your Time Day." Modeled on Earth Day, "Take Back Your Time Day" will encourage workers to stay home from work and attend events that deal with work-life issues instead.
De Graaf's premise is that Americans, who work much longer hours than their European counterparts, are so obsessed with material gain that they spend too much time working. If Americans consumed less and focused on other matters, they wouldn't need to work so much, he says.
"We're overdoing it here at the expense of so many things," says de Graaf. "I think most people really get it. I just hope some of the companies will get it, too."