The Philadelphia Trumpet: How to be Rich - Joel Hilliker

I just got back to my readings and I had to do some backtracking with this magazine I'm subscribed to called The Trumpet. On the July 2007 issue, an article caught my attention: How to be Rich.

Why did it catch my attention? Yesterday I was at the mall with my best friend and we went inside this Adidas sports shop. And it felt like I got clothes-horny with their merchandise. I was like, Ooh, ohh, aaah and wow with the jackets and the jerseys. I even tried on this yellow Liverpool jacket and I checked out the price tag. Jean Claude van DAMN! It costs around P3,500++, almost P4,000. (It was actually on sale. You call that 'on sale'?!) I told my friend, "Hey if I were that rich, I could buy this and that and those. Tsk."

And then I got home and started reading this Trumpet magazine. And that's how I was able to read the article.

It's a sick fact: Generally, no matter how much money we make, we feel we need more. And the more we earn, the more obsessed we grow with earning more.

The first part of the article introduces to us the depressing fact that even if we earn more money, we never get satisfied. There's no end to this desire to possess more things.

Surveys show that as incomes grow, the ability to discern wants from needs shrivels. Luxuries become necessities... Surely the inability to differentiate between what we want and what we need is one of the primary sources of our discontent—and one of the things we must fix if we want to be truly rich... No matter how much you have, it ain’t enough.

This is so true! Since you can afford to buy more things as your salary grows, you are able to test new things and become attach to them. Staying attached to these things becomes a need when in fact, this need was not there from the start.

Widespread as they are, ads dictate and reinforce many of the norms and beliefs of our culture. And to do their job, ads must create in us a yearning-convince us of needs we don't necessarily have. In many cases, this means appealing to our worst side: our vanity, greed, covetousness, lust; it means exaggerating and misrepresenting, being dishonest or deceptive. The ads tell us that spending money is actually saving money, that we can't afford to pass up this purchase, that if we wait we'll miss out. The ads tell us that we deserve to be pampered and spoiled, that we've earned the right to treat ourselves royally, and that anything less would be just plain wrong. The ads tell us that buying things will boost our satisfaction, relieve our depression, grow our circle of friends, solve our family problems, and supply us the quickest path to robust health and a future of ease. (Experience, on the other hand, tells us that buying things usually just gets us more things-more things that need to be taken care of, more things that break.)

Oh my. I have to disagree on this one. Not all advertisements do that. Some advertisements are there to inform; to educate. There is no hidden agenda behind these specific ads. Such stereotypical perspective towards the world of advertising is quite sad. However, advertisers should be aware of what they ethically can or cannot do and be responsible for their actions in order to promote their products/services. And people should get to know themselves better so that they can discern what they do or do not need at all. There must be a way to get educated on this matter. Don't blame it all on advertising. This works two-way, you know.

On abc's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, for example, a team of designers leads an army of workers to convert a family's house into the home of their dreams. New cars, home theaters, shopping sprees and over-the-top purchases rain upon the chosen family in fulfillment of every whispered whim. The show's warm-fuzzy message-that good families deserve the best (and I mean the best, including a large plasma-screen tv in every room)-packs a powerful consumerist punch. Clearly, stuff brings happiness. The viewer is happy for the family, but at the end of the show can't help but look around and notice how extremely un-madeover his or her own home is.

You do realize that the title of the show is Extreme Makeover. If you are in the right mind and you watch this program, you would be able to understand that all these are for the sake of television; for the sake of the show. In reality, nobody would just come along your way and give you a spankin new and fully-furnished room like it's normal. As television is used for escapism, it makes sense that some TV programs would try to paint a picture of fantasy. It's not a bad idea to entertain these fantasies TV create for us, but you must be able to come back and face the truth when you turn off the television. This requires your character and your knowledge.

What do we really need? In his 1999 book Luxury Fever, Cornell economist Robert Frank highlighted our unhelpful tendency to measure what we "need" by what the people around us have. It's the old "keeping up with the Joneses" trap.

This is pretty prevalent. We live with people. We are supposed to be in a community. However our possessions are not communal. There's always a comparison going on.

One extraordinary finding Hamilton quotes in his book is that most people would rather earn $50,000 a year if the average was $40,000 than earn $70,000 if the average was $100,000. They would take a $20,000 pay cut just to remain above average! No wonder some describe runaway consumerism as affluenza: It's a sickness that addles the brain.

That shocking statistic shows how easy it is to allow material things to delineate our social status, to dictate our sense of self-worth-even to define who we are. And it's not that we need these particular things in order to feel good-we just need more than the other guy.

I'm not really sure about this one. I don't think that's because of consumerism. It's because economics come into play. If you earn $50,000 when the average is $40,000, you're really far better off compared to $70,000 earnings against the average of $100,000. It would be sensible to say that purchasing power is higher if the average is $40,000 than if the average is $100,000. If you earn lower than $100,000 when that's the average means you are deprived. Sure, figures are figures. $70,000 is indeed higher than $50,000, but the issue here is how much your $50,000 can buy in a world where the average income is just $40,000. Definitely you have money to spare.

We can shake our heads at the superstar who blows a multimillion-dollar salary and goes into the red—but the same thing is happening on a smaller scale throughout the Western world. As much as our incomes are rising, our spending is rising more. Credit is ridiculously easy to come by, and going without is apparently no longer an option. The “you deserve it now” message has us by the throat. Gone are the days of saving up for a big purchase; the new saving is “post-saving”—buying on credit and paying over time.

Of course, that isn’t actually saving. In fact, the big myth about credit cards is that they enable you to get more things. In truth, more things now means far fewer things later. Consider. The average household in affluent America carries $8,400 in credit card debt. Paying that off requires cutting your spending in three separate ways: reining in your overspending, carving the $8,400 out of your present spending, and paying the interest on the debt. Shelling out $200 a month at 15 percent interest would tack $3,600 of interest onto that $8,400 and take five long years to pay off.

This is true, but there is also another side to credit. Take my story about my laptop for example. I hesitated at first when my dad told me to charge on my credit card the money I would use to buy a laptop. It's because I don't like having debts. But my dad's rationale is that if I try to save the same amount, it would take me a longer time before I can get that laptop. Sure, I would have no debts since I would pay in cash but the idea here is I CAN USE THE LAPTOP NOW if I use the credit card. Definitely I am not just paying for the laptop itself. I'm also vying for convenience. If I did pay in cash, I would have to wait before I can get the unit. During the wait, I would have to endure the inconvenience of not having a laptop. I probably would have also turned to other things because I don't have a laptop for the meantime, meaning there's a probability that I would spend more while saving the money, and worse comes to worse, I might end up not saving the money at all! The real problem here, I guess, is OVERCHARGING; charging more than what you can afford. Overcharging makes you sink! Now it has something to do with our perception of our needs, and the decisions that are influenced by this perception.

Choosing material goods over family also exacts its toll in another, subtler way. More and more couples are looking at the costs of having children and deciding they cannot afford parenthood. This, again, in the richest societies in history. Perhaps no trend exposes our skewed values more: We are simply unwilling to give up life's luxuries-fleeting and hollow as they are-for the sake of something as pricey as family-enduring and precious as it is.

Those couples who do have children fight materialism in other ways. Americans spend six hours a week shopping-compared to only 40 minutes a week playing with their children. With parental examples like these, then, it's no surprise that as children grow into teenagers, consumerist influences contribute heavily to the generation gap. Polls show that parents become substantially concerned about the effect of materialism on their children through these years as the powerful lure of youth culture divides teens from their families. In addition, as more and more families fill their homes with surround sound theaters and other gadgets to plug into, socialization and communion dwindles. Family members become strangers.

I don't know.. I don't think you can blame it all on the parents. They really work hard because of the changing times. As resources are being used up by generation after generation, the availability of these resources becomes less. We have to admit that gradually, the place we live in has turned into a dog eat dog world. Despite that, it doesn't mean we should neglect our values and responsibilities as part of the society. Parents still have the duty to raise children with love and care, not just with material things. It would be even great if these material things they acquire improve the quality of family life. We should find ways.

Clear your mind of the consumerist nonsense, and the answers quickly begin to come clear. Your family relationships. Loving your spouse. Teaching your children. Doing good for others. Making use of your talents and abilities. Seeking a relationship with God. Living a morally upright life. These are the things that fulfill us and satisfy us, the things that multiply our happiness.

This is true wealth. The degree to which we sacrifice these things in pursuit of material things, we become poorer.

If the way of get is making us sick, the way of give can make us well.

Well said. I don't think we can ever get rid of material things though. If we talk about religion now, you can find indications of material things in God's 10 Commandments:

3. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

8. Thou shalt not steal.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

The main point here is material things are NOT everything. There are other matters we have to attend to. We have control over material things, and not the other way around.

There will always be plenty of material things we lack. Combat dissatisfaction by being thankful. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude for those blessings we already possess-particularly the spiritual blessings. When we concentrate on and worry about what we don't have, we make ourselves poor. When we are grateful for and content with everything we do have, we discover how rich we truly are.

A lack of contentment is really a lack of perspective. If you are anxious about what you'll eat or drink, your perspective is off, Christ instructs us. Just be thankful you have a life to sustain with food and drink! Don't fret about clothes-be thankful you have a body to clothe! (read Matthew 6:25-34).

Be thankful! Be grateful! We will never have everything, but when we give value to what we have, it would already mean EVERYTHING. What more can we ask for then??!

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