RSS
Home
Among recession's benefits: less pretentiousness, more humility
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
"Goodwill rocks," says Goodwill shopper Linda Palmer.
RALEIGH, N.C. – It wasn’t the conversation itself that Pamela Taylor found unusual; it was the setting.
“We were dressed up and at dinner – a fund-raiser type of thing,” recalled the 42-year-old accountant. She and her husband found themselves at a table with a couple they knew because their children had once attended the same school.
When Taylor asked the other couple about their child, they told her that they had removed him from the school because they could not afford the tuition. Then the couple opened up about their finances, revealing that both had lost their jobs and they were in bad financial shape.
“They said they didn’t have that six-month cushion that you’re supposed to have, and they were in trouble – that their house may be going into foreclosure,” Taylor recalled.
“These people were just acquaintances, not good friends,” she continued. “Usually, that’s not something that you talk about. You’d talk about how well your kids are doing or whatever. It’s not considered polite conversation. It was kind of shocking to me how open they were.”
The conversation was not an isolated incident, Taylor said. “It has been happening more and more,” she said.
Taylor, who lives in Cary, a suburban community just outside Raleigh, is not the only one noticing this trend. All over the country, people report that it is a lot more acceptable than in pre-recession times to talk openly and honestly about finances. At gatherings of educated, accomplished people where conversations in the past tended to be about such topics as travel or the latest electronic gadget, now it is OK to commiserate about how hard it is to make ends meet.
And it’s not just conversations that have changed; behavior has, too. More people are shopping at second-hand stores, throwing simple birthday parties for children, clipping coupons and, in general, not trying as hard to impress people.
The recession may be changing American culture – away from conspicuous consumption and pretentiousness, toward being more down-to-earth, honest and humble.
A lot of the evidence for this change is anecdotal however at least one study supports these observations. Context-Based Research Group, a Baltimore-based firm that advises corporations on product strategies, in December released a study of the economy’s impact. Conducted in five cities over a two-month period, the study concluded that the economy has produced a change in attitudes that is both profound and permanent – a “cultural transformation” of consumers.
“We found that for most consumers the first reaction to the ’08 financial crisis involved confusion and questioning,” the report stated. “This reaction stems from a major transformation around what it means to consumers to be an American in our current economic context. We repeatedly heard from consumers about the social pressures they had felt to spend more than they had for status, for desires, for buying the American Dream.”
Feeling freer to talk about finances goes along with feeling less pressured to keep up appearances, said the research firm’s founder, Robbie Blinkoff.
“In our society, two things we don’t talk about in public are sex and money,” Blinkoff said. “How many people go around talking about their finances? The fact that people are telling people about something that has been hidden is amazing.”
The recession has been a painful “rite of passage” that has caused people to re-evaluate themselves and what they want out of life, he said. Other indications of the transformation besides greater honesty about finances, Blinkoff said, are greater interest in hands-on activities such as gardening and in simple pleasures such as playing the ukulele.
“Ukelele sales are through the roof,” he said. “The last time they were this high was in the 1930s. The ukulele is a perfect metaphor for these times.”
Ukeleles are inexpensive and most people take them up to have fun, not to become virtuoso performers, explained Blinkoff, who calls himself a “consumer anthropologist.”
Other signs of the times include people shopping more at second-hand stores. The recession may be devastating retail but sales are up since the beginning of the year at the 29 stores operated by Goodwill Industries of Eastern North Carolina, according to spokeswoman Becky Lytle. People who never shopped at Goodwill before are providing much of the new traffic, Lytle said.
Benjamin Ladner, former president of American University in Washington, D.C., now an independent writer and consultant based in South Carolina, agrees with Blinkoff that the country has undergone profound changes. He believes the recession is causing a “reordering of our cultural values” of equal magnitude to the changes caused by the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
But Ladner says powerful institutions must embrace the change before it becomes embedded in our cultural values. He wonders, for instance, whether universities will continue to pay football coaches far more than academic faculty – a system he said shows our misplaced priorities.
“To me there’s a question as to whether it’s real reform or a temporary change in habits…it’s an open question,” Ladner said.
What is not in question is that the economy has produced at least a temporary shift in attitudes, and it appears to be happening all over the country.
Beth Colley has seen a big change in the way friends and acquaintances in and around Annapolis, Md., celebrate children’s birthdays. Two or three years ago, things were “out of control,” said the 37-year-old small business owner.
“There would be major entertainment,” Colley said. “People were spending $500 or $600 on a party…moon bounces, snow-cone machines, cotton candy machines – people were dropping a lot of money on birthday parties. I’ve seen them go back to modest, home-based parties with just games. It’s not like we’ve gone back to ‘pin the tail on the donkey,’ but I’ve seen attitudes change where it’s more about celebrating the children rather than trying to outdo each other.”
When Colley hosted her son Aaron’s 7th birthday in April, she asked guests not to bring gifts – fearing many could not afford them – and, instead, donate books to the school library. Aaron did not complain, Colley said. “He was very happy to realize that he was helping the school library,” which had been hit by budget cuts, she said.
Julie Parrish is seeing different attitudes among other residents of the “fairly affluent” neighborhood where she lives in West Linn, Oregon. Homes there start at about $350,000 and often go for almost twice that, Parrish said. Three years ago, after starting a Web site that helps shoppers take advantage of coupons, www.hotcouponworld.com, she was often discouraged by the reaction she got when she explained what she did for a living.
“I got blank stares,” said Parrish, who is 37 and has an MBA. Many did not seem very interested and some asked whether clipping coupons was worth the trouble. “It was a little bit condescending,” she said.
“Now you have real estate agents and mortgage brokers – they’re not selling $1.2 million homes any time soon,” Parrish said. “Homes are sitting on the market longer. Their cash flow has completely changed and they’re saying, ‘OK, I need to start doing what you’re doing.’ And they’re really humble about it.”
Related Articles:
Comments
