Consumerism as an unfortunate by-product of global market economy

Introduction

Consumers are now participants of the global market. When prosperity and luxury come to people they begin to practise excessive consumption and extravagance. They simply cannot resist (or overcome)temptation to buy lots of things they do not need. They actually turn into ‘shopaholics’.

When it comes to subject of money and shopping most of us have been

tightening our beltsover the last years because of the global recession. This is a phrase that means that we have been trying to spend less money

than before. But unfortunately, many people have found this very difficult for various reasons and find themselves buying more than they can afford on a regular basis.

We are going to try to understand why we spend money on something which is often useless, our emotional response to it and the first step in

how to control it and overcome temptation to buy things we actually don’t need at all. The questions arise: “Do our emotions control our finances?”, “Are we quite restrained in our spending?”

Well, most of us are quite good with money usually. But sometimes buying a new pair of shoes makes some of us feel better, especially when

we are depressed. Shopping can be a great way of forgetting our troubles. This is something which is sometimes called retail therapy– shopping to make ourselves feel better. This is great when we have the money to spend freely, but what happens when our spending gets out of control? We develop the so-called debt culture.This is when we live off credit. We spend money we don’t actually have by using credit cards and by borrowing from the bank. Of course, when people don’t have the ability to pay the money back then it can cause real problems.

Sometimes people who spend a lot of money on things they don’t really need or can't afford are called shopaholics – these are people who

are compulsive shoppers and simply can't stop themselves buying things they don’t really need.

Here is the story of a real shopaholic, Helen Macmillan, who when she lost her job, found that her spending got out of control.

At first she started to buy expensive suits because she was desperate to get back to work. Then she went on to antique furniture for her house that didn’t even fit in the house and that was £25,000 in a day. Then she bought diamond earrings which were £10,000. It was money she didn’t have. She didn’t realize why she was doing it. There seemed to be a correlation between how depressed she was and how much money she would spend. Her shopping was a way of controlling her mood. Her self-esteem was extremely low. She said shopping helped her control her mood. She felt bombarded by pictures of happy successful people and thought if she bought the same things as them, then she would be as happy and beautiful as them. But then, unfortunately, the feeling would only last until she got home!

What advice do professional psychologists give in such cases?

Advice 1

You have to manage your money very, very carefully and you have to categorize what you are spending your money on.

Advice 2

You should go out shopping with a piece of paper and a pencil and you write down everything. That way you can track the leakage. Because the majority of people are leaking cash and they don’t know where it goes.

And unless you record that, you are never going to know.

According to some sources, the percentage of the population who are

shopaholics is rather high, it is actually 10 %.

Source: adapted from bbclearningenglish.com

VOCABULARY NOTES

· consumers –потребители

· prosperity –преуспевание, процветание

· temptation –соблазн, искушение

· tighten the belt –затянуть потуже пояс (с целью

экономии)

· retail therapy– зд. терапевтический эффект от

посещения магазинов