The Money Saving Muddle - Part 2

While I accept that anyone on a limited budget will want to make every penny count, the ‘money-saving’ culture is about something else also. It represents an almost obsessive religious fervour with paying the least one can, for the sake of it. And it is this principle, as a principle, (not the constraints faced by somebody who is hard-up),  that, although it masquerades as prudence, actually masks a brutal kind of egotism.

For what does the money-saving idea exemplify other than that one prefers to keep rather than share one’s resources, that the ‘money’ does not go to the other person but stays with oneself. To put it more radically it is the principle of impoverishing one’s neighbours, whether they are the producers, whose hard work goes into making goods available, or one’s fellow shoppers who must by logic pay more every time you pay less for a group-buy, a voucher or some deal.

I was therefore pleased to note when recently one of the money-saving sites had the following to say:

the higher costs for funding the vouchers are merely displaced, pushed on to those without internet access or the time to take advantage. …Vouchers have also killed spontaneity - drop in to Pizza Express on a whim, without vouchers, and you effectively pay a surcharge, a rule that now applies to vast swathes of consumer life in the UK. …  just when I thought there was nothing more to dislike about money-saving vouchers, one of our journalist discovered this: Online money savers wreck charity bake plans by exploiting 'free bread for a year' offer I have a hope that this whole coupon rush is just a fad, some nightmarish, misguided consumer experiment that will run it's course.

What is the effect of low-pricing? One just needs to look around one at the high-streets today which are occupied by ‘money-saving’ chains, or compare the quality of goods bought now to good produced 50 years ago. What happened to all that ‘money’ that was saved? It has made day to day life much more expensive because the land has been mortgaged … think the process through, or track it out in the accounts, and you will see to what extent the prices we pay today are a reflection of a need to make repayments on loans that were taken out at a level pressured by the need to lend ‘saved’ money at interest!

True Prices

When we feel confident that our needs will be met from the future then we can let go in the present what has come from the past. Then the rain will come. We need circulation not  stagnant dams and parched deserts. We will be glad to pay the true price for what we buy, the price that the other person can really live from, knowing that when we ask for what we need, he will be thinking the same way.