When the Economy Gets Bad ... Continue Spending?
- Anonymous
When your local or national economy takes a turn for the worse, the natural reaction is to pull back. Clearly, it's the thing to do: everyone is doing it!
The problem is, you're not everyone. In fact, depending on how you view your newfound wealth, you might be in a position to help everyone instead, and in a very simple, yet perhaps slightly uncomfortable way.
That way? Keep spending.
As I write this the U.S. has officially entered a recession, the unemployment rate is up, retailers have just had a very bad holiday season and assorted businesses are cutting back, or in come cases going out of business all together.
Our response?
We've made an extra-large donation to a local social service agency, purchased a new car, hired out the completion of a couple of large projects around the house, moved up some maintenance projects, and probably a couple of other things I've forgotten.
Exactly the opposite of what many people are doing. In fact, exactly the opposite of what most people probably should be doing: saving their money.
We jokingly refer to what we do as "stimulating the economy", but the bottom line is that it's no joke at all. Those of us with the resources to weather a prolonged economic crisis are likely to be the very ones who'll lead the recovery out of it. How? By stimulating the economy.
By spending money.
Now, I need to be clear here: you have a natural responsibility to make sure that what you're doing in fact is sensible with respect to your own finances. I'm not talking about sacrificing your own future financial security in order to increase your spending today.
What I am talking about is simply looking closely at your situation and understanding whether you really do need to pull back. If you don't, if you have the security of your newfound wealth, then you have an opportunity - some might even call it a responsibility. Not only can you participate in the eventual recovery but by doing so you're actually helping businesses and their employees weather the crisis today.
So consider what you might do. It might be increasing your philanthropy - or at least not pulling back. It might be retail therapy (consider buying local), or it might be hiring out some of those long postponed home improvement tasks.
However you do it, you may have some very simple opportunities to share your good fortune when others might need it most.
Think about it.
I'm new to this blog, and I really appreciate the heart and content. Even with limited resources, I feel it is my responsibility to do what I can to help turn around our economy.
Below are some ways that work for me. It's what I can do beyond giving money, volunteering, and working at a nonprofit, etc.
- I shop locally -- investing much of my disposable income in businesses near my home or office.
- Whenever possible I host meetings, to bring extra business to my local community.
- When it's appropriate and genuine, I heap mounds of shameless praise upon my local businesses and I do what I can to spread the word about their products or services.
- For people open to reading, I share one of my favorite books - Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman. The habit of being optimistic can be learned, and we need more of it to help move us through though times.
- At the nonprofit I run, in our longer community trainings I include an exercise on how to both give and receive acknowledgment and I encourage participants to flex & build their capacity to acknowledge others.
It feels good, it feels right, and I'm always on the hunt for other ideas I can incorporate.
Thank you!
Ana-Marie