Reasons We Buy More Stuff Than We Need

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

What things have you bought that you didn’t need?

What things have you bought to get a positive feeling from other people?

1. We think it will make us feel safer. Our thinking is something like this: if owning some things helps us to feel better, then owning much more than we need will mean we feel even better. But after we have the simple things that we need, the real feeling of safety derived from owning things is much less than we believe. All these things perish, get old or the feeling disappears. And they can disappear faster than we realize.

2. We think buying will make us happy. Nobody would ever admit they search for happiness in owning things—we all just live like we are happy when we have things. We buy bigger houses, faster cars, better technology, and trendier fashion hoping we will become happier because of it. But sadly, the real happiness derived from owning much more than we need disappears quickly.

3. We are more susceptible to advertising than we believe. On average, we see 5,000 advertisements every day. Every advertisement has the same message: your life will be better if you buy what we are selling. We begin to hear this messaging so many times and from so many different directions and places, we begin to subtly believe it. We cannot completely blame the marketing and advertising industry. This is simply that we need to realize that their messaging affects us more than we realize.

4. We are hoping to impress other people. In a wealthy society, envy quickly becomes something that makes us try to do more to win. Once all of our basic needs have been met, buying and owning must become about something more than what we need. It becomes a chance to show how rich we are. To show we are important and to show our financial success to the world.

5. We are jealous of people who own more. Comparison seems to be a natural way of being a human. We see what other people are buying, wearing, and driving. Our society encourages these comparisons. And all too often, we buy stuff we don’t need just because people in our friendship circles have done the same. A culture that is about admiring having too much will always not understand true success.

6. We are trying to buy to win against how we think we are weak or not good enough. We can make the mistake to look for confidence in the clothes that we wear or the car that we drive. We look to get stronger after loss, loneliness, or sadness by buying unnecessary things. We look for happiness by buying what we don’t need. And we try to impress other people with the things that we own rather than the people that we are. But trying to achieve these things will never fully help us to overcome our feelings of weakness. Most of the time, by buying what we don’t need, we can forget about the things about ourselves that don’t make us happy.

7. We are more selfish than we like to admit. It can be difficult to admit that as humans we are greedy and selfish. We look to grow the size of our personal kingdom by getting more and more things. This has been achieved in history by force, cheating, dishonesty, and by war. Unfortunately, selfishness continues to be strong in our world and our lives even today.

Having more than we need does not enrich our lives. In fact, buying things we don’t need keeps us from experiencing some wonderful, life-giving benefits. We would be smart to realize the cause and become vigilant in overcoming it.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=4, B=1, C=8, D=2, E=7, F=3, G=6, H=5

Some example sentences using the new words or phrases from the meaning of how they are used in the reading to help you understand better.

1. I could derive by his knowledge that he had read the book and done the homework.

2. Many people perished in the earthquake.

3. Gangnam is famous as the trendy area of Seoul.

4. People who don’t eat well are susceptible to being sick.

5. His fashion colors were very subtle.

6. If you want to impress someone on a date, then listen to them and understand them.

7. My parents enriched my life by supporting me in my dreams.

8. Security guards must be very vigilant and watch everything.

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1. How much do you agree that our feeling of success is derived from buying things?

2. What is something you have bought and loved? Has your feeling for it perished over time? Why or how?

3. Do you like to buy trendy fashions to impress other people? Why do you think we need to feel that impressing others is important?

4. susceptible

5. Do you agree that we begin to subtly believe something through a lot of advertising? Give any examples you can think of.

6. Besides buying things, what other ways can we enrich our lives?

7. If you want to change a bad habit, how can you be vigilant to change?