About twenty five years ago my grandmother started dedicating her Betty Crocker points toward a full set of flatware for me. These points were printed on the boxes of Betty Crocker products and could be redeemed for merchandise in the Betty Crocker catalog. (Betty Crocker retired this program in 2006). I did end up with a very nice 12 place settings plus hostess pieces set.
Many of the women in my family (including my mother) had everyday dishes that came out of boxes of Dove laundry detergent and most of the mothers I knew growing up collected green stamps.
Grocery stores used to offer up sets of pots and pans or everyday china that could be earned by shopping at that store. Usually you payed a discounted price per piece or got a free piece depending on what you spent at the store that day.
These kinds of rewards for loyalty programs have pretty much disappeared.
Today if someone wants new dishes they go to Bed Bath and Beyond, pull out the Visa and come home with the whole set. No one has the patience to do it any other way. Get what you want today and worry about paying for it later.
The families of this country have never been in the kind of financial trouble that we are in right now and we have, mostly, ourselves to blame.
In 1970 about 16% of American households had a credit card.
At that time the home fires were predominantly stoked by the woman of the family, who I like to call the COO (Chief Operations Officer) She often had a weekly budget, determined by the CEO (Chief Executive Officer [the man of the house]). This budget was to cover all household expenses for the week and at that time it was, in most families, pretty conservative.
If the COO wanted to do anything extra (buy a gift, go out to lunch, have her hair done, SAVE) the money had to come out of that budget.
Coupons equalled money, Layaway allowed you to pay for something over time, and promotions (like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this entry) gave you the opportunity to acquire things you needed, if you had the patience. Wise COO's put any pennies that were left at the end of the week into a teapot or under a loose floorboard for a rainy day.
People lived, for the most part, within their means. Aside from the mortgage and maybe a car payment, they didn't owe much, and most people had some savings.
By the year 2000, over 70% of households were in possession of at least one major credit card and most had several department store cards. The opportunity to do/have all kinds of things without having to save up, without having to wait ... FABULOUS! After all, it seemed kind of the same, you just pay what you would have been saving to the credit card company each month. Of course we know this doesn't usually work out, and, if you are making minimum payments, you pay interest for years before touching the principle.
In tomorrow's post I am going to discuss some strategies for trimming household expenses, keeping the grocery bill manageable and finding money to stick in a teapot.
I don't think it's realistic to try and go back to a 1970 COO's strategy, but it has also become unrealistic to continue a 21st century one. Somewhere in the middle is a recipe for success and I've been working on it for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment