Page 41 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

16 DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Franklin knew all about consumerism: ‘when you have bought one fine
thing you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a
piece.’ To which his reply, or, strictly speaking, that of his character
Poor Dick, is to observe that ‘…’tis easier to suppress the first desire
than to satisfy all that follow it’.

This is actually the seed from which the whole downshifting ethos springs.
Have you considered that real wealth may come by rejecting the pursuit of
money altogether, or at least toning down its role in your life? While
Franklin didn’t specifically discuss downsizing, he certainly touched on the
idea at its core.

DEFINING IDEA…
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make
people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the
people who work for them…it’s about getting a balance.
~ RICHARD BRANSON

All too often consumerism becomes a form of financial arms race with your
peers. Let’s face it, did you really aspire to this year’s model of car back
when none of your friends had a car at all? Keeping up with the Joneses is
seen as a joke, a quintessentially suburban pastime. The sad truth, however,
is that while we don’t think we indulge, we are all keeping up with the
Joneses to some degree. Whether it’s to gain social acceptance (‘all the
other kids have a pony’), to reassure ourselves of success (‘Dad never drove
a Jag’) or the more obvious forms of rivalry, we are constantly buying more
and more things in an endless escalation.

If you can deconstruct the arms race bit by bit, stripping away the need for
the new car or the cruise to Aruba, you eventually get to the point where
you realise you don’t need that job at all and could very easily double your
leisure time, spend more of it with the kids and breathe fresh air
somewhere far away from your curtain-twitching neighbours.