Aaron Ahuvia is a Professor of Marketing, a research psychologist, and the author of The Things We Love: How Our Passions Connect Us and Make Us Who We Are. On this episode of CFO at Home, Aaron and Vince discuss why we fall in love with things, how our desire for things can cause us to overspend, and more.
Key Takeaways
- In the best case scenario, the desire to create products that consumers “fall in love with”, pushes companies to:
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- Create high-quality products
- Establish a relationship with the consumer in which the customer trusts them
- Reasons that we overspend
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- We base our consumption on a lifestyle that we think matches our income. This is flawed because:
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- Our income is not our gross income, but our take-home income
- The lifestyle of people in television shows, movies, etc are vastly inflated from what they could ever afford in real life.
- Build your budget from the ground up, not tops down
- We attach our sense of self worth to material things
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- Many times people who grow up in middle to upper-middle class environments attach less of their self-worth to material possessions than those who grow up with less.
- People often overspend to buy their kids clothes, toys, etc that they really can’t afford. This can have the unintended consequence of doing more harm than good because of the money pressures it creates.
- Loving the things you have
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- We often envision how our lives would be better if we have certain things
- In reality, we often get the most pleasure out of things before get purchase them; the reality doesn’t live up to the desire
- When you love and appreciate the things you have, it reduces the desire buy more things
- Sometimes our love of things can be related to a search for identity.
- Our relationship with things is usually a relationship with people in disguise
- Things that we love we often love to impress or connect with another person.
Resources
Ways to connect/follow
Contact the Host - vince@thecfoathome.com
