Opinion

Taylor Armerding: Mother told me there'd be days like this

Taylor Armerding
Published: December 4, 2008

I can't believe it. I'm back in style.

I heard it on National Public Radio so I know it has to be true.

On the business show, "Marketplace," they did a segment on how our current economic trauma (brought on, of course, solely by the "failed policies of the Bush administration," which will be blamed during the next four to eight years for literally everything that doesn't reflect well on The Chosen One) has affected the advertising industry.

Apparently, the big corporate players are reconsidering those $3-million ads they've been running every year during the Super Bowl. As one big-time marketeer put it, those ads in recent years have been intended to be "aspirational," which is a positive-sounding euphemism for pushing people to reach beyond, and spend beyond — dare we say it? — what they can afford.

Well, yes, we can say it, because it is now horrifically gauche even to suggest such a thing.

Suddenly, the great masses of the American people don't want to see or hear (at least this is what the ad gurus are telling us) about Beyonce putting her conspicuous consumption on one major credit card as she bounces from charter aircraft to limo to mansion surrounded by a horde of sycophants and personal attendants.

"That would be so out of context," the ad man said.

Suddenly it is cool, it is edgy, it is cutting-edge to "live within your means."

And that makes me very, very cool. I am decades ahead of the curve in being un-aspirational. I have been living within my means for my entire adult life. I'm surprised People magazine hasn't already sent a reporter and photographer over.

I am not trying to claim any moral high ground here. I can't really help it. I'm a prisoner of the indoctrination of my "family of origin."

My mom came through the Depression (the real one — the pre-Social Security, pre-Medicare, pre-Medicaid, pre-food stamp, pre-unemployment insurance one) and warned me almost daily, as soon as I was sentient enough to understand her, that the next one was imminent — that government was out of control and "you'll be paying for it."

OK, so there was a delay of a few decades, but how prescient was that? Seven hundred billion, and we're only getting started. I think if she had lived to see this one, she would have taken more satisfaction than fear in it. She would have been able to say she told me so. But she also would have scoffed at it.

"This?" she would have said. "This is nothing. Let me tell you about Tulsa in 1930 ..."

And when she got through telling me about Tulsa, she would have told me, again and again, that I must never go into debt. It would destroy me. Did I want other people or banks or companies to own my car, my house, my paycheck?

Even my current fiscal habits, which are laughably conservative by today's standards, would be far too liberal for her.

Never mind that I've always paid off the entire balance on my credit card every month. Simply having and using a card is playing with Satan himself.

But hey, from where we're sitting now, it looks like she would have made a better Fed chairman than Greenspan or Bernanke. Or a better House Financial Services Committee chairman than Barney Frank. You know: Don't take out a loan, or if you do, at least take out one you can afford to pay back. How simple is that?

When I got my first credit card I could hear her voice every time I used it, and I tended to sweat subconsciously until I got the bill, which I then made sure I paid and mailed the very next day.

Even now, I can feel her scowling at me from on high for taking such risks.

So, whether it's genetic or environmental, I got in the habit of living within my means.

It actually works pretty well, especially when a lower-middle-class lifestyle today would have been considered spectacular, conspicuous wealth when my parents were growing up.

It removes a gigantic stress factor from life. Nobody is making threatening calls, or insisting that I come to their office and work out a payment plan. I have time available that I would otherwise have to spend shopping for things I don't even want, never mind need.

I even rebelled against President Bush when he said our patriotic duty was to go shopping in the wake of 9/11.

Yes, I know that we are a consumer-driven economy. But I'm going to enjoy this brief, 15 minutes of cool.

Because I know it will end rather rapidly. Credit will ease. Aspiration will be back in style. I will be out of style.

And all will be right with the world.

¢¢¢

Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, sister paper of The Salem News. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmer ding@eagletribune.com