What Is Making Young People Like Me Poor? Digital Choices, Perhaps

We, the young and rebellious, are getting poorer thanks to the everyday choices we are forced to make innocently.

Modify your thinking, make it more finance-oriented and you are good to go.

Image Courtesy: The Quint

Are you the cheated customer of today, whose sleeping, eating, drinking, partying, dating, holidaying habits and tendencies have been completely changed (some cultivated), twisted and played around with? And all of this, just to fill the coffers of some corporates or to lend some people a place into the covers of the holier-than-thou magazine of the crème de la crème, the coveted Forbes.

Change in Spending Habits

So, let me start by explaining when I felt the devilish laughter from the boardroom of a food delivery company aimed at me. The laughter stemming from the fact that they had successfully managed to ‘spoil’ a disciplined girl, who had a strict policy of ‘occasion demands a treat’ and nothing else.

In December last year, I exploited the 50% discount (and got exploited) like crazy.

From eating out once a week to seeing the number of orders I placed in a week increase in a geometric progression (yes, not even arithmetic) was a revelation.

I also came up with fatuous occasions which had nothing to do with me. Like, my ex-roommate got bitten by a dog (though she loved dogs, I wonder if she does now). I would like to call it the ‘Jio effect’- make the customer addicted to the experience you offer and then cash on it later.

Psychologists and marketers together can rule the world. Instant Gratification is something which aggravates the inability of humans to wait for things that bestow upon them pleasure and happiness and that’s what the game is about. ‘Lose 10 kgs in 10 days’- at least now all of us believe it is a farce.

Digital Money Is Making Us Broke

Call me anti-change, cynical or pessimistic (though I like worldly-wise), but on the month-end when you go broke, you will agree with me that digital payment system is somewhere responsible for burning the hole larger than normal in your pocket. When you don’t see a tangible valuable thing getting reduced, you tend to spend it mindlessly.

Cashbacks/credit points are another good example of tricking customers into believing that they are receiving an absolute discount. These seemingly benevolent offerings are just a trap to lure you into spending more in order to redeem the cashback.

And have you noticed few payment gateways’ skewed preferences for credit cards while excluding debit cards altogether? Most of the ‘heavy’ cashbacks and discounts are also applicable on payments made via credit cards and not the debit cards. By now, what possible explanation would you assign to that? Clearly, this is an attempt to push up the earnings of banks through the EMIs and late clearance charges, not forgetting the insane interest charges.

‘Loyalty’ To Consumerism

Same is the case with memberships and ‘loyalty’ cards. Many people subscribe to these without even assessing if they are actually benefiting from it or not. Memberships are meant for those who are frequent users of a particular product or service, and not the ones who seldom use it. These require the customer to make a lumpsum payment in advance to avail the membership and then this ‘loyalty card’ played on them allows them to avail the services in future at a reduced or discounted price. But the lumpsum payment was nothing but the advance recovered by the companies towards the future discounts.

As soon as the customer realises that, s/he ends up spending more hoping that the discount cumulatively availed will surpass the sunk cost incurred.

The customer doesn’t realise that the companies had already earned returns on the advance payment by investing it somewhere else.

So, where am I going with all of the disentangling analysis and caveats? I just want to state that being a responsible customer is not just limited to checking the expiry dates and the MRPs. And that a cost-benefit analysis never hurt anyone, but saved many a rupee from ludicrous spending. Some offerings are good and I do not deny that because making profit does not mean someone has to bear a loss.

How Can We Resist this Blast of Choice?

If we modify our thinking to make it more finance-oriented, we are good to go. We must always make a cash-flow analysis before spending. And if we are truly motivated by our welfare, we will discount the cash flow for inflation. I remember my dad telling me once, ‘Variety is offered so that different people are able to find what suits them, but people feel that they are missing out on something by not consuming all of the basket, and end up overspending on over-consumption.’

Let’s not get swayed by the advertisements. Remember, we live in an era where lemon is purer in finger bowls than in lemonades! So, the least you can expect from the company offering deal is not make an out-and-out loss incurring offer. The problem is, companies have long-term objectives and we tend to be blinded by the short-term benefits.

(Bhavya Arora is a student of B.Com (Hons) Year II at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. This is a Reader’s Blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)