New York, Aug. 8: She had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.
Yet Ms Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, California, and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”
So one day she stepped off.
Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms Strobel and her husband, Mr Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a website that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.
Her mother called her crazy.
Today, three years after Strobel and Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Oregon, in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-size kitchen. Mr Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms Strobel happily works from home as a web designer and freelance writer. With Mr Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms Strobel’s inc-ome of $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.
Ms Strobel’s mother is impressed. Now the couple have money to travel and to contribute to the education funds of nieces and nephews. And because their debt is paid off, Ms Strobel works fewer hours, giving her time to be outdoors, and to volunteer, which she does about four hours a week for a nonprofit outreach programme called Living Yoga.
“The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness.”
While Ms Strobel and her husband overhauled their spending habits before the recession, legions of other consumers have since had to reconsider their own lifestyles, bringing a major shift in the nation’s consumption patterns.
“We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption – which is ‘buy without regard’ — to a calculated consumption,” says Mr Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.
Amid weak job and housing markets, consumers are saving more and spending less than they have in decades, and industry professionals expect that trend to continue. Consumers saved 6.4 per cent of their after-tax income in June, according to a new government report.
Before the recession, the rate was one per cent to two per cent for many years. In June, consumer spending and personal incomes were essentially flat compared with May, suggesting that the American economy, as dependent as it is on shoppers opening their wallets and purses, isn’t likely to rebound anytime soon.
On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects.