:: I qualify: Therefore I am ::

Consumption on a per capita level in the United States and Canada has grown in our lifetimes reaching a point within the last ten years that could be considered glutinous. If nothing else it certainty has proved to be unsustainable as we are witnessing in our economy

You cant just blame consumer society for this. It has been instilled into us from birth through marketing. Our sense of self worth and the value of life in general is dictated to us. From the growing numbers of glossy weekend news paper inserts to magazine, television and radio advertising. Where ever we go, our landscape is overwhelmed by media marketing. I can't even stand at a public urinal, a mans most solitude moment, without being face to face with an ad telling me what I need to do next after I zip up in order to add the value that is missing from my life.

Not only is consumption pushed on us, we are massaged by it and subconsciously forced to compete with ourselves and compare ourselves with our peers by the messages within. We are so inundated with bits and blurbs of what we are missing and what life can be if we choose this or that. It has us blinded to the here and now and has us living in a perpetual state of motion towards some consumer nirvana that lies just out of reach.

You can't be without satellite radio when they offer the first three months free. You can't refute the zero down zero interest for twelve month terms on the new car to replace the perfectly functional three year old car. Especially now that it is dated according to media determined society standards. Your home is incomplete without the don't pay anything till 2009 hot tub you will use only six times a year and even that is incomplete without the time share or cruise package that Marcy and Jim told us about.

I qualify: therefore I am. That should be the catch phrase to symbolize the last decade.

Well the rubber has now met the road and the financial slack with the carrot on the end is being reeled in. There is a contraction taking place and it needed to happen.
What I think is going to and is already happing as a result is reassessment of our material values for many. A new mass mindset where society will dictate less on what I drive, my car works fine thank you very much and I am quite comfortable with my four blade razor, I don't need to move up to the new six blade Gillette decapitator.

I don't need ten more separate twenty nine dollar a year Internet programs and services and that latest terabyte hard drive, though it rolls off the tongue nicely and does get my ram flowing, it really makes no sense when I have barely filled even half of my current hard drive.

I might even start to buy my groceries based on what I can consume thereby throwing out less and reducing the number of condiment jars in my refrigerator by twenty or thirty. I will learn to be content for more than a year with my current television, cell phone and digital camera regardless of the technological advances the next year brings and as hard as it will be, I will come away from Costco having purchased only the items I came for.

People are beginning to take a breath and starting to allow practical logic to govern their purchasing behavior once again. As they do they will find that not only can they manage but they will realize their financial health is stronger than it has ever been. Business is tweaked right now to keep production in pace with the demand of the consumer junkies we have become and the next few years will continue to be a period of adjustment.

It will run contrary to those of us within the Real Estate industries expectations of the past ten years as well, with people learning to value their homes in a manor our parents and grand parents once did as we begin to see a house as more than an investment or financial leverage tool.

People are going to trade up less often as a result but it will also mean that many, many more who are learning to act with more fiscally responsibility and live within their means rather than their credit card limits are soon going to be in a position to buy into the real estate market. Millions who otherwise would never have learned to save a down payment or build a credit rating will become purchasers of real estate over the next few years. I think this will more than compensate.