Everytime I visit the home improvement section at Home Depot, I go away from there feeling like I live in another decade. Or would that be century? Possibly a cave?

Have you even been in one of those upscale stores where men’s ties sell for $150 and women’s dresses for $850? I’ve always wondered who buys that stuff? My assumption was it was purchased by people with money to burn. But according to this book, it’s the good ol’middle class buyers that support these high status, hippest of hip kinds of purchasing.

Juliet Schor is a professor in economics and teaches at both Harvard and Schumacher College. She did extensive research, and it shows in her book. About 25% of the book is bibliography, appendixes and notes, not the stuff that makes your heart go pitter-patter.

The author maintains that spending has become a social expression that people use to express their equal (or better) worth to reference groups. While not everyone participates, me for example, she founds that there are statistically significant socioeconomic and demographic differences between those who spend for status, and those who do not.

For example, urban and suburban women did much more status buying than those from rural areas. African Americans save more, presumably on account of lower economic position and a resulting tendency to drop out of status competitions (her words). College business majors with lower grades were found more likely to buy expensive briefcases, pens and wristwatches. She states that it is now widely believed that consumer goods provide an opportunity for people to express themselves, display their identities, or create public persona. The new game in town is individuality. In the words of one advertising magazine, “Lifestyle advertising is about differentiating oneself from the Joneses, not as in previous decades, keeping up with them.”

This book is for those who feel the compulsion to spend, particularly if your purchases are focused on labels, or unique products, or possibly if it gives your ego a boost. That’s not to condemn those motives, only to examine them to ensure that your reasons are driven by real needs rather than some auto pilot mechanism lurking in your soul.

The compulsive spender-type profile has always been my most challenging client, because they are the least likely to respond to “treatment”. By appearance, they are similar to most in that they want to be financially independent. The big difference is that they are generally, by psychological make up, unable to break their addiction. Frequently, they want to focus on tax reduction strategies, but the primary underlying motive tends to be so they can have more funds to spend, not to invest.

If you have those tendencies, and particularly if you have a lot of installment loans (auto loans, credit cards, etc.) then this book may help you to see those driving “social forces” behind your motives. Breaking the addiction to the money drug is the only practical hope to finding your financial freedom day if you have the “spender profile.” An increase in employment income won’t help, not if it gets spent, and even an inheritance won’t have a lasting impact unless it’s very large.

Though you may be successful in investing some of your hard-earned capital, this book could help you gain even more success. All of us I think engage in some status spending. Autos have to be at the top of the list. Homes and household furnishings would clearly be among the popular choices, as would clothing. Perhaps you should reexamine your “spending values” to ensure that you aren’t robbing yourself of an early financial freedom day celebration.

The author concludes her book with a macro-economic rant that leaves me a bit cold, frankly. While doing a great job in identifying the problem, she seems to conclude that maybe the government should take the lead in solving this “national quagmire”.

Well, this is my response to that proposal:

"Dear Juliet: if my neighbor wants to outfit their kids in tennis shoes that cost $125 a pair, it’s not my job to stand in judgment nor save them from what I might think is foolish. America does not mean standardization of values. I think rather, it means the opposite, the right to succeed or fail. My job is me. And if the neighbor wants to buy status shoes, then perhaps my focus should be on owning stocks in companies that make those status shoes."