Guilty pleasures

People who buy things using credit cards without having the money to pay for the bills are going to be worst hit during a recession

During an afternoon spent listing the discount sales on everything, from an automobile to an apartment, a friend made a pertinent point. Our guilty pleasures had turned some (okay, most) of us into good-hearted schemers, she observed wryly.

Guilty pleasures? With having too much credit thrust upon us, what other kind of pleasures were there, anyway?

Until very recently, didn't we go out for a coffee break and come back with a ridiculously priced trinket? Didn't we suffer moments of intense agony when conscience and closet collided? Wasn't our credit card the most abused substance? Didn't we set ourselves up for the giant fall?

Weathering the first severe economic downturn of our adult lives, we are discovering that a practice we once indulged in without thinking about it shopping when the mood struck us is now making us go through a personality makeover.

From spendthrifts, we are trying hard to turn into desi versions of Uncle Scrooge who must recession-proof everything from kirana lists to kiddie treats.

Described as a kanjoos all her life, an aunt who brought up seven kids on a monthly budget of Rs 580 put things in perspective when she defined the difference between people who are frugal and those who are, well, kanjoos.

"Frugal people are happy because they sensibly calculate the benefits of what they spend on and what they save on. Kanjoos folks are not happy. They pass up purchases not because they enjoy saving money, but because they hate to part with it. They do without things they could afford that would genuinely improve their lives," she said.

Glad that her recession-hit NRI nephews were finally seeing the shopping list through her eyes, she warmed to the theme. "Before the invasion of the malls and the ATMs ('Not quite the Jurassic Age', she clarified, when my 9-year-old's eyes grew round in wonder), people did most of their shopping in shops and they paid with cash."
This meant that unless you had money in hand, you didn't go around treating yourself to gizmos or holidays when the urge struck you, or worse, when you were plain bored.

Or better still, you didn't go around spending the money you did not have. Had we possessed such robust common sense (derided as conservatism by many) we wouldn't be tumbling down the slippery slope of self-induced poverty. Instead, we recklessly redefined risk and responsibility.

We cheerfully lit the fuse, so why are we now running for cover?