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All but the most enlightened of us cares, to some degree, what other people think of us.  For some people, it is their co-workers, or their neighbors, or their friends, or their in-laws.  For some people it is career success, or being a great mom.  But, almost everyone has someone that they somehow want to impress. All too often, the things that we are trying to impress people with are hard to show in any actual sense.  Maybe we want people to think we are intelligent, or ambitious or successful at our jobs.  Well, we can’t show them our IQ scores or our excellent review from our manager (well… we could, but it might be strange).  So, intelligence and ambition and financial success are often viewed in financial terms- if you are more intelligent or more ambitious or more hard working or more dedicated, then it is thought that you will make more money than someone who is less ambitious or intelligent or hard working or dedicated.  

Thus there is an implicit message in our heads and in the media, and even inherent in the whole idea of the American Dream, that richer is better than poorer.  So, if we want to impress people then we want them to think that we are rich.  Now, how do we get people to think that we are rich, or at least financially comfortable.  We can’t show off our 401K balances or our bank account balances or tell people how much money we make.  To do so is socially unacceptable and people would think you were bragging or obnoxious.  

So, instead, we look for outward expressions of our wealth.  Why is a BMW better than a Toyota Corolla, for example? Why is a shirt that says Calvin Klein or has a little Alligator on it better than a comparable shirt from The Gap or The Old Navy?  Because these things are outward reflections that ‘we have money, we are successful, we made it.”  People buy a lot of these things not because they make their lives better, but because they are ways to show those who they want to impress that they are successful/ambitious/intelligent, enough to be rich enough to buy them. In a way, it is sort of Keeping Up With The Jones’, but I argue that people don’t necessarily want to keep up with some generic ideal, but instead want to impress specific people in their social circle by having more or doing better.  

Maybe if it was more socially acceptable to flaunt our big bank accounts and our big 401K’s, more people would start to care about and value these items.  Maybe if we were all required to display the amount of our mortgages proudly under our fancy addresses on our McMansion’s, people would be less likely to buy huge houses with even larger mortgages that they don’t really need.  If once a year we had to wear sweatshirts to work which advertise our bank balance and debt loads, people wouldn’t put themselves into credit card debt to buy that fancy new thousand dollar suit so their coworkers can see them wearing it.

If it was more socially acceptable to flaunt our bank accounts, then the frugal guy/girl in the 10 year old used car with the huge networth and comfortable retirement cushion would be transformed from someone to think differently of, to someone to admire.