I love – and live by – a sentiment reportedly first uttered by English actor Quentin Crisp: “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level, it’s cheaper.” Old car.
Op shops. Aldi (it’s better for some things!). ‘Cocooning’, where you simulate restaurants and Gold Class movie marathons at home.
Or the park/beach. Exercising outside. No gym membership needed.
Cheap-as-chips holidays, when we have them – usually paid for with painstakingly collected and deployed frequent flyer points. Oh, and everything possible bought via cashback apps. The government is in the middle of regulating buy now, pay later products like Afterpay and Zip.
Credit: Louie Douvis I feel no shame; I am proudly what-I-call stinge -spired to save rather than binge-spired for appearances. But a new survey has found many Aussies are the opposite thanks to peer pressure. Apparently almost one-in-three have felt forced by the lifestyles of friends and family into making purchases.
A new Finder survey has found that on average people spend $1309 more than they can afford to ...
to compete. And that apparently extrapolates to $4.1 billion across the country.
More than one-in-10 have booked a holiday they can’t afford. Some 6 per cent have even bought a car out of their comfort range, purely for the sake of show. Five per cent have done the same with designer fashion items.
Then there’s the restaurant bill-splitting pressure, with 14 per cent feeling like they need to cough up a.