Why All the Yuppies Spend So Much

I’m not 100% sure about this yuppie thing. I’ve been quarter life crisising pretty hard over the past month or so, and I can’t shake this feeling that my life isn’t much deeper than a stereotype.

I know exactly how I got here, though. Put anyone in a completely new life phase in a new city with a new job and new friends, and most will slip into prefabricated, cookie cutter existence in an effort to get integrated and get by. Personally, I’m a little bundle of social anxiety, so fitting in was a sufficient victory, much less feeling an actual sense of belonging.  

But then I started dating a guy. At first he seemed like my usual type – smart, driven, athletic. But after a few dates, I started to notice some things that were weird. He lived in a tent for a few weeks during an out-of-town hospital rotation. He spent weekend nights drinking martinis and playing chess. He didn’t have a slightest clue as to what Miley Cyrus was up to these days (Twerking, Wrecking Ball – none of it). He made most of his furniture out of unfinished 2 by 4s and most of his clothes are free.

And in a rather close-minded fashion, weird made me uncomfortable and made me want to shut it down. But weird also the source of fun and novel conversation, perspective changing questions, and really good book recommendations. So he ended up sticking around to intrigue and inspire me until he matched for residency. (It’s ok though, I made sure to twist his arm into being my weird muse/mentor for the rest of time.)

It all prompted me to take inventory  of my own weirdness and whether or not I was embracing it and living authentically. In order to really answer this question, I had to parse apart the things in my life that I was actively choosing versus the aspects I just picked up as a part of the young professional package.

So like any normal girl, I went on a Kindle shopping spree and bought a collection of social commentaries on all things related to yuppie-dom: adult psychological development, behavioral economics, urbanization, capitalism, and the information age, and then I had a manic book binge for about a week.  

It’s striking how many signature yuppie tendencies are rooted in our environment and circumstance, but for today, I just want to talk about ambition, wealth, and materialism, as they’re some of the most fiercely disparaged qualities about the young, white collar crew. And while it’s a story of my personal financial mantra, I’m by no means trying to give anyone financial advice. We all know I’m not qualified for that.

I think I like working in private enterprise. The private sector gets a lot of heat for being greedy, and I think concerns like wealth distribution and corruption are completely valid. But I also don’t think the pace of innovation and our quality of life in this age would’ve been the same without it. I also like to think that capitalism is slowly becoming more steeped in humanity. The recession-inducing investment banks that employed a majority of the yuppies in the ‘80s are now seeing steeply declining application rates from top universities. Those students are going to the likes of Apple and Google – sometimes at a pay cut – to find a job with more creativity and relevance to everyday life.

But in order for private corporations are competing to be innovative and to better meet the needs of their consumers, they have to also compete for talent. And that more often than not comes down to compensation, sometimes to the point it seems weird. The average new grad from my alma mater makes as much as the average household in the US, despite the fact that none of us have any more experience than a few internships and credit hours in relevant courses. It’s my guess that they’re compensating more than just performance; that it’s also about potential. But it’s all of that discretionary income that can get a little questionable.

The science behind materialism is absolutely fascinating. Our non-routine, discretionary purchases trigger neural reactions that make us really happy, likely due to the evolutionary usefulness back in the caveman days, and researchers got interested in how that fact affects modern life. Some of them did a really cool study looking at materialism throughout adolescence and found that it looks like this as they age:

Notably, self-esteem looks like this:

And they found similar patterns in adults who had experienced periods of identity redevelopment. And what other group experiences a lower sense of self-esteem and identity? Young adults (further reinforcing the middle school stage of real life hypothesis). From there, self-confidence only continues to grow with age, and spending slows down accordingly. It makes sense though. A lot of us move away from our families and life-long friends for the first time, we start new jobs where we’re at the bottom of the totem pole, and we’re so transient between cities and employers that we don’t have time to cultivate many deep connections before either we or our peers are on the move. But it’s those family roles, friendships, and professional callings that self-confidence and our sense of worthiness are built on. Spending becomes a bit of a coping mechanism and a short spike of happiness for the times our sense of belonging is called into question. I’ve definitely been there. Just a few weeks ago, I was carrying around a lot of work stress, really missing my move-away friends, and of course, generally quarter life crisising, and they all accompanied me on a trip to the Lululemon warehouse sale to get some replacement yoga shorts. Naturally, I left with six tops. The bargain hunting buzz only lasted for the rest of the day, and now I’m stuck with six tops that I don’t need and that don’t fit in my dresser. I’ve realized I don’t even like two of them and I’ve still been wearing the same $3 cotton Jimi Hendrix tanks to the gym every night. At least it’s a healthier coping mechanism than disordered eating or substance abuse?

Maybe. But if I was blacking out in my apartment every night, I think my friends and family would step in and say something. Materialism, however, ends up getting celebrated. Our society values a strong work ethic, intelligence, and professional success, but these are hard things to measure and recognize when we all work in different industries and companies. But we can correlate them with our earning potential and our earning potential with our stuff. So when we see signs of wealth, it becomes a testament to the owner’s intellect and hustle. Imagine a guy emerging from an Audi, dressed in some casual JCrew garb, checking his messages on his latest model iPhone, and tell me you don’t assume he’s at least a little bit smart. (Unfortunately, I think if we did the same for a woman, we’d make those assumptions about her husband or father. I’ll get off my feminist soapbox now.)

 

When stuff becomes our success-o-meter, we can practically buy credibility, yet we wonder why we’re the most indebted American adult cohort of all time or why credit card debt increases so quickly between 20 and 30, regardless of marriage or kids.

I think a lot of the pressure also comes from working in an office environment. As an entry level hire, I’m one of the bottom 10% of earners I come into contact with throughout the week. Renting with a roommate in a downtown condo by the park with underground parking and a sauna suddenly indicates that I’m poorer than average. The biggest financial struggle I might witness in a week is my own inability to justify the $60 heat protectant spray that my stylist recommends. It’s crazy. And it creates this really skewed view of what “normal” looks like.

But does that mean that all yuppie spending is bad? Not necessarily. We can finally afford to be part of the value-driven consumer class and make purchases that give us the most bang for the buck. We’re able to retire the EasyMac, coin-op laundry, and $6 Forever 21 tube skirts that never survived the washing machine. We get that quality generally costs more, but we don’t always take the time to do the research on whether or not we’re really getting the best value. And we start making assumptions about price and quality that don’t necessarily hold true. It all adds another layer of confusion around how much money we really need to be spending.

So how do we combat all of this?

• Learn the difference between the things you like and the things you like because they give you status. Would you carry the same handbag if it wasn’t by a readily discernable designer? Or would you buy the same top if it came from Walmart? Would you go on the same vacations if you could only share photos with your closest friends and family instead of publishing them on Facebook?

• Volunteer. I swear that this is the all-encompassing remedy for every one of the yuppie vices. Help people who need it. It reframes your idea of struggle and helps you feel thankful for the situation you’re in. Thankful and gracious people are shown to be both the happiest and the most financially stable. So go get a good helping of it. Bonus points if it’s an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters or Hospice or Dress for Success where you can really form a bond with the people you’re serving. We’re at a stage in our lives where connection doesn’t come quite as easily or is quickly fleeting. But there are tons of organizations whose work will leave you with the feeling that you’ve built someone up and changed their life for the better.

• Embrace simplicity. It’s liberating to take yourself out of the “stuff hustle.” From Thoreau to Chanel to Steve Jobs to Da Vinci, so many great thinkers were proponents of simplicity because it removes the clutter and distraction that gets in the way of greatness. But it also extends so much further than yourself and affects everyone else who sees you as one of the Joneses that they’re supposed to be keeping up with.