11. Birkin bags: There are many, many poster children for consumer excess. Manolo Blahnik shoes. Gucci sunglasses. Hermès scarves. But a handbag that costs more than some cars will suffice nicely. ("Retail price: $18,000. Our price: $12,000.")
If you have this much money to blow, you should be donating it to your local food bank.
12. "The Secret": This mega-best-seller insisted you could think your way to wealth and a smaller waistline.
I'm not going to knock the value of visualization, because clearly imagining your goal is a crucial first step. But the idea that you could get what you want without any effort or discipline was a clear sign the bubble was about to burst.
13. Finance plans for plastic surgery: I actually laughed out loud the first time a company tried to pitch me its low-cost financing plan for cosmetic surgery procedures. Surely people wouldn't be so dumb as to risk their financial lives, as well as their physical lives, for unnecessary and elective procedures? Shows you what I know.
Now lenders as mainstream as Capital One have "health care finance" units, although the demand has drained away along with the economy.
14. Reality TV: Speaking of McMansions and plastic surgery, our national obsession with how the rich and vapid live is going to be tough to explain to future generations.
Whether it's dysfunctional rock stars or the real housewives of anywhere, it will be hard for our descendants to understand why we wasted hours watching the conspicuous consume.
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15. Mega-SUVs: Their very names -- Sequoia, Yukon, Escalade, Expedition, Hummer -- are now synonymous with excess, but years from now we'll wonder how anyone justified these massive, gas-guzzling "screw yous" to the environment and to anyone who tried to park (or drive) next to them.
16. "Underwater" cars: I'm not talking about the vehicles that drowned during Hurricane Katrina. I'm talking about the many, many cars that drowned their owners in debt. Before the auto industry rolled over and died, it puffed up profits by encouraging people to overspend on cars -- which they did, with a vengeance.
Many thought replacing cars every three to five years was "normal," rather than a huge waste of money, but incomes weren't growing to keep up with rising car prices. So more than 80% of car loans stretched beyond four years, and one in four car buyers still owed money on their trade-ins. Now that people are hanging on to cars longer, perhaps they'll discover the joys of life without car payments. We can hope. (See "The real reason you're broke.")
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17. $4, four-adjective coffee: However much you love your soy no-whip mocha frappawhatsit, you've got to admit how nuts it is to pay good money for ingredients that probably cost Starbucks 50 cents.
And that's before you even consider the calorie count. (See "Death of the 'latte factor'?")
18. Massive plasma TVs: Screens that dwarf the rooms they inhabit started as a status symbol of the very wealthy. But the desire for huge screens quickly worked its way down to folks who would pay for all that acreage many, many times over, thanks to stupidly high credit card interest rates.
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Wake up and smell the . . . How is the economy affecting your coffee drinking habits?
19. Deregulation: Conflicts of interest and allegations of fraud led to the creation of a wall between commercial banks and investment banks during the Great Depression. In 1999, Congress demolished the wall by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act that had created it.
The idea was that we had long since learned our lesson, that we wouldn't let bad things happen again and that modern finance required banks to have more flexibility to manage risk. Oops. (See "An ugly, unrecognizable recession.")
20. Las Vegas: I actually have no hope whatsoever that this monument to excess will ever go away. Built on delusions of easy wealth, soaking up resources of every kind (electricity, water, paychecks, home equity), this city has reinvented itself so many times -- including, horrifically, as a family destination in the 1990s -- to ever count it out, despite its current troubles.
But a city based on the squandering of wealth really should be allowed to melt back into the desert from which it came. (See "Is 'Sin City' poised for a comeback?")
Published May 26, 2009
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As someone with over 50,000 dollars in credit card debt I take great offense at this article. I happen to be one of those unlucky people tricked into outrageous interest rates, overcomplicated contracts for the things I really need like a big truck to do my job and a big house for all my kids and the huge T.V.s and the yearly latest and greatest video game system the kids demand. It is obvious Liz is out of touch with reality
