Rose Cottage Ltd

No real estate news this week. Instead, I’ve been amazed yet again at how much time and money people are spending on “Black Friday” 2014. I’m wondering where they get either – the time or the money. And then I see news reports about what they are buying and I’m even more amazed.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we are all being duped by technology. People spend hundreds per month on “smart phone” service – but they don’t seem to be any smarter. They buy hand-held games for themselves and for their kids – but no one is more fit and the country as a whole, is more obese and unhealthy than ever. I can tell you that the majority of TV ads I saw on Thanksgiving or just before were almost ALL for phones, or phone plans, or phone accessories…

I remember Christmases past and think I was one of the lucky ones. My parents had 6 children to provide for so we did not have great big piles of individual gifts under the tree. But I remember the year I got a pair of roller skates. I remember the year someone got a football or the year several of us got ball gloves, softballs, and bats.

What are parents giving kids this year? Will kids get an email saying their “communications plan” has been increased to 10,000 minutes per month? Will they get a package the size of a deck of cards that is supposed to offer the world, only to hear that the “apps” they wanted aren’t on their new “phone”?

Instead of having kids sitting under the tree playing the new board game they just got or getting dressed to go outside and throw a new football around in the snow, are they all sitting in their separate chairs with their faces in their phones – with no one interacting with or even talking to each other?

And what about all those who ran out on their families sometime Thanksgiving Day – to stand in line at a store? Don’t you feel your string is being pulled? How much “stuff” do you actually need? Based on the constant TV ads for “buy this, buy that” I saw on Thanksgiving Day, I must certainly have built up some sort of immunity that escapes many others. And I won’t be convinced to put thousands on a credit card that will stretch my budget because my life will be over if I don’t shop on Black Friday.

And Black Friday – what is it? It’s the day of the year that many retailers move their accounting balances from the “red” to the “black” – meaning the day they finally hit a “profit.” Sounds like a scary way to do business and a scary way to live to me. It’s bad enough US taxpayers are now working through most of April each year before they get beyond the tax bite.

Now they’re pushing “Internet Monday” or whatever they call it. So anyone who didn’t partake in the day after Thanksgiving madness can hop online and spend money on Monday – many from at work I guess.

It seems like madness to me. Or mass-manipulation. One and the same…