Wants and Needs Blog

I knew that when we were first assigned the project of keeping track of all our expenditures that I wasn’t going to like what I saw. I mindlessly spend little amounts of money on little worthless things, a pack of gum here, parking meters there, picking stuff up for my roommates at the grocery store that I never get reimbursed for. By the end of my five days I realized I had spent way more money then I could have ever imagined. Which made me think, what could I be doing with all this extra cash I could be saving?

Then when I evaluated what I actually bought, I realized 90% of the things I purchased were complete wants. While I did buy groceries, and I needed food to survive, I could have probably lived off the things in my cupboards longer than I wanted too. I didn’t need to buy a Subway Sandwich, I had bread and meat and all the other toppings at home, I was just too lazy to do it myself. The only three purchases in my five days of keeping track that I could justify as needs were laundry soap and gas and text books. I consider these needs because they are essential to my daily life. If I didn’t buy gas I couldn’t drive to work therefore I couldn’t make money to pay for school and rent and food and essentially I would be on the streets. A couple of times when discussing this project with my roommates I tried to justify my wants to turn them into needs. I tried to explain that I absolutely needed to buy a cup of coffee because otherwise I wouldn’t make it through the day, and I couldn’t just make my own coffee at home because I was out of cream and without cream I cant drink my coffee. I was being ridiculous.

After analyzing what I decided my wants and needs are I began to try and relate it to popular culture. It is very much a part of our culture to buy a cup of overpriced coffee (trust me, I would know, I work at a coffee stand) and be seen with your cup. When students buy coffee before class, I believe they purposely would chose to buy a Starbucks or a Dutch Bros because the cup with have the logo on it which says they have extra cash to spend on frivolous things. So far we have learned that popular culture is the subordinates thriving off the dominant, rebelling against them and then creating their culture. As a poor starving college student I am a subordinate in this society, while the dominant are telling me I have to spend too much on text books and other things I don’t care to buy. I was going against the dominant (the OSU Bookstore) because I looked at prices at the bookstore and chose not to buy some of my books there because they were way too expensive. This was my chance to act against the dominant.

I think most of the time people aren’t conscious about their purchases. I now know that I could be saving a lot more money if I would keep track of things I spend on and cut down on wants and save for my needs. While there are times when I think popular culture affects what I buy and what I don’t buy, I don’t think I address these issues before actually making a purchase. Most of the time I just buy and consume and then move on.