Your words

”Your words really hit me, but I’m strong and I won’t stop. You want them to hurt me and you succeed. I know who I am – who you are.” – Nicole Cherry ”Your Words”

Words have an impressive (big) impact on people: on their actions, on their way of thinking, on the emotions they trigger. Each word, in addition to the information it transmits, also transmits energy: motivation-demotivation, action-inaction.

The role of words in financial life

Words represent the code of communication. Through the code, the message is transmitted, which can be pro or con, motivation or demotivation. Therefore, words have the power to influence, as the purpose of communication itself states.

Your words or those of anyone around us influence in one way or another.

We will focus on advertisements. They contain words that manipulate the behavior of the receivers. (Manipulation has both a positive and a negative direction.)

We observe in the content of advertisements the urge to consume; to consume various products: food, clothing, household appliances and electronics, cars, medicines and financial products. The purpose of advertisements is to promote those products in such a way as to determine you to buy them. How do they do this? By appealing to your desires, determining you to think about how you will feel having that thing. They arouse in you the emotion of fulfillment that you have achieved your desire. They already put you in the position of the buyer and describe to you how good you feel because you bought it. And finally, you act, buying that product.

Decisions are made emotionally and are rationally reinforced.

Seeing yourself in front of the accomplished fact, it’s like you don’t feel the same emotion anymore. The effect of the words is gone. Now you own that product, but you’re not as happy anymore. You are no longer convinced that you did a good thing, but in order not to rebel against yourself, the psyche protects you from the appearance of guilt, motivating why it would still be a good choice.

When a woman buys her 56th pair of shoes, because those shoes were presented to her as “the most comfortable shoes in the world”, but gets home and finds that she has no place to put them, that they are not as comfortable as they seemed in the store, she starts thinking in the following way: “yes, but I didn’t have the brown and black combination, I didn’t have the stiletto model” and so on. All thoughts come to reinforce the decision made based on emotion. Emotions are fleeting. You can use the expression: “it’s just an emotion!” when you don’t feel well and also when you want to avoid overspending.

Excessive consumption puts a hole in the budget. The urge of advertisements to consume is immediately embraced by those for financial loan products. There are even partnerships between banks and stores to facilitate access to products that are either not on the list or do not fit into the budget of your current situation. In order to avoid making a trip to the bank, the bank comes to you and supports you in accumulating debts.

The words in advertisements are intended to influence consumer behavior. They are used with the aim of increasing the consumption rate. We must be aware that the economy is based on the consumption rate. However, here, we are talking about an artificial increase and an exaggeration of your needs and desires. You will see the impact of excessive consumption in your own pocket, when you run out of money before the end of the month. That is why it is very important to be aware of your own needs and desires, of how advertisements, the words used by sellers, influence your behavior.

Decisions and free will

In life we make decisions and use free will. We made that decision, not someone else for us, theoretically. In practice, however, by being aware of the words used in advertisements, in the promotion of various products, we can easily see how our free will is influenced.

Obviously, we need to buy, to consume, but what matters is whether we buy because we choose to do so or because we let ourselves be carried away by some words. Also, buying one brand or another can be triggered by a preference. There are preferences based on taste, ingredients used, quality criteria, brand, appearance of the product in advertisements, recommendation from friends or a celebrity. If there is a preference for a certain brand of product because the level of ingredients is accepted by our taste and body, but not because our favorite celebrity recommends that product to me, then free will works.

Unfortunately, free will is most often enveloped and absorbed by beautiful words that encourage consumption. It is not for nothing that the Romanian language has a proverb that illustrates the purpose of words: “A good word brings a lot”. Obviously, in advertisements, words have their positive form. I am not doing anti-advertising to the competition, but using beautiful words, in positive terms, in the superlative to present the respective product. The product is in the foreground and it becomes the star that can also be found in your household, if you purchase it.

Spending and saving

We see in advertisements how they appeal to consumption, so to spending money, not to saving or investing money. Of course, consumption is the basis of the economy, but saving and investing money also helps the economy. Money invested leads to development. The money you put to work helps to develop the society in which you live. They go into research, product and equipment development, supporting social categories: pensioners, the unemployed and public systems: health, education. All money drives the economy, and you get a share of the profits generated by that developed area, because you took part in the development.

Financial education drives people to spend wisely, not not to spend and how to produce more for themselves.

Ultimately, the money earned from investments will be spent. It will thus end up back in the economy in the area of consumption. But, at least, you are allowing yourself what you really want. Long-term savings/investment plans bring you the highest profit from the interest rate/return obtained on your money, as well as a high level of living standard that you will be able to afford later. You may not be able to afford to support your children in their studies abroad, but by saving and investing money you can achieve an important and expensive goal for yourself.

Good luck in becoming more money conscious!