Frugality in the Age of Automated Consumption

image: Kindel Media on Pexels

Frugality doesn't just feel harder because we're battling inflation, but it's also more troublesome at this time because we are fighting Silicon Valley's smartest software engineers.

Not too long ago, having a no-spend week simply meant not going to a store. When catalogs with 1-800 phone numbers hit the scene, temptation to spend became a little more difficult to deal with. But still, we could put that catalog down, throw it away, or ask to be taken off the mailing list. 

In retail design, anything that slows a customer down when making a purchase is called friction. Friction impedes consumer purchasing and reduces business profits. In the age of automated consumption, digital engineers have created "frictionless spending." 

It's really somewhat insidious when you think about it. Predictive algorithms, AI, and one-click checkout are entirely designed to get the customer to click buy now before we can stop ourselves and think through a purchase.

If you have ever struggled with purchasing more than you deep-down wanted, you realize that we are at war here. It is us, the consumers, against the digital engineering of retail merchants. 

So what are some examples of engineered frictionless spending?

The One-Click Trap

As I mentioned above, one-click checkout, where your information and credit card are "kept on file" for your convenience. You enter your email address and all of the fields are filled for you, including the last 4 digits of your credit card. All you have to do to make that purchase is click. In the purchaser's mind, One-Click purchasing speeds past the moment when you pull your credit card out of your wallet and have to read and enter the number. Brief as this moment might be, it still slows you down and gives you a minute to evaluate if you really want to make this purchase.

The Solution to One-Click

• You can reintroduce friction on any of the websites you use, from retail to food delivery platforms. Simply delete your saved credit card information from those sites and apps.  
• If you do most of your purchasing on your phone, you can delete the apps and force yourself to shop via your desktop. Apps are designed to be quick and easy -- open the app, make your selection, one-click and you're done. Using the website on your desktop or laptop requires you to be at your computer, navigate to the site, and then initiate a purchase.
• On many sites you can also enable Two-Step Verification or Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) through your account settings with each site. By necessitating a second form of verification that you are who you say you are, you introduce friction and slow each purchase down long enough to think through.

Predictive Algorithms and Retail Surveillance

This borderlines on creepy. I'm sure you've experienced this. You spend some time on one website looking at products. Then for the next several days or weeks you notice ads for those products or very similar ones popping up wherever you browse or read online. You can be on a news website, and the ads that reflect your previous window shopping will pop up. Beyond surveillance, e-commerce algorithms track how long and fast you scroll and the time you're online. If the scrolling is taking place at a time studied to coincide with average consumer low willpower, targeted and highly personalized ads will display right at that moment.

The Solution to Digital Big Brother

• Turn off "Personalized Ads" in Google, Apple, and social media settings.
• Clear browser cookies frequently or use one of the privacy-focused browsers like DuckDuckGo or Brave.
• Resist the temptation to "heart" or save items to a digital wishlist. Indicating that you like these items opens the floodgates to targeted ads that say "price dropped" or "only 1 left!"

The Subscription-ization of Everything

What can't you get on subscription these days? We get our rancher-direct beef with a subscription plan. The plan allows us to get a better price than if we ordered when we wanted more. We do buy more beef than we would otherwise, likely spending more overall on meat for our household. Subscriptions rely on the "set and forget" mentality. The one positive, though, is we share the extra beef with our son and daughter-in-law. 

My husband and I don't subscribe to any paid streaming services, but one of our daughters does from time to time. Many streaming subscribers find they "super-watch" shows or movies in the first month, and then the amount of watching dwindles until they aren't even using the subscription in some months. And yet, they are paying for the availability of the service every month. 

Do you remember the height of the meal kit subscription boom? It seemed like a lot of folks were trying them out. And why not? It's convenient. They're delivered on a regular schedule. Everything has been pre-thought out for you. Oh, yeah -- the cost. On a strict financial basis, meal kits cost  about double what scratch-cooking from grocery store ingredients cost.

The Solution: The Burn and Rebuild Audit

This is a radical method for determining what you truly need for harmony in your life. It's a little bit like figuratively walking away from that shopping cart on Amazon to see if you truly want all of the items. Once the service is removed, it becomes obvious whether or not that subscription added value to your life.

• Instead of canceling one or two subscriptions at a time (if you have many), cancel only the non-essential ones. And remember, you get to decide what is essential and what is not.
• Then as you go, resubscribe individually when you find that the lack of that particular subscription is causing friction in your life.

Ultimately, mastering modern thrift is no longer just about clipping coupons or shopping special sales. In the digital age, we need to be aware of the engineered traps embedded into our online shopping. By reintroducing friction into our shopping experience and blindfolding the algorithms, we regain our consumer control. When we turn off the automated consumption machine, we save money, yes, but equally important, we gain peace of mind and financial clarity.

For those of us who pay for subscriptions, I want to put out a challenge to give a fair assessment to whether or not the subscriptions are adding value to your life. For those here who keep their credit info on sites where you shop for non-essentials, would withdrawing that info create a hardship for you, or would it improve your financial clarity? Do you ever ask yourself if all of this "convenience" is really benefitting us? And to clarify, I'm not anti-consumerism. I am pro-conscious choice consumerism.