Every working citizen is subject to purchasing goods which can emphasize his or her social status. As graduates actively search for employment and rapidly start their careers shortly after receiving a degree, they often tend to acquire costly assets that eventually become a burden. While there is a variety of encouraging factors for such behavior, the appropriate financial education, including understanding the origins of these decisions, can instill responsible spending at the beginning of a career.
While an individual can experience the pressure of the circumstances or social imposition, the result of an acquisition is always a certain form of satisfaction. As one study demonstrated, those citizens of a higher income are more satisfied in experiential expenses, and those with a lower income are more content with buying material goods (Lee, Hall, & Wood, 2018). The observations align with the case of the newly employed graduates, as they gain confidence by making expensive purchases during their adaptation to the process of earning money.
One right approach to encourage working citizens to spend rationally is to conduct financial literacy trainings. The youth mainly fail the personal budgeting tests, so the study advises focusing on the educating methods which form the respectful adolescents’ attitude to expenses (Totenhagen et al., 2015). The main advantage of acquiring an expensive asset like a house is a possible tax break (Monroy, 2016). At the same time, these breaks benefit only for the costly goods, while purchases of the newly employed are mostly of modest prices and thus cannot become beneficial (Monroy, 2016). Workers often neglect such details, and, to prevent the undesirable costs, they should be well-educated on personal budgeting.
To conclude, employees often face the challenge of making expensive acquirements at the beginning of their careers. Such acquisitions mostly cause material satisfaction, as new workers need to strengthen their social status. While such decisions may seem compelling, as due to possible tax breaks, the employed should be financially well-trained to rationally plan their expenditures.
References
Lee, J. C., Hall, D. L., & Wood, W. (2018). Experiential or material purchases? Social class determines purchase happiness. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1031-1039.
Monroy, M. (2016). “The more you buy, the bigger your tax break”: Why the Ninth Circuit in Voss v. Commissioner erred in interpreting the debt limitations of the home mortgage interest deduction. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 49(3), 729-750.
Totenhagen, C. J., Casper, D. M., Faber, K. M., Bosch, L.A., Wiggs, C. B., & Borden, L. M. (2015). Youth financial literacy: A review of key considerations and promising delivery methods. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 36(2), 167-191.