If your high school class in economics started you on the road
to hating any talk about Gross Domestic Product, inflation, or recession, then
first of all you probably had a dull teacher.
But it also means that you didn’t learn the more exciting—dare I say
risqué?—aspects of economics, like looking at underwear. Well, not looking at underwear itself, and I
certainly don’t mean looking at people in underwear. I’m talking about sales of underwear, specifically as tracked in the so-called Men’s
Underwear Index, or MUI.
The MUI is an unofficial but very real gauge of the health
of the U.S.
The MUI was famously followed by no less than Alan Greenspan,
former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
I don’t think he ever testified before Congress about the MUI, but it’s
hard to know for sure. He always talked
in the five-dollar words of arcane economics language when he was
testifying. (I can hear him now: “Sales of covering commodities for critical
national assets ticked upward in the third quarter…” And there wasn’t a single Congressman who
understood what he said or who asked what he meant.)
Regardless of its value as a national marker for recession
or recovery, the MUI can teach some valuable lessons at the personal financial
level.
First, when a couple sits down to make their household
budget, sorting necessities from wants is a critical first step. While they might agree that “clothing”, as a
category, is a necessity, a woman is likely going to want to only wear
undergarments in good repair. She will
list that as a necessity. The man? His natural inclination when money is tight
is probably to pare down the clothing allotment and keep wearing that pair of
boxers whose elastic barely holds them up, regardless of mom’s words ringing in
his ears from childhood, “Suppose you get hurt at school and have to go to the
hospital and everyone there sees your tattered underpants!?” Replacing holey boxers is a very low priority
to him. So just be aware of your mate’s
different priorities and be a little flexible when you make that household
budget.
Second, most fathers learn a self-sacrificial spirit if and
when they experience financial hard times at any point in their life. If the man in your life has that quality,
know that giving him practical gifts is not a bad idea at all. While a woman might ordinarily cringe if
given a blender on Mother’s Day, dad will likely appreciate the thoughtfulness
of someone who took even his used power tool with the frayed cord (but
otherwise in good condition) to get it re-wired so he wouldn’t have to keep
wrapping it in electrical tape and take his life into his hands with every
household project in which he used it.
Finally, adjusting your purchasing choices (and timing of
those purchases) is a real-life reaction to how you perceive your personal
financial situation. And when economists
take the choices of millions of others like you and condense them into
something like the MUI, they can get a pretty good picture of how the public
at-large sees the state of the economy.
That’s a lot more telling than having a politician preach to us how well
the economy is recovering. The economy—economics—is
personal, and that should be the first lesson in Economics 101.
So ladies, taking a peek into your man’s underwear drawer
might tell you something about where he sees the economy going. You might even make investment choices based
on what you see there, though I would be very reluctant to go that far. At the very least, see if he could use some
new boxers. Remember, he probably needs
a fashion consultant as much as he needs help crafting the family budget. Be there for him.
Happy Father’s Day.
Until next time,
Roger
“As bad as you are,
you still know how to give good gifts to your children. But your heavenly Father is even more ready
to give good things to people who ask.” Matthew 7:11 CEV
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