Experiment to addiction: How the occasional fancy purchases can quickly turn into habit, pushing you to the brink of financial crisis

The dangers of these social markers is that they tend to creep into our mandatory spends. They slowly become a part of our identity and preference. They also create rigidities about how we dress up, how we look and behave, where we eat, and whom we socialise with. Each of these habits is designed to exclude the world around us and create a bubble in which we believe we must belong.