Money and affection ― “Buy only what you need”―

This time, Inamori* spoke about the above motto to Seiwajuku workshop members. What Inamori said is quoted with “”. 

“When purchasing goods and raw materials, you should not easily buy more than you need, simply thinking about the economy of scale. Buying more than you need is a waste of money. For example, even if you can temporarily purchase a large amount at a low price, this will require a warehouse to store inventory, and will incur extra expenses such as interest for those inventories and even additional cost to change the product specifications. We also have to consider the risk that those spares become completely unusable for some reason. After all, manufacturers should be devoted to producing goods and materials, managing inventory is the fundamental attitude for us to be manufactured. The idea is to buy only what you need when you need them.”

This is the principle of “Buy what you need” that Mr. Inamori always tells us. This seems to be against the economy of scale, but Mr. Inamori says, “Even if it costs a little more, the benefits exceed additional costs. “ Considering the long-term benefits, as Mr. Inamori explains here, this principle allows us to save expenses such as storage fees and inventory interest which come from having extra inventories. However, I feel we can find the following much more fundamental benefits in this principle.

Let me explain a bit more for each one of the above. 

1 Money is not our value benchmark

First of all, let’s think about why people prefer bulk purchase. This is because they want to believe they did the best buy, in other words, they were cleverer than other standard buyers in terms of cost management. This mindset is driven by the idea that the richer, the happier.  Therefore, we must change our value standard which has been driven by money or other  financial status. If this value driver changes, the criteria for judging what is considered precious will also be affected. It’s not easy, but I think it’s important not to put importance on money as the criteria to measure the quality of our life. 

2 Think about what you really need 

When buying something, it’s important to think about whether you really need it. Even if it’s one pencil or one notebook, we should ask ourselves :

Those questions are worth thinking about. 

Some psychologist consider money as something that measures love. When people feel a lack of affection, they try to test how much the counterpart care them by asking the counterpart to spend money for them. For instance, when children take money from their parents’ wallets or ask their parents for expensive toys, this is not because they want the money or the toys, but because they are trying to ascertain how much their parents care about them. 

Even in a workplace, I think it is good to think about where and why this purchase request comes from. There must be the same situation we have seen for children: asking to buy something as the proof of how much the company (parents) take care of the staff (children).  I think it is important to think about whether the staff feels a lack of affection in their mind.

3 Change our subliminal mindset 

The other reason why people do “bulk purchase” is a sense of anxiety. People unconsciously feel that what if the materials run out and we are in the most problematic situation. Such anxiety embedded into our subliminal mind has always driven our purchases. So we have to change our subconscious mind.

To change our subconscious mind, paradoxically, we need to recognize that we are feeling anxious. When we are about to buy something extra, we need to stop and ask ourselves whether we are thinking “just in case…” or “under the contingency”. By doing this, the anxiety that we always feel will gradually appear at a conscious level, so we will not unconsciously buy more than we really want.

In conclusion, to put this into practice, we should think about what we need, and get such subliminal anxiety placed under our conscious area. It’s a small thing, but by reviewing this in our daily life, I think our mindset towards materials will be purified. 

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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