Keeping your sanity intact in sales season

In the UK, gross government debt for 2012/13 is forecast to be £1,412 billion. At the end of March 2009, it stood at around £796 billion. Our debt now runs at around 73 percent of GDP - not as high as other countries like Italy and Japan, but still a cause for concern.

Most of us find the rapid, seemingly unstoppable increase in national debt disturbing. What kind of inheritance, we ask, are we leaving to future generations?

Yet this tendency to run up debt while living on the never-never starts at a much more personal level.

It's almost axiomatic that, in a democracy, people get the governments they deserve. Freely elected governments tend to reflect the priorities of those who placed them in power.

If we can't see beyond a consumption lifestyle on a personal level, if we can't recognize the benefits of frugality, we'll never vote for politicians who have the willpower needed to keep debt in check on a national scale.

There are two factors at work in our fondness for spending, and especially spending on credit. The first is the digital revolution, which affects everything from music, books and movies to money.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others are attempting to bring as many of our real-world experiences as possible under a digital umbrella. They're doing so not because they're driven by purely humanitarian goals; their motivation is the fact that our personal data is worth money.

In the age of Big Data, predictive analysis and location-based marketing, personal information is the new global currency.

One part of this revolution is the digital economy and the increasing digitisation of cash. We think of money less and less as a physical thing to hold in our hands; it is becoming more and more an ethereal commodity, to be sent from one computer to another without ever having a physical form.

Digital money has many advantages, but it has two major downsides: it is an easier target for fraudsters and it has no weight, no substance; you can't tell when you've exhausted it.

Not so long ago you could tell when your money was running out because your wallet was getting lighter by the minute. Money that's reduced to the ones and zeros of binary code is ethereal and much easier to lose track of.

The second factor feeding our taste for spending and living on credit, is the strong existentialist, instant-gratification streak running through our culture.