Oscar Wilde said that indulgence was the luxury of the poor, while penury (or stinginess) was the luxury of the rich.

It seems to me that spending habits are backward sometimes. Claude Hopkins, the old advertising genius (he wrote Scientific Advertising) once wrote that you have to market luxury goods to the poor, not to the rich, since it was the poor that mainly bought them.

The psychology, as it was spelled out by Hopkins, was that poor people face deprivation constantly, so if they can afford certain small indulgences, they will take advantage of that oasis in an otherwise bleak, penny-pinching environment. The Avon company (ding-dong) survived and even thrived during the Great Depression by selling lipstick and small containers of perfume. Luxury items, sure. But affordable treats that brightened the day of housewives who were trying to figure out how to make meat loaf without the meat.