Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Is Not Keeping Up with the Joneses Boring?

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We’ve been on a journey to pay off our debt for 3.5 years now.  At first, we were gazelle intense, but then I burned out from working too hard, so we slowed down on the debt repayment.

Last year, we moved to Arizona from Illinois, so our money became much tighter as we faced unexpected moving expenses.  (Aren’t there always unexpected expenses when making such a long move?)

To make matters worse, in the first 3.5 months of 2015, we’ve faced $5,000 in unexpected car repairs and dental bills.

The good news is that even though we haven’t made significant debt repayment progress over the last year, we’ve been able to pay for all of these most recent expenses in cash, without going further into debt.

Boring JonesesBasically, each year for the last 3.5 years, our budget has become tighter and tighter.  We’ve definitely NOT kept up with the Joneses.

Yet, we’ve not found this type of life boring.

We Appreciate Splurges More

If anything, living this way makes us appreciate a “treat” that we used to take for granted.  For instance, I homeschool my kids, and my daughters recently completed preschool and kindergarten.  They were both very excited about moving on to kindergarten and first grade, respectively, so my husband and I decided to take the family out for a treat.

We went to our favorite restaurant.  We went for breakfast, so the bill would be cheaper, and we used a $25 gift card that we had gotten at Christmas and saved.  Because we had not gone out to eat in about five months, the kids were beyond thrilled.  All of us enjoyed the meal greatly.

Because we haven’t gone out to eat in so long, doing so was a special treat.

Before we got on a budget and started paying down debt, we often went out to eat three or four times a week.  Honestly, because we did it so often, going out to eat had become boring.  Now, because we don’t do it very often, we appreciate the meal when we do go out.

Because we have simplified our lives, we are able to enjoy special occasions much more.

We Have Plenty of Fun—For Free

Just because we aren’t keeping up with the Jones and are on a budget doesn’t mean we aren’t having fun.  Just this week, my mom was in town for a visit.  We took her to a national park, which had free admission that day.  We watched artisans make homemade tortillas and weave baskets.  We listened to a local band, and we got an excellent tour of the site.  Before heading home, we enjoyed a picnic lunch on the grounds.

Last month we went to the Tucson Festival of Books.  There was so much to do (for free!) that we stayed over five hours.  We could have stayed even longer.

Going on a tight budget and deciding NOT to keep up with the Jones can be difficult at first.  Now, however, we’ve done it for so many years that we find living this way actually improves our quality of life.

 

Keeping Up With the Smiths

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Keeping up with the Joneses is bad.  We know that.  From a financial perspective, we spend a great deal of our time overcoming the green monster called envy in order to keep our lives in some semblance of financial order.  We know the Joneses down the street with their big, fancy new SUV.  We see them going on long family vacations.  And we know the guy that mows their lawn.  But, we also know that there’s a pretty high probability that they still owe a ton of money on that SUV.  That that family vacation likely was financed through a credit card.  Their entire financial life depends on them keeping their well-paying jobs.

Forget the Joneses

I’d like to talk about another family.  The Smiths.  You don’t know them.  We don’t talk about them like we do the Joneses.  Why don’t we?  Because, outwardly, their lives are nothing to be envious of.  They don’t own a big house on a double lot.  They don’t drive a brand new Escalade.  Their family vacations consist of weekend trips to state parks or trips to visit family a couple of counties over.  Outwardly, they may even seem a bit downtrodden.  They may seem (GASP!) a bit poor.

Sometimes they are.  Sometimes, they are truly victims of their circumstance, or their poor financial choices along the way.  But, for every one of those families, there’s at least two that aren’t poor.  They have well paying jobs.  They have money in the bank.  And they occasionally barbeque a steak on the cheap grill they have on their back deck.  It’s those Smiths I’d like to talk about.

It’s the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch Out For

Why don’t we know the Smiths?  Because we live in a society that is enamored of our celebrity.  We hang on every word that that famous athlete, or famous actress says.  We try and model our lives after theirs.  They live a glamorous life, full of flashing photography, red carpets, and any number of endorsement deals.

Keeping up with the Smiths

Who wouldn’t want to be like that?  Short of being famous, we decide that we’ll see how close we can get.  The bank doesn’t turn us down for that big house, big car, or vacation to the same beach that the celebrities hang out on.  Maybe we’ll even get to see one of them!

But, it’s the Smiths we should know.  We should know people who live their lives responsibly within their means.  We should know people who live for more than having our fellow neighbors think about how rich we are, and how rich our lives must be.  We should be the Smiths.  We should be the people who drive the reliable older car without the flashy rims and booming sound system.  We should be the people who live in the smaller house that we try and repair ourselves.

Society may push us towards that Joneses sort of lifestyle.  After all, what would become of some of the companies if we stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses and stopped buying all their luxury goods?  What would the news and tabloids cover if we weren’t constantly buying their rags in order to find out what sort of clothes the princes and princesses of some foreign country were wearing this spring?

Shiny Facades, Crumbling Foundations

All around us, there are Smiths.  We don’t notice them, and we rarely get to know them.  We’re surrounded by the Joneses, and the shiny facades of businesses and economies that are driven by their reckless spending.  But, under those shiny facades is a crumbling foundation.  The economy of the world is on shaky ground.  We saw just how shaky it really was in 2008.  When the housing market crashed, it very nearly brought the entire world economy with it.  Luckily, the economy was strong enough at the time to take a beating.  It wasn’t strong enough to bounce right back.  It’s been a long slog back to where we were.  We aren’t even back there yet.  There are still parts of the world that are hurting economically.

Imagine, for a moment, if we rebuilt that economy, not on the sands of bailouts and extended unemployment benefits, and instead built it on the bedrock of hard work and frugality that got us where we were in the first place.  Imagine if we had seen the folly of our loose spending ways and tightened our belts, stuck to our budgets, and started building an economy that doesn’t shake and quiver at the smallest rise in unemployment, or the slightest miss in an earnings report?

What if, instead of running around willy-nilly chasing the lifestyle of the Joneses, we were calmly working ourselves into the stable economy of the Smiths?  What if we all didn’t have wait for our next paycheck to buy gas because our last paycheck went to our mortgage and car payments?  What if we were able to fill a tank of gas from the cash in our bank account and know that we still had our emergency funds to help us along should a real emergency come along?

We can.  We can bring our spending in line with our earning.  We can sell the fancy car that we don’t need.  We can downsize our house to something that we can afford.  Sure, the dependable used car you buy might not have as much chrome as the fancy one.  It might not have the same heated seats.  And the house you downsize to might not have a walk-in closet, or a jacuzzi bath tub.  I’ll let you in on a little secret.  You don’t need them.  They’re luxuries.  You only think that it’s normal to have those things because the Joneses told you it was.

We should be keeping up with the Smiths.

We can be the Smiths.

The Joneses and Jealousy

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We spend a lot of time, while talking about finances, talking about the Joneses. We often talk about how most of us make the mistake of trying to keep up with the Joneses by buying cars that are new, houses that are bigger, and generally spending our way into oblivion.  What we seldom talk about is what really is motivating us to keep up with them.

The Joneses and Acceptance

The reasoning that most people assume is really being put to work is that of acceptance.  And, surely, it does play a part.  Humans are, at our most basic, a tribal animal.  We’ve long been conditioned to be that way.  Historically, we lived in tribes, and what was good for the tribe was also good for the individual.  If any individual of the tribe stepped out of the accepted norms, it was likely to get that individual killed, or other members of the tribe killed.

In more modern times, we talk about it taking a village to raise a child.  We talk about how we’re all “in this together.”  We, as children, are thrown into sub-tribes (classes in school) where we quickly learn that it’s easier to get along with the majority of the other children and not be one of the children that’s ostracized for being a bit “weird.”  As we get older, that need for acceptance grows.  We get to college, and the further splitting of our peers into sub-tribes begins.  Graduates from college quickly find that their college tribe has broken up, and they must find a new tribe.  We begin in the place we spend the most time; at work.  In true tribal fashion, we quickly begin attempting to appease those with the most power in order to gain favor, and thus, not be cast out from the tribe.  We call it getting fired.

And, in trying to appease those with the most power (perceived, real, or otherwise), we learn to buy cars that are similar to theirs.  We learn to buy houses that are as big as theirs.  We learn to eat at the same restaurants, drink the same drinks, and hang out in the same social circles.  All because we have a deep rooted desire to be accepted in our “tribe.”  And because we know that humans have a natural attraction to people who are most like us.  We accept them.

The Joneses and Jealousy

The issue of tribal acceptance is almost a genetic issue.  It’s been conditioned into the human psyche for centuries.  But, there’s another, equally powerful reason that we all try and keep up with the Joneses.  Jealousy.

Masquerade BallThe very same urge that we feel to try and gain the acceptance of those with power (again, perceived, real, or otherwise), also is driven by jealousy.  Survival depends on our acceptance.  And our acceptance is given by those we see as having the power.  And the power we see them with is one that we’d love to wield.  For two reasons.  One, we want the power because those with the power aren’t thrown out of the tribe.  And, two, because those with the power have the ability to throw out those they are enemies with.

It’s a story we’ve seen played out in the news many times.  Some guy (or girl) climbs the corporate ladder and finds him or herself at the top (or near it).  Years later, they have some event that brings them down.  Corruption, greed, or some other malfeasance.  On their way down, we start hearing stories about how all those years they were at the top, they were taking the ideas of those below them and claiming them for their own. Their friends got all the promotions. People who disagreed with them would suddenly find themselves the subject of an internal inquiry and then were summarily fired.  In short, they held the power.  They dismissed their enemies from the tribe.  And, while they eventually fell from power, they wielded it to their advantage for a long time.

Few among us haven’t tasted the desire to have that power.  Whether we intend to use it in a bad manner or not, we’ve felt it.  That desire to have the power.  That jealousy of those that do have it.  And, through our jealousy (and need for acceptance), we learn to buy cars that are similar to the car that those that do have the power have.  And we learn to buy homes that are as big as theirs.  And we learn to eat at the same restaurants, drink the same drinks, and hang out in the same social circles as they do.  All because, you guessed it, we have a deep rooted desire to be accepted in our “tribe.” And what better way to guarantee our acceptance than to be the one who does the deciding?

Replacing the Joneses

Whether it’s through a desire for acceptance, or jealousy of their power, we try to be the Joneses.  We try to be the ones with power.  I’ve felt it.  I’ve done it.  Sometimes I managed to accomplish it too.  Maybe not financially, but socially.  Heck, I’ve still got some of the debt to prove it.  And, I’d bet that there are plenty of you who do too.

Replace the Joneses.  – click here to tweet this.

The only real cure, as many of my fellow personal finance bloggers will attest, is to give up chasing the Joneses.  To stop trying to gain their acceptance, and to let the jealousy go.  But, something that deeply ingrained into our human nature isn’t easy to do.  I’ve gone through times where I’ve done really well with not caring what the Joneses are doing.  And the next thing I know, I walk around the corner, and there’s one of them.  And it comes flooding back in a momentary flash of natural instinct.  Before I know it, I’m looking at big fancy houses that I don’t need, eating at restaurants all the time, and buying gadgets like crazy.  And then my senses return, I realize what I’m doing, and the remorse comes.  Remorse for forgetting that I don’t need that big fancy house.  Remorse at the money I’ve squandered.  And remorse at the lack of will power I displayed.  In times like that, I try to remember that it’s only natural to feel those pangs of jealousy and the need for acceptance.  And I try again.

Giving up the Joneses isn’t an easy thing to do.  In fact, it’s nearly impossible to do.  What you’ve got to do is to replace them instead.  Get a different tribe.  That ladder climbing, socialite-ing, money spending tribe isn’t the only one out there!  Just like our ancestors, the modern human race is divided into many tribes.  Find one you want to be in.  Find one whose leaders are living the life you really want to be living, and gain your acceptance there.  Surround yourself with people who have the same passions as you do, and make them your tribe.

Replace the Joneses.

img credit: Jaguar Ahlan! Masquerade Ball 2012 by jaguarcarsmena on Flickr.