Picture this:
You’re 45 years old, married, with three kids. You live in the suburbs of Washington DC, in a beautiful 5,000 square foot house that you just built last year. It looks like a home straight out of HGTV, filled with fine furniture and professionally handpicked decorations. In your backyard, there is a large pool with a diving board and slide. You can watch the kids swim as you sit beside your custom made fire pit. Every week you have a landscaping service visit to keep the yard in pristine condition. You also have maids come to clean the inside of the house.
Parked in the driveway is a 2018 Range Rover, 2017 Ford F-150, and an (older) 2015 Lexus. You figure you might have to trade that one in fairly soon, because you don’t want to run into any maintenance issues from owning an older vehicle. Your family has a membership to one of the nicest fitness centers in the area and also a membership to the local country club. You’ve got NFL season tickets to watch the Redskins play. You send your kids to a private school, because you want them to get the best possible education and get into the best colleges.
It’s the American Dream.
Picture this:
You wake up at 5:30AM to get ready for work. You had an awful night of sleep as you tossed and turned thinking about the presentation you would be giving to your boss and clients at 8AM. By 6:15, you leave the house. Your kids and spouse are still asleep, but you can’t wait around any longer if you want to beat the traffic into the city. You hop on the interstate to head to the office. Within five minutes you’ve come to a standstill—an accident has slowed traffic to a crawl. Your commute is already 45 minutes to begin with, and who knows how long this accident could delay your arrival. You arrive to the office 10 minutes before your presentation. Another nightmare commute, which unfortunately seems to grow more and more frequent.
The work day goes by in a blur. The hours are filled with phone calls from upset clients, fixing mistakes of subordinates, and getting yelled at by your boss for missing a key deadline. By 6:30pm, as you plan to head out to make it home for a late dinner with your family, you get a phone call. A client needs a report completed by tomorrow morning. Looks like another night of coming home past 9pm.
The rest of the week follows a similar pattern. Work is all-consuming as you work on a big project. You get to see your kids for only a couple of hours all week. They stay busy with sports practices and homework. Your spouse also works in the day and shuttles the kids around in the evenings. On Friday night you make it to your son’s basketball game—midway through the fourth quarter. Atleast Sunday will be better, you tell yourself. Going to a football game should be great family time together. Unfortunately, your boss calls on Saturday afternoon and says you need to pack your bags to catch a Sunday flight to visit a client in Boston. It looks like you’ll have to watch the game on your phone…
You haven’t been able to go to the gym or play golf in over a month. Week after week of grinding at work has left you worn down and exhausted. You feel as if you barely know your family, and you long for more than the one week of vacation you feel you can take each year. You want to quit.
But you can’t.
You still have $700k left on your mortgage. Your monthly car payments alone total over $3k. Your country club membership and private school tuition bills cost more than what most people make in a year. If you quit your job, you know your spouse’s job as a public school teacher won’t be enough to maintain your lifestyle. In less than 2 months, you’ll run out of money. You’re trapped.
It’s the American Nightmare.
What do you value?
Did you catch the fact that these two different descriptions are of the same person? What seems like success on the outside can be the furthest thing from it when you actually dig a little deeper. Keeping up with the Joneses, accumulating material possessions, and living in the biggest house possible are not the best methods to effectively produce happiness with money. What good is owning a giant pool if you never get to swim in it? What good is living in huge house if all it is used for is sleeping?
It’s really not the possessions that money can buy that bring happiness—it‘s the freedom. The freedom to quit your job and do something that makes less money but brings you enjoy. The freedom to take trips with your family. The freedom to not have to go to work on a Tuesday and instead go on a summer hike with your kids.
By living a simple, frugal life, free from the entrapments of American consumerism and excess, you can avoid getting caught in this metaphorical hamster wheel.
Why spend all of your time working for things you will never get to use? Spend time with friends and family instead. Go camping. Read books. Watch your daughter’s swim meet. Go fishing.
If you’re smart with your spending, you won’t be forced like so many Americans to waste so many hours and years of your life tied to a desk. I hope this blog will help convince you to be different and think differently.