Ah, the Jones’. You know the ones; they’re trendy, and fun, and always have the latest and greatest gadgets, and they have 2 new cars in the driveway, and their house looks like a decorating magazine just featured them on the cover, and they take 2 trips a year, and they just bought a cottage or a boat or both, and they eat out all the time at the newest over-priced talk-of-the-town places, and she would never dream of wearing the same evening gown twice, and she gets her hair and nails done regularly, and they both have memberships at the trendiest gym, and their kids only wear trendy brand names, and, and, and...
Oh, we LOVE the Jones’, don’t we? They’ve got it ALL, and we want to be just like them. And they know it. They LOVE that we envy them and they make us feel like if we don’t spend like they do that we’re boring and cheap.
The truth? They’re drowning in debt. And they want us to do the same so they can justify their situation as being the norm.
How do I know this? Because we’ve had Jones-like moments. We’ve made huge purchases when the money was nowhere to be found. We justified the behaviour as normal and “everybody does it”. We weren’t rocking any fashion trends for clothes or cars, but we certainly took our share of vacations, had an RV in the driveway, built a new house, and owned lots of “stuff”.
My A-HA! moment came when a friend asked me how we did it. She’s like, “How do you own all that stuff with only one income?” My honest answer was, “Credit cards.” I want to thank my friend because that conversation was the catalyst for changing my family’s future. We had racked up and paid down our credit cards 2 other times, so I never broke a sweat when the debt started piling up again, but that conversation made me take a closer look. The credit cards were up to $70,000! That’s the day I decided enough was enough.
This blog is about celebrating the anti-Jones’ out there. Come back weekly for new info on every aspect of your money. Let’s pay down our debt! Let’s save up some money! Let’s invest our money so we make more money! And THEN let’s make those big purchases! Let’s be boring and cheap together!! Who’s in?