I confess, sometimes I wonder too. One glance at Facebook during spring break, and you'll see what appears to be the entire world on vacation in either Disneyland or Hawaii this year. And those of us sitting at home are left to wonder, how can everyone else afford that? I mean, if I had $5,000 sitting around, I'd be on my way to Hawaii too, wouldn't you?
Lot's of people have a bigger house than me.
Lot's of people have newer cars than me.
Lot's of people go out to eat more, go skiing, or go to Europe more than I do.
What's up with that?
When I see these differences, I start to wonder why. Why do other people have and do things that I don't?
In a quest for understanding, I start to make assumptions. And many of them are not pretty.
Maybe they work too many hours and neglect their children in order to earn more money.
Maybe they are deeply in debt and just living on borrowed money.
Maybe they are just plain lucky.
It's human nature to try to understand the world around us. And natural curiosity is a very useful tool, but this kind of thinking isn't curiosity, it's jealousy. And jealousy is never a good thing. It's hurtful to you, and it's hurtful to the target of your jealousy.
Imagine if you had worked really hard for something and someone else just dismissed your accomplishment as being lucky (or worse, gotten by some less than virtuous means). In fact I'm sure there are a lot of things in your life that others could be jealous of. Would you want them to dismiss your hard work and sacrifice so easily? Not only is it hurtful, but it is completely counter-productive.
I once had someone comment that they couldn't afford a cell phone (but I could) because they chose to be a stay at home mom (but I didn't). Little did they know that I was the sole provider for my family at that time. I was only working because my husband was in school. I gave up being a stay at home mom of fifteen years in order to support my husband. We were desperately poor, and the cell phone was just part of a leftover contract from back when my husband was steadily employed. I also had someone suggest that I only had a college degree because my parents paid for it. Apparently the two summers I spent working twelve-hour night shifts at the paper mill, the thousands of toilets I scrubbed on campus, or the scholarships I worked hard to earn meant nothing. In their jealous eyes I didn't earn a degree, I was handed it.
I could name a million more examples (both that I have been the victim of or even the perpetrator of). These types of comments are incredibly hurtful. More importantly, they are completely unhelpful.
There are a lot of people who are blessed with material wealth through no effort of their own. There are even more people out there who are currently enjoying material wealth through the beautiful snare of credit cards. But you aren't those people, so don't worry about them. Let's focus on the type of people we want to be. We want to be the people who are enjoying the things we want, based on our own hard work and sacrifice. Right?
So instead of sitting back and wondering how people do it, why not ask? Obviously you can't just ask anybody. Money is a taboo subject that can only be discussed among good friends. So since we are all good friends here, I'm going to tell you how I do it. Now, don't misunderstand, I don't have a glamorous, exciting life, but I still have things others do not. In the spirit of full disclosure, I want to tell you how I've gotten some of the things I have. These are things, that no matter how common they may seem, others have still expressed to me their jealousy over them.
In 1998 my husband and I went to Hawaii. We used our tax return (more about that here) to buy the tickets, and put the rest of the trip on a credit card (not our wisest choice).
That year we also bought our first house (a 600 sq ft mobile home). It was cheaper than renting in the area where we lived, and larger than most of the apartments we could afford. We bought it with no down payment, and when we finally left that house six years later, we owed more than we the initial price of the house. Still many of our friends were insanely jealous of us that we owned our own home so young.
In 1999, we bought a new-ish car. We had very little money, but we had excellent credit at the time. We used the bulk of our meager tax returns to pay it off in the next three years. (If you are saying to yourself: I don't get a tax return so this doesn't apply to me, great! That means you probably make more money than we do, so instead of waiting for a tax return you could actually be saving money each month! Or maybe you are saying All our tax returns go to pay regular bills or for sudden emergencies like car repairs. I have regular bills too, but no matter how poor we are we don't use one time money to pay monthly expenses. I have emergencies too, but that's what our emergency fund is for.)
In 2002-2004 our kids took regular dance lessons and attended preschool. Preschool was accomplished through creating and working my own preschool co-op. Dance lessons were paid through a series of non-monetary trades (more about that here and here) made between friends.
In 2009, shortly after my husband lost his job, we started our girls in dance lessons again. We gave up TV and eating out to afford the lessons (read more about that here).
That year we also bought a new-ish truck. We used an insurance pay out from a car accident to put a large down payment on the truck. Then paid double payments for a year (dispite having income that the government deemed well below the poverty level) to pay it off completely.
We own a beautiful piano. We bought it with the $1000 inheritance left to me by my grandmother.
I have a bachelor's degree. As I mentioned earlier it was paid for by working long hours at really gross jobs. My husband's bachelor's degree was paid for through waiting tables and pell grants. His master's degree was completely financed through loans that we now have the privilege of paying back over the next ten million years.
Right now we have a goal to one day take our kids to Hawaii (my husband lived there for two years, so it's a place that has special significance to him). So we have a coconut monkey we bought on our last trip to Hawaii (16 years ago), and we have been saving all our loose change and stuffing it into the monkey all this time (more about families saving together).
Obviously there are thousands of other sacrifices and purchases that could be listed here, but I think this is a good enough sample to make a point. Life is about choices, and these are some of the things we choose to do.
- We take advantage of extra money. We save even when saving seems impossible. We always put our tax return toward big ideas.
- We have found that sometimes the non-traditional path is cheaper than the norm.
- Doing things ourselves or trading talents with others has gotten us things we couldn't normally afford.
- Sometimes we just got lucky. Sometimes others bless our lives through their generosity.
- We have given up a lot of things to get the things we wanted more.
The first and the last on this list are probably most important. We use our money wisely and choose to put our money towards the things that matter most to us.
This leads me to the most important thing I want to tell you today:
You can have just about anything you want,
but
you can't have everything you want.
This one bit of information can make all the difference in your life. You can really have just about anything you want. You can live in a big house. You can drive a new car. You can go skiing every weekend. You can hire a maid. You can go skydiving. You can vacation in Florida. You can do what you want. But you have to make a choice. You might already have $5,000 sitting in the bank, so why aren't you using it to fly to Hawaii right now? Because it's not your priority. Your priorities are what determine what you will have and what you will not. It may be a matter of saving the money you have now, to get what you want later. Or you may have to give up something else in order to save the money to do what you want. Is that Christmas bonus going to buy you a new dishwasher or weekend at the spa? That big house you want may mean living further outside the city than you'd like. That new car may mean working overtime for a year or two to pay it off more quickly. That trip to Disney World may mean you drop $20 bucks into a jar every time you resist the urge to eat out.
Life is about choices. What is it that you want? You can let it be a dream, or you can make it a priority. How do other people afford the things they have? Priorities. For good or bad, they have put that thing at the top of their priority list. So if that's what you want, you'll need to decide what you are willing to do/give up/trade/sacrifice for it.
Don't spend your time wishing you had what you don't. Decide what you want. Set a goal. And go get it.
Good luck!
Marcia
P.S. We'd love to hear what you accomplished! What have you done to reach your goals?
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