The Millionaire (is not living) Next Door
“Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.” — Erma Bombeck
Last week, I mentioned how some women use cash as a way to hide (from their partners) how much they spend on personal indulgences. Scott Medintz at CNNMoney.com reported on a survey that revealed how people hide the truth about money and not just to their spouses.
The article called Secrets, Lies and Money asserts that, “Outside of marriage, most of us claim we don’t lie about our money as much as we just keep quiet about it. In fact, these days people are just as uncomfortable talking about money as they are about sex: Half of the survey takers said they consider money a sensitive topic. Far fewer said the same about politics or religion.”
“While we may be shy about disclosing our financial situation, however, we’re still intensely concerned about what others may think of it. About three out of every 10 people surveyed admit that they have misrepresented their professional or financial success to family or friends.”
According to JJ Jordon, gay men aren’t any different. He writes, “I believe that gay guys are particularly prone to the ‘keeping up appearances‘ syndrome. Gay men just seem to really, deeply worry about what their peers think of them – whether it’s how they dress, their physical appearance, or their financial situation.”
“In the case of finances, keeping up appearances can be very dangerous. Instead of truly striving for financial security by avoiding consumer debt and paying down mortgage debt, many gay men feel compelled to ‘show off’ their relative ‘wealth’ by purchasing cars and clothes and homes and trips and all kinds of things they can’t afford.”
Kathleen Gurney, CEO of Financial Psychology says, “Americans often think their neighbors and friends have much more than they do and they’re the ones living a sham but there’s a very good chance that their friends and neighbors are in the same situation.”
There’s a lot of pressure to keep up a successful image. Shira Boss the author of Green with Envy: Why Keeping Up with the Joneses is Keeping Us in Debt writes, “We convince ourselves that our problems are ours alone, and we spend so much of our time hiding our angst, which causes more stress. What I learned is that everybody struggles with issues around money, nobody is completely happy and comfortable — and knowing that is a huge relief. We feel less alone.”
Meanwhile back to the CNNMoney survey: “It’s encouraging that many who took the survey do recognize that keeping money secrets–from others as well as themselves–can have consequences. Roughly one out of five say their deceptions caused them to make bad investment decisions. Nearly a quarter worry that keeping secrets hurts their relationships. Almost one out of three see that some secrets may prevent them from reaching their financial goals.”
Laura Rowley at Yahoo Finance concludes, “To overcome money envy, we need to figure out our purpose, identify what we love and value most, and make our money obey our values by setting specific financial goals. Because if we achieve the things we value most, we’ll be less riveted by what the neighbors are doing.”
“This isn’t a one-time exercise, but a lifelong struggle. The Joneses, the media, and American culture will forever seduce us to betray what is genuinely meaningful for what is comfortable, beautiful, and enviable.”
So open up about money and feel free at any time to join the conversation at Queercents.
Appearances matter, to me, more than I want them to. The partner and I both insist that we hate keeping up with other people or maintaining appearances, but that pressure gets very difficult to overcome. I love our free secondhand furniture while we’re lounging around at home, but when company comes over, it doesn’t look so good anymore.
I do appreciate the fact that I don’t feel envious of neighbors or assume they are doing better than we are even when I see their nice homes, nice furniture, nice clothes, and nice cars. No, what I see is huge potential for debt and teetering on a financial edge – maybe all this pf reading has jaded me a bit. 🙂 I do want many of the same things (well, my level of nice is more practical), when I can afford them and we’re just not there yet.
I had to chuckle when I read this site. I wrote a book;entitled, why gay men do what they do”, an inside look at gay culture. I wrote a chapter exactly what the clever author of this article is all about. My chapter is also entitled; “keeping up with the Jones” as well. I coined a phrase that people get a kick out of because of it’s truthfulness. I call this phenomenon that many gay people fall into, “competitive nesting”. It is about how gay men in particular, at higher incidence than their straight brotheres. They tend to spend exhorbitant amount of time, energy and often money they don’t have in order to give the impression of success. They so often go way over the top, giving their homes an overly fussed over look. They will often over excerize and put on display just about everything they have ever bought in their lives. They wrongly believe that more is better, not less is more. It’s all for show. They can be over sensitive if somone comes over and they don’t fuss over what a “FABULOUS” home they have. The premise of my book is that many of these behaviors are merely the result of extreme insecurity. Since they feel worthless themselves they will wrongly place worth in extraneous things such as spending to much time and money as I mentioned on their homes. As comical as I sometimes see it, it in fact actually very sad because it is born out of sadness and a s sense of worthlessness. Thank you, aaron http://www.aaronjasonsilver.com
I find that I’d rather save up and buy one really nice whatever (furniture, item of clothing) instead of a ton of the currently fashionable whatever charged on plastic money.
Having an intentionally simpler life has gotten me out of that ‘Jonesing rat race’ once and for all (I hope).