How To Stop Keeping Up With the Joneses For Good

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Today, I want to tell you a little story about how I stopped keeping up with the Joneses like I was trying to avoid the plague.

My story starts with me sitting on the couch, enjoying a few minutes to myself after a long morning with two toddlers and finally getting a little peace and quiet. 

As I settled back into my couch with my phone in hand, finally catching up on all the day’s notifications, I happened to catch sight of my wedding rings. 

Good story, right?

More important than the story, though, is the epiphany that came out of it. 

Keeping up with the Joneses origin

According to Wikipedia, the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” originated from a comic strip of the same name way back in 1913 (who knew it was that old of an expression!), featuring a man trying to keep up with his neighbors.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how many of us laugh at the concept? We’ll say something like “well that’s a silly ambition – why would you need to compete with or try to keep up with your neighbors?”

Every single one of us, every day, is trying to “keep up with the Joneses.” And we don’t even realize it.

“No,” you argue, “I don’t care about what my neighbors drive, or the new clothes my co-worker bought. I’m happy with what I have and I don’t compare myself to others.”

But is that the actual truth, or just something you like to tell yourself?

I’m sure there are exceptions out there and those of you who are, I applaud you. 

For the rest of you, I have some questions for you:

• Think of your cell phone. How old is it? And how long do you plan on keeping it before you replace it?
• How old is your car? How long do you plan on keeping it? When and why did you buy your current car in the first place?
• How big is your house? Do you feel like you want to buy a bigger house? 
• And ladies, how big is your diamond in your engagement ring? Do you ever wish it were bigger?

What “keeping up with the Joneses” means

We just talked about where this phrase came from, but what does it actually mean?

It means that for those four questions I just asked, you have the wrong answers.

Ready to see the right answers, the ones that mean you really and truly are 100% unconcerned with what your neighbors have going on? Let’s break them down one at a time.

Why keeping up with the Joneses is bad

There’s a number of reasons why it’s a bad idea to try to keep up with the Joneses. Some of the things that it causes are:

• mental health struggles
• lowered self-esteem/self-confidence
• financial difficulties
• general dissatisfaction with life

To name just a few. All of these results center around the general idea that whatever you have, whatever you are doing, wherever you are in your life, it just isn’t good enough.

And that’s an outright lie.

With that much negative energy put on your shoulders, how can you possibly continue to grow into who you’re meant to be?

I’ll admit, I’m one of the first people who really struggle with the concept that who I am, what I have, and what I’m doing is good enough. I’m a habitual Debbie Downer, a chronic sourpuss, and a self-demeaning jerk – to put it bluntly.

But there are a few concepts that for some reason are stronger than the negative voice in my head, and have better perseverance than I do.

We need to keep and value things until they’ve outlived their useful life.

I know I’m not going to make many friends by saying this, but I think today’s world needs to hear it:

Your cell phone will be useful so long as you can still make a phone call with it. That’s why it’s still called “a phone.” The rest of its features are just niceties.

A car is still useful so long as it’s repairable. Remember:  cars were made to drive for hundreds of thousands of miles. The age or number of miles at which you replace a running vehicle is an arbitrary choice of opinion, not a hard rule. 

Clothes can be mended, parts can be replaced on most appliances and gadgets in our homes. Window trim can be painted and even the soles of your shoes can be fixed (although you admittedly may need a professional’s help). 

Many women choose to “upgrade” their wedding rings for some milestone wedding anniversary, to get themselves bigger/fancier rings. If they aren’t broken or damaged, then why do they need replacing?

We only feel a deficit in our own accomplishments, belongings, or relationships because we LET ourselves feel a deficit.

We recently shopped for and bought a new (yes, brand new) truck for my husband. I won’t get into it here, but trust me, for our specific scenario, it (shockingly) actually made the most financial sense to buy a new 2018 instead of buying used. I ran numbers for days; I know it’s right. 

At first, I’m ashamed to admit, I toyed with the idea of buying ME a new car instead, having him drive it until the company paid it off, then I would “inherit” my current dream car. 

But I quickly shot that idea down for 2 reasons:

1. Based on his predicted annual mileage, by the time that car came to me, I’d be replacing my current car with something that had MORE miles on it, which seems pretty dumb to me. 
2. More importantly:  I DON’T NEED A NEW CAR. 

I realized that my car only felt insufficient because I let myself compare it to a new car. I mean let’s face it:  a clean, solid, well-running 2005 with only 103k miles on it isn’t exactly “worn out” just yet. 

We need to stop making negative comparisons.

I beat myself up when I can’t maintain a house that looks like Pinterest or a magazine shoot. Until I realize that house renovations take time, toddlers are walking disasters, and yes, sometimes I just plain get lazy (don’t we all). 

I walk into my closet to dress for an event and think, “I have nothing to wear; all these clothes are frumpy.” While the frumpy part may very well be true, I DO have something to wear and to be honest, I bet no one cares what I’m wearing anyway. Especially since I became a mom – everyone is too busy looking at my absurdly adorable kids instead to even notice my outfit.

I see people take big vacations and jealously, grumpily think “it must be nice to have that much extra money.” But do I really know their financial situation? Maybe they are stuck in a cycle of trying to keep up with their friends on social media, and they took on a big chunk of debt just to look like they could afford an extravagant vacation.

Social media doesn’t equal inside knowledge, after all. More importantly, do I really care that they went or where they went?

Does any of this sound like you, too?

Every single one of these negative comparisons is why keeping up with the Joneses is one of the reasons for indebtedness and why keeping up with the Joneses is a bad idea.

Each time in our daily lives that we let one of these thoughts enter our head, we let ourselves bring in conflict and detours against our path to happiness.

I’ve done some thinking going into this new year and realized that everything in my life – every action, every purchase, every single thing I own, and every goal or plan I make – needs to answer one of three overarching questions:

1. Does it give me peace?
2. Do I feel fulfilled (happy)?
3. Does it light a fire in my soul?

These should be the driving forces behind every decision you make. Don’t say yes to something unless it gives you a sense of being alive and pure, unadulterated happiness.

If your decisions are based on “yes” answers to those three questions, then you will be certain to make all the right decisions that will lead to your personal growth into the best version of yourself.

Isn’t that something we should all be striving for, every day?

How to stop keeping up with the Joneses

It’s simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing to do, to stop comparing yourself and start to truly enjoy where you are right now and thrive.

Use these three questions to shift your mindset, simplify your life and feel free.

1. When I first got it/started it/thought of it, did it make me happy?
2. What about it don’t I like now?
3. Does the answer to question #2 really matter?

BONUS QUESTION:  Can I find a way that it still makes me happy, either now or in the future?

Question 3, as you may have guessed, IS a sort of trick question. The only thing that really matters is that at one point in time, the something in question did make you happy.

Hopefully, this something made you answer all three of the earlier “overarching questions” with a yes. In which case what needs to change is not the thing you’re dissatisfied with now, but your perception of it (hint:  that’s where the bonus question comes in).

If you shift your mindset to focus on these couple sets of questions whenever you feel dissatisfied, I have a feeling that you, too, will stop falling for marketing gimmicks and popular opinion and start to see a shift in how you perceive the things around you. 

You’ll still like (love?) your car, and appreciate its value despite its age or wear. Instead of feeling bummed about how “everyone has a newer car” than you, you’ll start to love the thought that you’re driving for free while everyone else you know has a car payment. Think how happy you’d be if you instead saved your money a while, haggled down a great deal, then asked for a cash discount on top of that for your next car purchase!

Although your house may be smaller than you’d like, you’ll laugh to yourself that “at least it’s not as much to clean.” The longer you pay on your mortgage, the more equity you’ll have for the next house; in the meantime, the memories made will be just as valuable in the smaller house.  

You’ll study some numbers and find your 3- or 4-year old cell phone is entirely sufficient since it saves you $20+ per month off your bill, instead of financing a new one. Hell, as I watch our kids play with a couple of our old flip cell phones, I find myself wondering why I ever went down the smartphone rabbit hole in the first place. I mean, do I really need a level app everywhere I go?

You only need what you have today, and probably even less than that. 

We all travel a different road on the way to happiness. The detours that hold us back are entirely up to us — whatever you perceive as “not fair” or “not good enough” is of your own creation. 

Will a bigger house make you happy? Maybe. Until you regret losing more time to cleaning it or you’re constantly stressed about your too-big mortgage payment. 

Would your life be happier if you had another DVD on the shelf or another few outfits in the closet? Maybe, for a time, until you soon slipped back into the cycle of wanting more.

And would life be better if I had MORE carats or diamonds in my wedding rings? 

As I sat on my couch and studied the details of my wedding rings, I realized that even more important than how they look is what they represent — loved ones, memories, and happiness. 

I see the minuscule scuffs from daily life and the slight loss of shine of the finish. Every scuff represents life trying to wear them down.

I wonder:  does its new, earned patina make it even more valuable than when they were purchased?

As life tries to wear YOU down, will those scuffs make you into a better version of yourself? Just as a worn-in and well-loved ring becomes better than some pre-packaged, flawless, appeal to everyone ring in a jeweler’s case, a worn-in and well-loved you becomes something unique, something durable, something resilient. Something for people to be privileged to be around.

But through everything — or maybe in spite of everything — most things that they come in conflict with won’t get to them, won’t ruin them entirely. They stay strong, resilient, beautiful, and yes, better than before — no matter what the world (and other wedding rings) around them looks like.

May we all do the same.

What are the things in your life that you often find yourself trying to “keep up” on? What would it take for you to shift your perception and feel at peace about it, instead?

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