Day 15: The Joneses Can't Afford it Either!
by Edward Smith
20 Jul 2020
Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should
When I first moved out West, I had just gotten married. I had no kids. I had no pets. I had no job to speak of, and I had a high school diploma but no college degree. I was a nobody in a strange new town. A town full of beach mansions on one end and spider infested apartment buildings on the other.
I lived in the apartment building full of black widow spiders along with five other tenant families. There was one washing machine in the entire building, and the washing machine was broken most of the time.
Like with the spiders, the owner didn't like to do anything about it. He lived on the East Coast, had inherited the place from his mom's estate, and never saw the place in person. For him it was just free rent money.
Soul Searching Next To the Sand
During this time, I lived pretty close to the beach. When I would get frustrated, as I did often, I would take walks down to the ocean to blow off steam. It was magnificent. Nice water, nice sand, nice sun, and nice looking people.
I remember the houses.
Along the beach, for miles, as far as the eye could see, ran a prosperous collection of beach side mansions. Multi-million dollar homes, with backyards that led directly to the sand and water. I used to wish about making it in that town, and how some day, some how, I would live in a house like that, looking out over everyone and everything.
I figured you just had to get your foot in the door, with the right person, at the right time. I mean, how else were these people able to afford houses like that? There had to be some kind of system. You just had to crack the code.
I had big dreams and big ambitions, but no actual plan.
I also didn't have a lot of money or experience.
I didn't know what it took to run a house. I had never been a homeowner before. All of the houses that I ever lived in belonged to other people. I lived with my parents or I rented.
When something went wrong, I told someone, and then it would get fixed, or it wouldn't get fixed. It was totally up to the person in charge. They owned the place. I just lived there.
Flash Forward to 2012
By this point a bunch of things had happened. I completed college with a Bachelor's degree. I had two cats and one kid. I had moved to a rental house away from the beach in a scary neighborhood, and then had gotten a good job at a top end aerospace company. The house situation wasn't ideal, but things were improving.
After two years of both of us working and saving up, we felt pretty good about our future.
We were tired of renting, so we decided to put down the money for our first house.
Classic "Keeping up with the Joneses" mistake. We knew friends and family that had completed school and were living in houses that they owned and weren't renting. The places were really nice, and we felt like we were getting left behind.
It's kind of like when you graduate from high school and then you start going to college because your friends are going to college. It doesn't even matter if you can afford to go. You have no idea what those other people did to get to where they got to. You didn't experience their journey. You only see the results, not the struggle.
When you imitate without knowing how to relate, things can get bad quick.
Don't Let That Be You. Comparing Yourself to Others Can be Expensive and Stupid.
Want to Know How the Stupid Thing We Did Turned out?
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