I recently ran into a guy who collects bottles in my neighborhood. I like to talk to people from all walks of life, because I know there is a lot we can all learn from each other. Once he stopped by my home to collect some bottles and I got to talking to him, and he shared some of his dreams for himself. So, when I ran into him, I followed up with him to see how he was doing with accomplishing those goals.
He shared that he had just bought a truck, what he was doing with it, and how much money he has the potential to earn. As I’m always wearing my financial advisor hat, I started providing him guidance on not starting to increase his spending to his new potential income, along with other guidance. As the discussion took it’s meandering course, he reminded me of a topic that I wanted to share with you: Keeping Up With The Joneses.
Can I tell you how easy it is to get caught up with how the proverbial Joneses are living? Especially as we now have instant access to people’s lives on social media. A friend I follow on Instagram shared this verse from Proverbs 13:7 NIV “One person pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth”. To accumulate wealth, we have to live below our means. That does not mean that you must deprive yourself of everything, it simply means you do not need to buy everything.
When you are not working to “Keep up with the Joneses”, you are able to focus on what is important to you, and to spend and save in a way that works for your financial life. A way of automating your savings through your work retirement plan, is that you are actively automatically contributing to it via withdrawn funds from your paycheck, and it invests it on your behalf. How would it work for you if you were to automatically create such a rule for both personal savings and investments?
Friends, this is how wealth creation happens, by consistently creating good habits and following through with them. Then one day, you will realize just how impactful the consistent actions that you were taking over the years add up to big results.
Friends, if I may share a secret, not even the Joneses are keeping up with the Joneses. Stay focused on your goals and keep taking consistent action over time.