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Outsourcing my life: Why I pay others to do tasks I could do myself

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When people talk about saving money, DIY is one of the first things that comes to mind.

Do all of this (and more) and you could save hundreds of dollars a year.

And that’s great. I know lots of folks that enjoy growing a lush garden resulting in delicious produce (that can be canned or frozen) in due season. There are people in my life that find doing laundry calming, and others that will happily take on any domestic project that comes their way. Personally, I enjoy doing the dishes.

While I’m happy spending time on the things that I like, there are certain things that I hate doing — and that I will happily outsource to others.

Am I perfectly capable of cleaning my home and mowing the lawn? Sure. But why should I spend the time doing these things when I can pay someone else to do them? Here are some reasons I spend money to outsource parts of my life.

Why I Outsource Tasks I Could Do Myself

I Can Make More Money

The number-one reasons I outsource tasks I could do myself is that by doing so, I make more money. Wait, what?

When I talk about spending $200 a month on lawn care or $20 an hour on house cleaning services, many people are surprised to find that I make money by outsourcing these mundane chores.

I’m a freelance writer, so any time I free up can be used to write an article, interview a source, or work on edits. Rather than spending two hours cleaning the house, I can pay someone $40 to do it instead — and make $500. That’s a net gain of $460 each week, or about $1,840 per month.

There have been times that I take my laptop with me to get the oil changed. Jiffy Lube takes care of it for $65 and I can do work amounting to about $200 in the time I’m sitting there. That’s a net gain of $135.

In the past, I’ve used services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh to plan my meals and deliver the ingredients. That saves me the time and hassle of meal planning and grocery shopping, and allowed me to focus on other things. However, with my travel schedule, these types of services haven’t been meeting my needs.

Instead, with Instacart now available in my area, I’ve switched to getting someone else to do the shopping, while I use a service like $5 Meal Plan to plan my meals and provide me with an ingredient list.

No matter how I do it, though, the cost of these services is much less than what I can make doing a little extra work. Whether you want more time to work on a side gig, or take action to grow your business, the investment you make in outsourcing can yield dividends later. [Read more…]

Spare change: Awesome articles from elsewhere

Mindblowing study: Adolescent acne is positively correlated to academic achievement (and for women, future earnings)

8 places that will pay you to live there

Apple's shady repair practices and the "right to repair" movement

Buying too much stuff is driven by uncertainty

Should you invest while you're in debt?

What happens if you replace gold with REITs in the Permanent Portfolio? [warning: total nerdfest]

What to do when you hate your new job

An overview of various retirement housing strategies

How to trick people into saving money

Things that make your life better for under $50

Find an archive of all past spare change links on Pinboard.

The psychology of passive barriers

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A surprising thing happens to people in their forties. After working hard, buying a house, and starting a family, they suddenly realize that they'd better start being responsible with their money. They begin reading financial books and trying to learn how to set up a nest egg for themselves and their families. It's a natural part of growing older.

If you ask these people in their forties what their biggest life worry, the answer often is, quite simply, “money”. They want to learn to manage their money better, and they'll tell you how important financial stability is to them.

Yet the evidence shows something very different.

In the table below, researchers followed employees at companies that offered financial-education seminars. Despite the obvious need to learn about their finances, only 17% of company employees attended. This is a common phenomenon.

401k compliance rates

As Laura Levine of the Jump$tart Coalition told me — and I paraphrase — “Bob doesn't want to attend his 401(k) seminar because he's afraid he'll see his neighbor there…and that would be equivalent to admitting he didn't know about money for all those years.”

They also don't like to attend personal-finance events because they don't like to feel bad about themselves. But of those who did attend the employer event, something even more surprising happens.

Of the people who did not have a 401(k), 100% planned to enroll in their company's 401(k) offering after the seminar. Yet only 14% actually did.

Of those who already had a 401(k), 28% planned to increase their participation rate. 47% planned to change their fund selection (most likely because they learned they had picked the default money-market plan, which was earning them virtually nothing). But less than half of people actually made the change.

This is the kind of data that drives economists and engineers crazy, because it clearly shows that people are not rational. Yes, we should max out our 401(k) employer match, but billions of dollars are left on the table each year because we don't. Yes, we should start eating healthy and exercising more, but we don't.

Why not? Why wouldn't we do something that's objectively good for us?

Barriers are one of the implicit reasons you can't achieve your goals. These barriers can be psychological or profoundly physical, like something as simple as not having a pen when you need to fill out a form. But the underlying factor is that they are breathtakingly simple — and if I pointed them out to you about someone else, you would be sickened by how seemingly obvious they are to overcome.

It's easy to dismiss these barriers are trivial, and say, “Oh, that's so dumb!” when you realize that not having an envelope nearby could cost someone over $3,000. But it's true. And by the end of this article, you'll be able to identify at least three barriers in your own life — whether you want to or not.

The Psychology of Passive Barriers [Read more…]

Book Review: I Will Teach You to Be Rich (2019 Edition)

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When I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006, I had no idea other money blogs existed. I'd been blogging about cats, computers, and comic books since 1997 — before blog was even a word! — and I thought my new venture might be the first blog about personal finance.

I was wrong.

I learned quickly that there were already dozens (dozens!) of people blogging about money on the interwebs. For instance:

  • Harlan Landes was writing at Consumerism Commentary. He now runs the Plutus Foundation, a financial literacy non-profit.
  • Jim Wang — a ginormous money nerd then, a ginormous money nerd now — was writing at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. He now runs Wallet Hacks.
  • John was writing at Free Money Finance (a front for selling Moose Tracks ice cream!). He now runs ESI Money.
  • Ramit Sethi was writing at I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He still runs the site, but his focus has shifted from personal finance to entrepreneurship and marketing.

I Will Teach You to Be RichAll four of these folks built and grew successful sites because they produced quality content. But Ramit might be the most successful of all. Nowadays, he produces helpful courses on a variety of personal development subjects. He hosts conferences. He wrote a best-selling book. And he never sold his website.

Instead, I Will Teach You to Be Rich has evolved as he's evolved. In recent years, Ramit has distanced himself from the world of personal finance. Nowadays, he's focused on the many different ways his readers can build a Rich Life.

In fact, “how to live a Rich Life” is the core theme of the brand-new second edition of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, the book. In 2009, Ramit wrote, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich is about sensible, banking, budgeting, saving, and investing.” In the 2019 edition, that's been changed to, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich is about using money to design your Rich Life.” I think you'll agree that this is a much more compelling theme.

If you've read my other book reviews, you'll note that I sometimes shy away from giving an overall evaluation, opting instead to talk about some aspect of the book I liked (or didn't). When this happens, it's usually because I don't think the book is that great.

I won't be coy today. I Will Teach You to Be Rich is one of the best personal-finance books on the market. It's great.

Let's take a closer look at why I like it so much. [Read more…]

The pink tax: The hidden cost of being female

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Women working to achieve financial independence face an extra hurdle: the hidden cost of being female.

Though it’s cheekily referred to as the “pink tax”, the additional cost women incur for personal-care products, toys, clothing, dry cleaning, health care, mortgages, and vehicle maintenance is no joking matter. It inflates our budgets, limits our ability to save, and sometimes hinders our ability to access affordable and safe sources of credit.

Based on that semi-intense description of the pink tax, you may think it’s already been made illegal to charge someone more on the basis of their gender. But that’s not true. There’s no federal law prohibiting companies from charging different prices for products that are identical (or very similar), but which are marketed by gender. At least not currently.

Only one U.S. municipality — Miami-Dade County — has banned this practice. California enacted a similar restriction in 1995, but it applies only to the pricing of services. New York City followed in 1998.

On top of the pink tax, women still earn less than their male counterparts. The average woman is paid 82 cents for every $1 her male colleagues earn; the discrepancy is much worse for women of color.

When you’re paying more for basic goods and services from birth until death — just because you’re female — it’s easy to understand why so many women are pushing to “Ax the Pink Tax”.

The Pink Tax: The Hidden Cost of Being Female

What Is the Pink Tax?

Twenty-five years ago, in 1994, the State of California studied the issue of gender-based pricing. They found women pay about $1300 more each year for the same services as men. Accounting for inflation, that figure is now closer to $2135 per year.

If that figure doesn’t shock you, maybe this will: By the time a woman turns 29 (like me), she’ll have spent an estimated $39,203 on the pink tax alone! Can you imagine how much money I could have right now if I’d put the money I spent on the pink tax in a savings account? Especially one with compounded interest!?

In 2015, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) published a report on the pink tax entitled “From Cradle to Cane: The Cost of Being a Female Consumer”. The report found that women’s products cost more than men’s products 42 percent of the time. 42 percent! By comparison, men’s products cost more than the female version 18 percent of the time.

According to the DCA report, products for female consumers were likely to cost more across industries:

  • Girls’ toys cost more 55 percent of the time, while boys’ toys cost more 8 percent of the time.
  • Girls’ clothing cost more 26 percent of the time, while boys’ clothing cost more 7 percent of the time.
  • Women’s clothing cost more 40 percent of the time, while men’s clothing cost more 32 percent of the time.
  • Women’s personal-care products (shampoo, conditioner, razors, lotion, deodorant, body wash, and shaving cream) cost more 56 percent of the time, while men’s products cost more 13 percent of the time.
  • Senior home health-care products (supports and braces, canes, compression socks, adult incontinence products, and digestive health products) cost more for women 45 percent of the time and cost more for men 13 percent of the time.

Nowhere is the pink tax more evident than when it comes to personal-care products. Personal-care products geared toward women cost approximately 13 percent more than similar products marketed toward men.

Similarly, women are financially penalized for having their menstrual cycle. The U.S. government has deemed menstrual products a “luxury item” despite the fact that menstrual cycles are a monthly reality for all women, not a “luxury”. [Read more…]

How to budget: A pain-free guide to building a budget that works

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“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” — John C. Maxwell

I've had more one-on-one money coaching meetings during the past year than my previous twelve years writing about money combined. I used to claim that I'd never do money coaching. Apparently, I was wrong.

As I meet with folks, certain common themes stand out.

For one, most folks have no idea how much they're actually earning and spending. Their finances are like a black box. They get paid, put the money in the bank, then spend it until it's gone. Almost nobody actively tracks what they earn and spend. “Do I have money in my checking account? I can buy something!”

Because people don't track what they spend, it's tough for them to plan what they spend. Frequently, I suggest that the people I meet with make a budget. Because budgets have been demonized for so long, there's a lot of resistance to this idea. That's too bad. Budgets don't have to be a bother. When used correctly, they're an excellent way to take control of your money.

If you pick a budget that fits the way you live, it can help you meet your goals more quickly. The key? Don’t think of a budget as a constraint. Real Life is a constraint; a budget helps you break free so that you can spend on what’s important to you, on the things that bring you joy.

Why Budgets Fail

A lot of people get frustrated with budgeting because it never seems to work. They never reach their spending targets. Or emergencies break the budget. Or it seems like so much work for so little reward. I hear you. I've been there. But if you follow a few rules (or maybe “guidelines”, if you prefer), budgeting can be less stressful and more useful.

Based on my own experience — and based on comments of GRS readers like you — I believe there are a handful of reasons most budgets fail. You may encounter trouble with your budget if:

  • It's too complicated. People have a tendency to make budgets more complex than they need to be. A simple budget is usually more useful.
  • It doesn't reflect your values. A budget should help you achieve your goals, so make it personal. If you try to use somebody else's budget, you're going to have a tough time.
  • It doesn't reflect reality. When you build a budget, base it on your actual income and behavior — not on some imaginary ideal you.
  • It seems like a chore. Don't let your system bog you down. Your goal is to have a budget that works, so keep looking until you find one that works for you.

To summarize: To minimize the risk of failure, a budget should be simple and easy to use while reflecting both current realities and your future goals.

That's all rather esoteric, though. What does a simple, easy budget look like? There are a lot of approaches that work. While some people do manage to make detailed budgets work, I've found that “budget frameworks” are more effective for me and the people I coach.

Today, we're going to take a deep dive into the world of budgeting. Based on my thirteen years of reading and writing about money, here are my thoughts on how to budget effectively. [Read more…]

Food waste and food consumption in the United States

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how much food I consume (and waste). I'm not happy with how I shop and eat, and it's not just because I'm fat right now. I don't like what I'm eating and I don't like how much food I'm throwing out.

Food waste is a huge problem in the United States. Most studies find that Americans waste about one-third of all food that enters the supply chain. This is insane. And when you consider that food spending is the third-largest component of the average American budget, this is a great place for most folks to boost their budget.

According to the 2017 Consumer Expenditure Report, the average household spends $7,729 per year ($644.08 per month) on food. If, as the USDA reports, 31% of the average family's food goes to waste, that's the equivalent of burning $2395.99 per year ($199.67 per month).

For most families, $200 per month is a big deal. That can be the difference between deficit spending and earning a “profit”. That $200 per month could be enough to purchase a new car or to afford better health insurance.

Today, I want to think out loud about food consumption and food waste in my own life.

Our actual fridge at this very moment

This article is unusual in that I'm not going to try to offer any solutions. Instead, I'm simply going to share some observations, and I'm going to divide these observations into bite-sized chunks.

If you have solutions to food waste, however, I'd love to hear them. [Read more…]

An introduction to square-foot gardening

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I grew up in the country. My family always had a vegetable garden. For us, gardening meant a large plot, plowed and raked, then planted with long, widely-space rows of vegetables. It also meant weeding and hoeing, weeding and hoeing. Lots and lots of weeding and hoeing.

Gardening was a chore.

When my ex-wife and I bought our first home, we both wanted a vegetable garden, but we didn't want the drudgery that came with it. Besides, we didn't have a big space in the country — we had an average city lot. Fortunately, we discovered Mel Bartholomew's Square-Foot Gardening.

Bartholomew's method allowed us to enjoy reasonable crop production in a small space. With his technique, almost any homeowner can grow her own food.

How Square-Foot Gardening Works

The square-foot gardening concept is simple: Build a raised bed. Divide the space into sections of one square-foot each. Lastly, plant vegetables (and/or flowers) in just the amount of space they need.

The advantages of this system include reduced workload, less watering, easy weeding (and not much of it), and easy access to your crops. This is a great way to learn to grow some of your own food.

Back in the 1990s, Kris and I had raised beds similar to these (from Flickr user johnyaya).

raised beds

We built our square-foot garden one Saturday in mid-April. I spent the morning constructing three raised beds out of two-by-sixes. Each bed was twelve feet long, four feet wide, and twelve inches tall. At the time, I most certainly was not a handyman, yet I was able to build these in just a few hours. It was fun.

Digging was less fun.

I spent the afternoon double-digging three patches in our lawn. We maneuvered the frames into place, leveled them, and then filled them with rich soil (purchased from a nearby nursery-supply center). Finally, we created a grid over each bed using tacks and twine. When we were finished, our raised beds looked like orderly grids.

After we built the raised beds and outlined the growing space, we followed the guidelines in Bartholomew's book. [Read more…]

Struggling with money anxiety and finding balance

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On Saturday evening, I had a chance to chat with my friends Wally and Jodie. You might remember them from a reader case study from last August. They're the couple that wants to get their finances in order but they're worried because they're starting with less than zero.

When we chatted in August, Wally and Jodie had over $35,000 in debt. They had variable incomes, but somehow seemed to spend exactly what they earned — about $3000 per month after taxes. Worst of all, they were behind on some payments.

Now, eight months later, their situation has improved.

Over smoked German sausage and beer, Wally and Jodie told me about their progress. (My dog, Tahlequah, was eager to take part in the conversation. Or maybe it was the sausage she wanted?)

Jodie, Tally, and Wally

Taking Baby Steps

“Based on your advice, we've worked hard to increase our incomes,” Jodie told me. “We've both been picking up extra shifts whenever possible. And I started a second job that pays pretty well.”

“So, you've been able to get a gap between your income and your spending?” I asked.

“You bet,” said Wally. “By working more, we don't have time to spend much money. In August, we didn't have any gap between our earning and spending. Our gap was zero. Now our gap is almost $2000! And we've been using the debt snowball method to get out of debt. We've already paid off a bunch of smaller stuff and now have $438 extra per month for debt payoffs. Plus, we have an emergency fund.”

“This all sounds amazing,” I said. “Great work!”

“It is amazing,” Wally said. “This is the best shape I've ever been in financially. But we're struggling to figure out what to do next.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” said Jodie. “We're getting married in September. We don't know how much to budget for that. Meanwhile, we still have a lot of debt. We owe about $10,000 on Wally's car. We had to replace my Mini Cooper last winter, and that brought us another $10,000 of debt. Plus, I still owe on my school loans.”

I did some mental math. While the couple's cash flow has improved, I was a little nervous that they hadn't actually decreased their debt since the last time we talked about money. That said, I know Jodie's old car had been a thorn in their side. And they have paid down nearly $10,000 in miscellaneous debts.

“The real issue is that we can't seem to find balance,” Wally said. “We're burned out. We've been working so much that we never have time for ourselves. Or each other. It's affecting our moods and our attitudes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's tough.”

Wally nodded. “Now I have a friend who wants us to fly out to his wedding,” he said. “We've done the math, and we can't afford it. He's offered to pay for the trip, but we don't know how we feel about that. We want to go, but even if we do accept his help, it'll cost us a few hundred bucks — plus whatever income we lose while we're gone.”

“What should we do?” Jodie asked. “We thought saving more would reduce the stress, but we're just as anxious as ever. Well, maybe not anxious in the same way, I guess, but still. We're worried about money — even with a $2000 gap each month.”

“Trust me,” I said. “The money worry never goes away. Everybody has money anxiety, no matter how much they earn, no matter how much they have saved.”

Worrying About Money

“Do you worry about money?” Wally asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I'm basically financially independent, but I still have money anxiety. In fact, I'm so worried about it that this year I'm tracking every penny I earn and spend. And, just like you, there always seems to be something that comes up for me to spend on. There's my heart-attack scare, which now looks like it'll cost me $7500. I just paid a huge tax bill. And there's all of this travel I've committed to this year. It's always something.”

“Should we fly to my friend's wedding?” Wally asked. “I haven't seen him in a long time. I can tell it's important to him for us to be there.”

“That's a tough call,” I said. “And it's an example of how personal finance isn't just about the numbers. There are relationships and emotions to consider too.”

“From a financial perspective, I don't think you should go. But it'd be hypocritical of me to tell you that. My cousin Duane is still fighting cancer, but he wants to make another trip to Europe next month. At first, I was reluctant to join him. Like I said, I'm trying to cut expenses this year because I feel like I'm spending too much. But you know what? I'm going. So, you see, my advice and my actions are at odds here.”

I didn't know how to tell Wally and Jodie, but my biggest concern with their situation is that it seems like they're getting ready to stop the race when they've barely begun. They're not out of debt yet. They've made some excellent progress, but there's still a long way to go.

They've spent eight months on this project. From the looks of it, they have another eighteen months to go — but that's if they use the gap they've created to accelerate their debt payments. If they don't choose this route, it's going to take them even longer.

At the same time, I get where they're coming from about feeling cramped. Sure, there's a finite amount of time until they get the debt paid off, then they can loosen up. But when you're in the thick of it, eighteen months can feel like eighteen years.

Finding Balance

The key, of course, is to find balance. And I think that's what Wally and Jodie are trying to do.

They're not trying to quit the race early. They don't want to get behind on payments like they used to be. They don't want to spend their emergency fund or to stop their debt snowball. What they want is to find a balance between today and tomorrow.

I didn't mention it to them at the time, but I think they should look at the balanced money formula from Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi's excellent All Your Worth.

The Balanced Money Formula

Warren and Tyagi argue that in order to achieve financial balance, your after-tax spending should be allocated like this:

  • At least 20% should go to Saving (which includes debt reduction).
  • No more than 50% should be allocated to Needs (which includes housing, utilities, healthcare, basic food, and basic clothing).
  • The rest — around 30% — should go to Wants (which is everything else).

Warren and Tyagi are adamant that less than half your budget should go to Needs. If you pour too much toward necessities, you don't have room in your budget for fun or the future.

The authors are just as insistent that you should build room into your budget for Wants. “You should ask yourself,” they write, “are you making enough room for fun?”

Wally and Jodie aren't spending much on Needs at the moment, but they're not spending much on Wants either. They've been pumping most of their money into Saving (in the form of debt reduction). This is a Good Thing. But maybe it's too much of a good thing?

Making a Plan

On Sunday morning, Wally sent me an email. After meeting with me, he and Jodie formulated a plan:

  • Until their wedding in September, they'll keep their debt snowball where it is today: minimum payments plus the $438 they've freed from satisfied debts.
  • They'll use an envelope-like budget for entertainment, travel, gifts, dates, and personal items.
  • With the rest of their monthly gap, they'll create a dedicated savings account for their wedding. After the wedding, they'll throw this money at debt.

This seems like a good, purposeful plan to me. It balances today and tomorrow. And you can be sure that I'll follow up with them in the fall to make sure they've stuck to the plan — that they've remembered to prioritize their debt snowball again.

In the meantime, I sent Wally this Reddit post in which a young guy realized that by pushing for a 65% saving rate, he was miserable. He writes:

I'm currently shooting for a 55% saving rate and I cannot tell you how much more I enjoy life. I went from feeling like I couldn't spend a dollar that wasn't strictly budgeted, to travelling with friends, going to concerts, and enjoying the pleasures of life. That 10% made all the difference in the world

As for me, I still feel anxious. I've done a good job of controlling my small, everyday expenses this year, but the big stuff is still stressing me out. I need to heed my own advice and find better balance. That will come, I think, as I consciously make better decisions about future large expenses — and as I work to increase my own income.

Why financial literacy fails (and what to do about it)

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April is Financial Literacy Month in the United States. This is a pure and noble thing. I think it's great that there's one month each year devoted to promoting smart money habits. That said, it has become increasingly apparent over the years that most financial literacy programs fail. They don't work. And this isn't just me speaking anecdotally.

In a 2014 paper from Management Science, three researchers conducted a “meta-analysis” of 201 prior studies regarding the efficacy of financial literacy. Their conclusion?

Interventions to improve financial literacy explain only 0.1% of the variance in financial behaviors studied, with weaker effects in low-income samples. Like other education, financial education decays over time; even large interventions with many hours of instruction have negligible effects on behavior 20 months or more from the time of intervention.

To put it in plain English, financial literacy education makes no discernible difference in behavior. People who take personal-finance classes manage their money no better (and no worse) than the general population.

We're pumping tons of money and time into a fruitless endeavor. All of this push to promote financial literacy accomplishes nothing. Zero. Nada.

Why is that?

Why Financial Literacy Fails (and What to Do About It)

It probably won't surprise you to learn that I have some strong opinions on this subject. Today, let's talk about why financial literacy fails (and what to do about it).

Note: This afternoon (April 24th) at 4 p.m. Pacific (7 p.m. Eastern), I'll be part of a Facebook Live interview about this very subject. If you're free at that time, you should join us! Update: Here's the entire interview.

[Read more…]

Keeping up with the Joneses

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It's always fun when disparate worlds of geekdom collide. Today, for instance, I learned that the term “keeping up with the Joneses” — a popular phrase in the realm of personal finance — actually originated in the funny pages.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

That's right: “Keeping Up with the Joneses” started out as a newspaper comic strip. As a comics nerd, one who especially loves comic strips, this makes me happy. (Note: For some strips in this post, you can click on the image to open a larger version in a new window.)

Keeping Up with the Joneses (04 April 1913)

Arthur Mormand created “Keeping Up with the Joneses” in 1913. This comic strip (which was very typical for its time) parodied American domestic life, especially the increasing drive toward conspicuous consumption.

The term conspicuous consumption was itself relatively new in 1913. This concept was introduced by Thorstein Veblen, a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist, in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. (You can download this book for free from the new Get Rich Slowly file vault.) People at all levels of life, Veblen says, buy things “as an evidence of wealth”, to signal financial “prowess”. This is worth an entire article of its own. (I should re-read the book and write it up, shouldn't I?)

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia's brief history of the strip:

[“Keeping Up with the Joneses”] debuted on March 31, 1913 in The New York Globe. The strip is a domestic comedy following a family of social climbers, the McGinises: parents Aloysius and Clarice, their daughter Julie, and the family's maid Bella Donna. Various strips feature the McGinis family attempting to match the lifestyle of their neighbors, the Joneses, who are often mentioned but never seen.

The strip was later picked up by Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World, and was subsequently syndicated in many other papers by Associated Newspapers. The title and central conceit of a family struggling to “keep up” with the neighbors resonated with its audience, to the point that the phrase keeping up with the Joneses became a common catchphrase.

According to interviews with Mormand, “Keeping Up with the Joneses” was based on his own life. He and his wife lived for a time in Cedarhurst, New York, a relatively wealthy community on Long Island. Mormand claimed his family lived “far beyond our means in our endeavor to keep up with the well-to-do class”.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Eventually, Mormand and his family gave up. They moved to Manhattan. There, he used his experience as source material. Mormand claimed that he originally wanted to call the strip “Keeping Up with the Smiths” but it didn't have the same ring to it as “Keeping Up with the Joneses”.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Some argue that the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” was already in use when Mormand started drawing his comic strip. This may (or may not) be true. Regardless, it was his work that made the phrase a part of the American vernacular.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

While “Keeping Up with the Joneses” never became as popular as, say, “Gasoline Alley” or “Bringing Up Father”, it did achieve some measure of success. At one point, more than 150 newspapers around the U.S. carried the strip. And, for a time, a few of the gags were adapted into short animated films like this one.

If, like me, you are both a money nerd and a comics nerd, you might enjoy browsing this public domain collection of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” strips from 1920. (Again, this is part of the new Get Rich Slowly file vault.)

Keeping Up with the Joneses (16 April 1938)

Mormand died in 1987, at the age of 101. He spent the latter part of his life working as a portrait painter in New York City, but his lasting contribution to American society was coining the term “keeping up with the Joneses”.

Waving Good-Bye to the Joneses

A study out of the U.K. confirms what many of us have already learned: Money only makes you happy if you have more than those around you. According to the London Telegraph:

Despite the vast improvements in general standards of living in the past 40 years across Britain, ‘keeping up with the Joneses' is still our biggest aspiration, the findings suggest.

Researchers have found that owning a fast car, a large home and having a good job may only make you happy if those around you are less well off. The pursuit of wealth is leading more people to work longer hours as they seek to pay their mortgages and climb the social ladder. Dr Chris Boyce, of University of Warwick's psychology department, said Britons were victims of chronic dissatisfaction.

Americans are victims of this same chronic dissatisfaction. It's too easy to compare ourselves with those around us. (And television gives us a chance to make false comparisons: We see what “normal” people have in commercials and in various programs, and we subconsciously begin to want these things too.)

But even if you know that you oughtn't compare your life with others, it can be tough to exercise self-control. It's easy to get swept up by materialism, especially if all of your friends are into it. (If they all have iPhones, you want an iPhone. If they all wear expensive clothes, you want expensive clothes.)

If you want to wave good-bye to the proverbial Joneses — the ones you're always trying to keep up with — you have to quit paying attention to them. You have to make a conscious effort to not care about what they own and do. Instead, focus on your goals and your needs. What you want or need to own shouldn't be defined by what other people have; it should be based on what you want to do in life, and what brings you intrinsic happiness.

Ask yourself at what point you'll have Enough:

  • If you have five more DVDs, will that be Enough?
  • If you complete your collection of Patrick O'Brian novels, will that be Enough?
  • If you buy three more sweaters, will that be Enough?

How much is Enough?

Only you can answer that question — and the answer may change with time. But until you spend some time contemplating Enough, you'll always be tempted to buy what your neighbor buys — to keep up with the Joneses.

The great thing about deciding you have Enough in your life right now is that this also helps you have Enough in the future. If you don't need to spend your money to buy things (because you don't want things), you can use your cash for saving and investing. That money will then be there to assure you have Enough when you're older, too.

How to stop keeping up with the Joneses

The truth is, we all have our Joneses. It doesn't matter how much you earn or what you have; there's always someone who has more. Sometimes it's hard to go without when it seems like everyone around you has everything — but that doesn't mean it's real. In fact, the Joneses are often broke or living a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. What I've found is, what we so often emulate is an illusion to begin with. In fact, the cost of “having it all” is often a lifetime of debt, stress and, of course, work.

If you've been keeping up with the Joneses and your pocketbook shows, it's important not to beat yourself up. So many people have been there themselves, and we all know how hard it is to go against the status quo. But, if you want out, there is always a way. Here's how:

  • Stop comparing yourself to others. Since you never know what anyone else's financial picture really looks like, it's important not to see their “apparent success” as “your own failure.” Remember, you don't know their story and it's highly possible that your peers are living beyond their means as well.
  • Learn to live within your means. No matter how much you earn, it's important to spend less. Any other strategy is a recipe for failure. Start by tracking your spending to figure out where your money is going. You might be surprised at what you find.
  • Stop enabling yourself. If you can't stop spending, be prepared to cut yourself off. Cut up your credit cards if you need to or ask your spouse to do it. Something has to give.
  • Commit to your own financial well-being. One of the basic tenets of Get Rich Slowly is that “nobody cares more about your money than you do.” That's why it's important for you to take action to improve your situation. Commit to your own financial well-being, because no one is going to do it for you.
  • Find value in yourself and in others. Material possessions cannot fill an empty heart. Instead of spending mindlessly, put your energy into your family and your relationships. That's where the real value is.

No matter how much you earn, the Joneses will always be there. They'll have nicer clothes than you and send their kids to better schools. They'll have better parties and seem happier than most. Just remember, keeping up with the Joneses is not only impossible but also a complete waste of time.

No matter how hard you try, the only way to win against the Joneses is not to play the game to begin with.

Have you ever tried to keep up with the Joneses? What did you learn?