Living our Parents Lifestyle

I have found that there is a significant number of my peers who feel they have the right, the need, or at the very least the desire to live the life that their parents do. There seems to be a disconnect in that our parents worked for twenty years (while we were being raised) to accumulate the wealth and ‘stuff’ to which our generation desires. The catch is that there are a number of 20-somethings who want to start out at the same point that are parents are leaving us off.

It just doesn’t work that way!

I am not sure where this misplaced sense of deserving comes from, but people seem not to understand that it takes time, work and energy to accumulate things. You can’t just have everything you want all at once. Let me correct myself. You can have it – if you want to live in a debt-hole for your entire life. By essence of you reading this blog, I can imagine that you likely do not want to live in debt, so please – stop buying things you can’t afford.

I do this sometimes; buy things that I can’t afford. I’m every so slowing weaning myself off of it. I’m not sure that it’s an addiction per say; however, it is certainly a challenge to change your habits - to just stop using that credit card. To save first, and buy later.

For example, this weekend I bought a new fishing rod. The rod, reel, and line cost me just under $100. The rod will probably last me a lifetime and I “Needed” this fishing rod because we’re going camping next weekend. I wanted to be able to fish with J and my dad without having to ask to borrow their rods.

After I bought it, I had instant buyer’s remorse. That would be my brain telling me a moment to late to stop buying things. Jordan and I actually had the idea of trading credit cards. We wouldn’t be able to use the other person’s but we could hang on to it to help remove that bit of temptation. We would have to ‘ask’ the other person before we could buy something which would challenge the need/want struggle.

It’s a thought.

I think however; that I’m not as bad as some people are. I’m not sure I like using the word bad in this case, but we’ll go with that for now. I mean that I haven’t bought a quad, snow machine, house, new cell phone, new wardrobe, new car…. Ect. I bought a $100 fishing rod (and last month a $200 patio set).

So yes, I need to continue to remind myself that it’s OKAY that I don’t have the means to have my parents lifestyle yet – it took them YEARS to amass the wealth and other ‘things’ that they have, that I want. Patience and it will come.