In a recent\u00a0USA Today article Top 5 money problems Americans face <\/em><\/strong><\/a>cited that \u201cliving for today\u201d, \u201censuring a comfortable lifestyle\u201d, \u201caccumulating too much debt\u201d, and \u201cmaking poor purchasing and investment decisions\u201d topped the list of financial concerns for survey respondents. \u00a0I\u2019m not alarmed. Ok yes, I am alarmed. Maybe surprised, is a better word. I\u2019m not surprised. This has been the tone for quite some time. What concerns me most is that it\u2019s not changing. We can blame the economy; stating that jobs are not paying enough, that the cost of living is too high, etc. We can look at a lot of external factors. While those things contribute, I think the bigger problem lies in us. \u00a0More importantly, so does the solution.<\/p>\n

When you look at even our very basic expenses, our \u201cneeds\u201d, our expectations have changed. A house in and of itself isn\u2019t sufficient anymore. It\u2019s has to have the amenities (walk-in closets, granite counter tops, state of art appliances, etc) Just spend an afternoon watching HGTV. Somehow we feel \u201cless than\u201d if our houses don\u2019t measure up. Or lets talk technology. Cell phones used to be a luxury now I\u2019d say the majority of Americans rank it a necessity. (And they\u2019re not cheap, especially considering how often we upgrade them and the money we spend on data.) Not only have our lifestyle expenses grown but what we consider to be necessities has\u00a0also changed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that we can\u2019t have these things or even wanting them is somehow wrong. But we do have to face the reality that we can\u2019t have it all and have it all at once. We have to choose, we have to prioritize. I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re all so scared. We don\u2019t want to choose. We think that if we cut something out we\u2019ll feel deprived.<\/p>\n

Happiness researchers prove it\u2019s not the amount of stuff that leads to our happiness. (More doesn\u2019t equate to more happiness.) It\u2019s about the \u201cright\u201d stuff. And that\u2019s where it gets tricky. The \u201cright\u201d stuff is different for each one of us. It\u2019s highly individualized and is based on what we value, what makes us come alive inside. It takes work, though, to discover what that is. It takes introspection and the ability to see what we already have in a new way. \u00a0We have to get in-touch with ourselves.<\/p>\n

I think perhaps it\u2019s just easier to see and believe an add that tells us, \u201cThis will make you happy.\u201d \u00a0So we go out and buy that. Or we see a friend who seems happy and buy what they have. We waste a lot of money chasing what we think will make us happy. We spend more in lifestyle expenses. We buy more than we need. We take on more debt. We make poor purchasing decisions.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re looking in the wrong places. We\u2019re looking at everything around (external factors) instead of looking within. I believe that when we focus on the \u201cright\u201d stuff, we can actually spend less and be even more fulfilled. Until we change how we measure happiness, how we spend, and what we value we\u2019ll continue heading down the same road of feeling that we never have enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent\u00a0USA Today article Top 5 money problems Americans face cited that \u201cliving for today\u201d, \u201censuring a comfortable lifestyle\u201d, \u201caccumulating too much debt\u201d, and \u201cmaking poor purchasing and investment decisions\u201d topped the list of financial concerns for survey respondents. \u00a0I\u2019m not alarmed. Ok yes, I am alarmed. Maybe surprised, is a better word. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","sharing_disabled":false,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[74,72,73,71,78],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9rIpx-9f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahcarrfinancial.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}