Ask HN: How do you manage the “Keeping Up with the Joneses” trap?

Read this summary of the research on how to maximize happiness per dollar.

Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451665075/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

There’s a lot of guidance on which “keeping up with the joneses” spending might actually make you happier. It’s also easier to resist some spending when you can recall a concrete reason from the book that you know that purchase was researched and the happiness was short-lived.

If you’re in the United States you should also read this. The title doesn’t hint at it, but similar ideas of maximizing happiness per dollar spent over lifetime, but more US-specific advice:

Money Management Skills by Michael Finke, The Great Courses, narrated by Michael Finke: https://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B00Q5DHLBM&source_code=ASSOR...

Some of the other answers here appear to be "just don't do it," which I don't think is helpful. I also struggle with the Joneses.

For me, it helps to hold in my mind what the Joneses have to do in order to be the Joneses. It may look like the Kardashians got super rich off doing nothing, but instead they consented to having cameras in their life all the time. There's no taking a long nap on a Saturday and not doing anything. They are constantly doing something to stay entertaining, and that seems exhausting to me.

On a closer-to-me level, I have some friends who are engineers at hedge funds in New York. I really love New York and I get jealous thinking about making fintech money there. But then if I chat a little more I realize that most of them are working 10-12 hour days on the regular, their apartment is either way out of downtown or it's super tiny with no room for personal projects.

However, I also have some friends who are super into their fitness and their travel. And I do try to keep up with them, because that lifestyle is appealing to me. I'll track them on social media and try to push myself to take more vacations and work out harder. They're my inspiration.

To keep myself grounded, I don't just think about keeping up with the Joneses, I think "am I willing to do what it takes to be a Jones?" Yes - some folks got lucky and fell into a pile of money. Most didn't. Sometimes I'm willing to do what it takes to be a Jones, sometimes I'm not.

Don't keep up with the Joneses. Instead, just be a nerd and don't care about being popular http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

I am cheap and I had to cut off many “friends” from my life because I was pressured (mostly implicitly pressured) into doing activities that costed too much money for my taste.

Example 1: going on a ski trip and staying at a 5 star hotel when a nearby motel would do the job just fine.

Example 2: everyone in my old circle driving a $80k+ car while I drove an old Toyota.

It is not easy, but it was a life choice that liberated me.

I live on $40k/y and have been fully financially independent for a few years now. I think it was worth paying the price of losing those social connections.

During the Rashidun Caliphate, the caliphs were as powerful as kings but took median salary, made their own bread, and wore tattered clothes. They believe all wealth would be audited in the afterlife. A king who ate well when his citizens didn't would be punished in the afterlife.

So the caliphs tried to be as poor as possible, because that was the easiest way to avoid punishment. There was a story about the kings of Yemen met Caliph Abu Bakr and upon seeing the way he dressed, they donated all their crowns and jewels away.

One moral for this is you can compete to be more humble than the humblest person you can think of.

The theological appeal to humility is that everything comes from God - your family, opportunities, intelligence, inner drive.

You don't need to be a theist to be humble though. Just think back about how you got where you are. What mentors helped you throughout life? What books, what schools, what colleagues, open source? Maybe your parents abandoned you, but what about the rest of society, from your siblings to government and voters. We've had wars to get rid of slavery, that's at least something to be grateful for.

If you ever find yourself saying you were self taught and that you earned it all from your hard work, you should question that. Would you be happier buying that Ferrari? Maybe buy a nice steak for the people who have helped you this far.

Avoid impulse purchases.

If you see something you want to buy, ask yourself if you really need it now, or if you could delay it until next week - it will still be there, right?

For many things, the urge to buy it will simply pass, or it will go on sale. If you still want it after a few weeks, you probably really do need it, and you should get it! This way, it's not about doing without, it's just about delaying until you're sure and getting a good deal.

My SO and I are pretty frugal. We both are "jeans and t-shirts" kind of people. I bulk buy t-shirts so they're like $3US each, for example. I do have a polo or two for occasions. We are both senior eng and we live on less than one income. We give away most of the other income because that brings us joy. Our home is paid for (as are our vehicles, etc - we are completely debt free), but we continue to pay a mortgage, car payment, etc. to ourselves so that we are constantly saving for the next one. This helps keep our spending in check because every single dollar has a job. We don't want for anything really because "stuff" just weighs us down; it's a burden. That being said, we aren't extreme. We both love to read, so we never deny ourselves the books we want to read. We love traveling, so we don't deny ourselves that either. But what we don't do is buy a Porsche because Ted down the road bought one. If that's how he wants to spend his money, that's his business, but we don't desire those things.

I bury my head in the sand. No Joneses down here.

The answer is likely some combination of ignore it and be better than it. Whatever those mean to you.

"Keeping up with the Joneses", baldly stated, is basing your self-worth and well-being on being able to flaunt material wealth to acquaintances and strangers. Sounds ugly when stated that way, doesn't it? But that's what it is and if that's who you fundamentally are (or, even worse, that's who your spouse/family are) you are well and truly stuck in the trap.

To not be in the trap, you need to do the hardest thing in the world: change your personal values. Flaunt your contributions to your community. Base your pride on your professional and personal achievements. Base your mental comfort in building a nest egg that will cover not only your own retirement. Be known for aiding those less fortunate than yourself. Anything else but the empty materialistic charade of "keeping up with the Joneses".

I live in a rural area with very little access to shopping. You don't feel compelled to buy much if you don't see it around.

It really helps too if before you buy something, you ask yourself about alternatives - like if I don't buy this, what are the consequences? I read someone say once that they don't buy anything that they couldn't pay for twice over in cash - makes you think about whether you really need the item.

Overall, it's about shifting your mind set. Let someone else play the game of trying to one-up people. Realize that generosity to others is a greater form of wealth than material goods. Realize that the person who spends lavishly often finds themself out of money at some point in their life. That person who finds the need to "keep up" might actually be signaling a cry for emotional help.

I'm not exposed to very many Joneses. Not on any social media, so I'm not seeing whatever perfect curated influencer lives are dominating Instagram. I didn't jump neighborhoods a bunch as tech salaries skyrocketed, so my neighbors are mostly poorer than me. The few long time friends I still have from the good old class of '99 run a gamut of averageness you'd expect from any random sample of who you happened to meet and like at a public high school in the 90s, so not much to keep up with. Co-workers are working a similar job at a similar salary. I work for the DoD, so the senior executives directly managing us are making less money than the contractor engineers.

There are plenty of people out there worth being jealous of, probably, but if I don't know about them, I can't be jealous.

That's never been a big problem with me. I've never been acquisitive or felt the need to have all of the expensive trappings of my neighbours. It took years, but I figured out what I need and what I don't.

When I do find myself with the urge to keep up with the my neighbours, I stop and ask myself:

1. Do I really need that thing? 2. Will it make me happier or make my life better? 3. What are the longer-term costs (maintenance, depreciation, insurance, etc.)? 4. Is my money better spent elsewhere or just saved?

Trying to keep up with the so-called Joneses is a zero sum game. It won't make you happier. It won't make you a better person. It won't improve your lifestyle. You might just wind up struggling to maintain a life that really isn't yours and isn't for you.

I'm very cheap and try not to buy much. I think a big part of this is just how I was brought up - to save money and fix or build things. The other big driver is having a job I absolutely hate. I end up asking myself if it's better to retire a day earlier or buy some item(s). Hatred of the job almost always wins.

I do not have my identity in whether I am even with or ahead of other people. That makes it easy to simply not play the game.

You simply don't participate.

I mainly self-assess with two questions: (1) is there something relevant to my job that I don't know and should, and (2) of the skills relevant to my job, which are the weakest and how can I improve them?

I keep up with what makes "me" happy, intrinsically. Would that thing make me happy if I had it with me on a deserted island (kind of thought experiment)? Yes, great! Probably easier said than done. [I was fortunate(?) to grow up a bit of a sociopath/autistic or whatever-you-call-it and got not caring/being-aware about others' opinions for free.]

The only exception I could make is to play along to find a compatible partner, but possibly also worth reconsidering, depending on your priorities.

I'm through bein' cool

I pity the Joneses.