This is a good point. I turned 18 in 1980. My parents had one car, a 3-bed bungalow, and no cable while I was growing up. The Mother's Day special dinner was a bucket of KFC, and we had a garden and cool room for vegetables. And, while we weren't rich, we weren't poor either. Solid middle class, I felt, and I had a great childhood. I could probably retire early if I brought my lifestyle down to what my parents thoroughly enjoyed.
This article is why I always take with a grain of salt the messages that boomers could have a normal job and afford everything while current generations can't afford anything. Yes there is some truth to that....but as an early GenX'r from depression era parents, we did not spend money on: cell phones, internet, cable TV, going out to eat (very rarely), tons of kid activities, large house, newer cars, big vacations, A/C (only my parents room had a window unit), the list goes on and on. I'm talking about stuff that we think need now beyond the $7 latte. My parents watched pennies, and rarely wasted.
We moved into a home seven years ago that is older and does not have AC. We chose it because it has a fireplace, and because it’s an older home, it’s actually built well, you know? It’s heated by a boiler/radiators, so adding AC would first require adding ductwork to the entire house, at a cost that seems…not worth it. Summers here are humid, and sometimes hot. We have added light-blocking curtains, window AC units in the bedrooms, and a dehumidifier in the basement to keep our books and walls from getting soggy. We’ve learned to bake bread in the toaster oven on the 3-season porch, to enjoy dining outdoors on the patio, and that if you keep the bedroom door closed and the shades drawn, the cool from running the window AC at night lasts through a very good portion of the day. But really, over the course of a summer, say May to September, there are probably only 20-30 days which are truly unbearable. And so over seven years, we’ve all learned to simply soldier on. It’s worth it to be in a house that otherwise has “good bones,” it’s worth it to feel like it actually puts us back in rhythm with the seasons, and to find the little joys like switching to iced coffee, and how you know it’s finally autumn when my husband bakes fresh biscuits for breakfast again, it’s worth it to know that we can survive unpleasant moments, it’s worth it when we notice how quickly we are getting our mortgage paid off because we spent half what we would have on new construction. It’s all worth it.
It's a really good and insightful article. I spend way more than I like because the circle of friends I move in have very high incomes and high expenditure lifestyles. But if you want to move in those circles--or keep good friends who have high consumption lifestyles--it's the price you have to pay. Friendships are formed--and kept--by common activities and interests and that means being able to have the funds to partake in those interests as well.
I grew up in a working class family and my parents to this day berate me about my expenditure, not realising that its a consequence of my professional status and the friends formed by moving in that circle. Somehow they felt that I could live on a work classing expenditure while moving in professional class circles. It isn't going to happen.
What I do find interesting though is that much of high-consumption that I see is an attempt by lower status people to dominate higher status ones. It's not so much as keeping up with the Jones's as wanting to be their social superior. I think this aspect gets overlooked quite a bit in these discussions.
Good post. For those working to advance in a corporate setting, simply ignoring or opting out of status indicators Aaron describes comes at a high cost—you’re unlikely to be seen as high potential / a future leader. I know Xians at work who take that approach and while I respect their self-discipline and vision, others see it as unsophisticated and boring. To cite just one example of how this plays out, so much small talk in professional settings revolves around the latest and greatest thing to wear/eat/see/do that it can be difficult for alternative lifestyle types to contribute and connect in baseline polite conversation.
Like other trends Aaron has pointed out elsewhere, this seems to have accelerated around 2014.
Master planned communities such as The Woodlands where I live has a built-in ratcheting mechanism. The smaller houses aren't just smaller -- the build quality is lower. For the most part, the bigger the house the "nicer" or more custom it is. To cut against the grain is, ironically, itself a kind of status signal/luxury good. If your goal is to own a well-appointed small house, you have to buy it and pay a premium to customize it, etc. And then you'll have a house that doesn't fit market expectations...so you have to not care as much about your ROI. So lots of pressure to go big and stay big.
That's a really good insight. It's similar to the difference between people who drive new cars vs. old cars, except for those who drive classics that are immaculately maintained and cost quite a bit to keep up - say a classic Corvette or an old Porsche.
See this affecting city design too, Austin is passing a bunch of yimby policies, but the problem is building a modern house is still way too expensive. Great you can build an extra unit or two on your lot now. But it’s still going to cost you 300k minimum not including land to build anything. Meanwhile mobile homes can be had for under 100k but they remain effectively banned for aesthetic and lifestyle reasons
Same with Austin’s new train. Busses with dedicated lanes could cover 10x the routes that the train could and provide better service. But people think the upper middle will never be seen on a bus, but would be willing to ride a train for some reason
This article pairs well with an article that has been influential upon me by the FIRE advocate 'Mr. Money Moustache' in which he describes hedonic adaptation and how it makes you a 'sucka'.
He talks about lottery winners... "Well, it turns out that when a person jumps to a new level of material convenience, he loses the ability to enjoy the things he previously thought were pretty neat. A cold Bud Light was once a true delight after a work day for the lottery winner, but after the win he quits the job and takes up high-end scotch, poured by a personal butler. Both serve the same purpose, and the pleasure is about the same."
He then follows up with an article on how to resist hedonic adaptation:
-Delay every upgrade
-Break upgrades into smaller pieces
-First address other things that are blocking happiness 'like a messy garage'
One of the things I find very difficult about living in an affluent area is that the parents send their kids to activities (that they have to pay for) all the damn time. Like, our kids could just play in the yard or the street. They would be doing the same basic stuff for free and we don't have to drive them somewhere according to a schedule.
My family was lower middle class growing up and my parents chose to live in ways that were deliberately different, which, in combination with the restrictions of the conservative Christian culture of the eighties made me feel like an outcast among my peers. I was at the bottom of the social pecking order and felt like I literally had nothing going for me (I was terrible at sports and was always one of the ones picked last, I had hand me down clothes from a friend who attended a very conservative Christian school, I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio, had no facility with the opposite sex, etc.) and I very much resented it.
One of the things that saved me as a teen was discovering Christian rock music, which was a lifeline for me that allowed me to connect the world I had to inhabit at public school with the world I had to inhabit at home and church in a way that made it possible not to feel like total outsider to everything. Even then, many of the people who surrounded me at church were critical of the Christian music I liked, which felt like they were trying to pull me back into the status of total social outcast. I fought that relentlessly, but it was hard and I was often filled with conflict and doubt. I still struggle with the effects of all of the above to this day, especially feeling like I never fit in anywhere, and I'm in my early 50s.
I don't know what the best way forward is in light of the above that Aaron shared about lifestyle markers, but I wanted to share my own experience as an example of how difficult it can be to go against the grain of expectation, especially when it's unchosen, as it was for me as a kid.
One of the biggest problems with age-segregated education is that it operates on peer-pressure, which makes everyone feel like they have to fit in. So even before the public schools went all liberal, they were damaging kids by training them to have their peers as their guide, instead of standing on their own. It's one of the big benefits of homeschooling that kids are raised without that kind of motivation being drilled into them.
I agree. I've often wish I could have been homeschooled, but I don't think my dad would have gone for it and it just wasn't as widely known and practiced back in the 70s and 80s when I was in school.
In my family of nine, we lived in a three-bedroom, one-bath (tub only) house. The girls' bedroom was 7.5 x 14', and there were four of us in there. The boys' bedroom was even smaller, and there were three in there. Looking back, how we survived with one bathroom is beyond me, especially when we had four teenagers at a time. But we were not the biggest family in the neighborhood, and our conditions were not unusual. Mr. Renn is correct: our expectations have made us poorer, both financially and character wise. But now that I live in Florida, no way would I survive without air conditioning, and yet the pioneers certainly did. I long for a simpler life, but honestly I don't know how to pull it off.
0. Especially Christians, but also almost everyone, should be worried about this in their own lives and should be actively fighting against this.
1. Hedonic Treadmill / Lifestyle Ratchet is a big threat to human flourishing, especially in affluent societies. Especially in America. Envy, dissatisfaction, working more hours, raising kids with ever inflated expectations (def. where I'm failing), relational isolation (per John E Bishop below), etc.
2. Wendell Berry's fine essay 'The Joy of Sales Resistance' inspired me 15 years ago - along with folks like Mr. Money Mustache -
2a. "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else." - Dave Ramsey.
Different people will find fault variously with WB or MMM or DR. But their common ground is also in common with this piece.
3. How to do so? I agree with Russ Pulliam below about 'Pursue Community Strength', etc.
Finding people who share similar values is helpful and mutually reinforcing, especially if they are near you. Important both as a reinforcement for me, but also as an inspiration of what could be.
But also I've noticed something in the rarified air I sometimes move in with my consulting work - 98th percentile income earners, center to far left - they actually are intrigued by the life we've chosen to live (no debt, retire early, deep community, walkable) and *say* they want to pursue that too. Another person in my circles - not a person of faith, I think - made a commitment to only working during 8-5, so he could be with his kids. Deeply countercultural in his field, but people are drawn to it. (A Hindu friend from a coastal city pulled me aside 3 weeks ago and said: I'm going to do what you did - retire early, start a nonprofit, get engaged in my community.)
3a. So, Aaron, you might be right that dialing back the expectations could cost you in some circles and make you stand out in a negative way, but I've found that largely to not be true. I am but a data point of one, though.
I find this consumer problem and keeping up with the Joneses a deeply rooted western world problem especially in America where we believe in the rugged individualism. Other cultures don't believe that BS. A lot of muslim families operate as business units where they all pour their resources together in a pile and share stuff like Ferraris and big mcmansion. The average American family unit does not operate like this hence why most Americans are 666k in debt trying to upgrade their life to whatever magic TV man says they need to get.
This is a good point. I turned 18 in 1980. My parents had one car, a 3-bed bungalow, and no cable while I was growing up. The Mother's Day special dinner was a bucket of KFC, and we had a garden and cool room for vegetables. And, while we weren't rich, we weren't poor either. Solid middle class, I felt, and I had a great childhood. I could probably retire early if I brought my lifestyle down to what my parents thoroughly enjoyed.
This article is why I always take with a grain of salt the messages that boomers could have a normal job and afford everything while current generations can't afford anything. Yes there is some truth to that....but as an early GenX'r from depression era parents, we did not spend money on: cell phones, internet, cable TV, going out to eat (very rarely), tons of kid activities, large house, newer cars, big vacations, A/C (only my parents room had a window unit), the list goes on and on. I'm talking about stuff that we think need now beyond the $7 latte. My parents watched pennies, and rarely wasted.
We moved into a home seven years ago that is older and does not have AC. We chose it because it has a fireplace, and because it’s an older home, it’s actually built well, you know? It’s heated by a boiler/radiators, so adding AC would first require adding ductwork to the entire house, at a cost that seems…not worth it. Summers here are humid, and sometimes hot. We have added light-blocking curtains, window AC units in the bedrooms, and a dehumidifier in the basement to keep our books and walls from getting soggy. We’ve learned to bake bread in the toaster oven on the 3-season porch, to enjoy dining outdoors on the patio, and that if you keep the bedroom door closed and the shades drawn, the cool from running the window AC at night lasts through a very good portion of the day. But really, over the course of a summer, say May to September, there are probably only 20-30 days which are truly unbearable. And so over seven years, we’ve all learned to simply soldier on. It’s worth it to be in a house that otherwise has “good bones,” it’s worth it to feel like it actually puts us back in rhythm with the seasons, and to find the little joys like switching to iced coffee, and how you know it’s finally autumn when my husband bakes fresh biscuits for breakfast again, it’s worth it to know that we can survive unpleasant moments, it’s worth it when we notice how quickly we are getting our mortgage paid off because we spent half what we would have on new construction. It’s all worth it.
It's a really good and insightful article. I spend way more than I like because the circle of friends I move in have very high incomes and high expenditure lifestyles. But if you want to move in those circles--or keep good friends who have high consumption lifestyles--it's the price you have to pay. Friendships are formed--and kept--by common activities and interests and that means being able to have the funds to partake in those interests as well.
I grew up in a working class family and my parents to this day berate me about my expenditure, not realising that its a consequence of my professional status and the friends formed by moving in that circle. Somehow they felt that I could live on a work classing expenditure while moving in professional class circles. It isn't going to happen.
What I do find interesting though is that much of high-consumption that I see is an attempt by lower status people to dominate higher status ones. It's not so much as keeping up with the Jones's as wanting to be their social superior. I think this aspect gets overlooked quite a bit in these discussions.
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.
Good post. For those working to advance in a corporate setting, simply ignoring or opting out of status indicators Aaron describes comes at a high cost—you’re unlikely to be seen as high potential / a future leader. I know Xians at work who take that approach and while I respect their self-discipline and vision, others see it as unsophisticated and boring. To cite just one example of how this plays out, so much small talk in professional settings revolves around the latest and greatest thing to wear/eat/see/do that it can be difficult for alternative lifestyle types to contribute and connect in baseline polite conversation.
Like other trends Aaron has pointed out elsewhere, this seems to have accelerated around 2014.
Our society encourages class-based, conspicuous consumption. Huxley predicted this. Anyone remember Brave New World? Centrifugal Bumble Puppy.
Master planned communities such as The Woodlands where I live has a built-in ratcheting mechanism. The smaller houses aren't just smaller -- the build quality is lower. For the most part, the bigger the house the "nicer" or more custom it is. To cut against the grain is, ironically, itself a kind of status signal/luxury good. If your goal is to own a well-appointed small house, you have to buy it and pay a premium to customize it, etc. And then you'll have a house that doesn't fit market expectations...so you have to not care as much about your ROI. So lots of pressure to go big and stay big.
That's a really good insight. It's similar to the difference between people who drive new cars vs. old cars, except for those who drive classics that are immaculately maintained and cost quite a bit to keep up - say a classic Corvette or an old Porsche.
See this affecting city design too, Austin is passing a bunch of yimby policies, but the problem is building a modern house is still way too expensive. Great you can build an extra unit or two on your lot now. But it’s still going to cost you 300k minimum not including land to build anything. Meanwhile mobile homes can be had for under 100k but they remain effectively banned for aesthetic and lifestyle reasons
Same with Austin’s new train. Busses with dedicated lanes could cover 10x the routes that the train could and provide better service. But people think the upper middle will never be seen on a bus, but would be willing to ride a train for some reason
This article pairs well with an article that has been influential upon me by the FIRE advocate 'Mr. Money Moustache' in which he describes hedonic adaptation and how it makes you a 'sucka'.
He talks about lottery winners... "Well, it turns out that when a person jumps to a new level of material convenience, he loses the ability to enjoy the things he previously thought were pretty neat. A cold Bud Light was once a true delight after a work day for the lottery winner, but after the win he quits the job and takes up high-end scotch, poured by a personal butler. Both serve the same purpose, and the pleasure is about the same."
He then follows up with an article on how to resist hedonic adaptation:
-Delay every upgrade
-Break upgrades into smaller pieces
-First address other things that are blocking happiness 'like a messy garage'
One of the things I find very difficult about living in an affluent area is that the parents send their kids to activities (that they have to pay for) all the damn time. Like, our kids could just play in the yard or the street. They would be doing the same basic stuff for free and we don't have to drive them somewhere according to a schedule.
Yes. If you send your kids to play in the streets, they won't have anyone to play with.
WELL I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, WHERE AT LEAST I HAVE AC
AND I WON'T FORGET THE BRITS WHO DIED, IN THE HEATWAVE OF '03
AND I'LL GLADLY SIT DOWN IN MY ROOM, AND ENJOY THAT SWEET COLD AIR
THAT HOT HOT SEETHE AND EURO COPE GOD BLESS MY FRIGIDAIRE
All of these mean that we have to be intentional when it comes to building relationships with our neighbors, loving them.
My family was lower middle class growing up and my parents chose to live in ways that were deliberately different, which, in combination with the restrictions of the conservative Christian culture of the eighties made me feel like an outcast among my peers. I was at the bottom of the social pecking order and felt like I literally had nothing going for me (I was terrible at sports and was always one of the ones picked last, I had hand me down clothes from a friend who attended a very conservative Christian school, I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio, had no facility with the opposite sex, etc.) and I very much resented it.
One of the things that saved me as a teen was discovering Christian rock music, which was a lifeline for me that allowed me to connect the world I had to inhabit at public school with the world I had to inhabit at home and church in a way that made it possible not to feel like total outsider to everything. Even then, many of the people who surrounded me at church were critical of the Christian music I liked, which felt like they were trying to pull me back into the status of total social outcast. I fought that relentlessly, but it was hard and I was often filled with conflict and doubt. I still struggle with the effects of all of the above to this day, especially feeling like I never fit in anywhere, and I'm in my early 50s.
I don't know what the best way forward is in light of the above that Aaron shared about lifestyle markers, but I wanted to share my own experience as an example of how difficult it can be to go against the grain of expectation, especially when it's unchosen, as it was for me as a kid.
One of the biggest problems with age-segregated education is that it operates on peer-pressure, which makes everyone feel like they have to fit in. So even before the public schools went all liberal, they were damaging kids by training them to have their peers as their guide, instead of standing on their own. It's one of the big benefits of homeschooling that kids are raised without that kind of motivation being drilled into them.
I agree. I've often wish I could have been homeschooled, but I don't think my dad would have gone for it and it just wasn't as widely known and practiced back in the 70s and 80s when I was in school.
Thanks for sharing that.
In my family of nine, we lived in a three-bedroom, one-bath (tub only) house. The girls' bedroom was 7.5 x 14', and there were four of us in there. The boys' bedroom was even smaller, and there were three in there. Looking back, how we survived with one bathroom is beyond me, especially when we had four teenagers at a time. But we were not the biggest family in the neighborhood, and our conditions were not unusual. Mr. Renn is correct: our expectations have made us poorer, both financially and character wise. But now that I live in Florida, no way would I survive without air conditioning, and yet the pioneers certainly did. I long for a simpler life, but honestly I don't know how to pull it off.
Wow - that's a lot of people in a small space.
It was! I credit that situation for our love of the outdoors. We were rarely in the house if the weather was halfway decent.
0. Especially Christians, but also almost everyone, should be worried about this in their own lives and should be actively fighting against this.
1. Hedonic Treadmill / Lifestyle Ratchet is a big threat to human flourishing, especially in affluent societies. Especially in America. Envy, dissatisfaction, working more hours, raising kids with ever inflated expectations (def. where I'm failing), relational isolation (per John E Bishop below), etc.
2. Wendell Berry's fine essay 'The Joy of Sales Resistance' inspired me 15 years ago - along with folks like Mr. Money Mustache -
2a. "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else." - Dave Ramsey.
Different people will find fault variously with WB or MMM or DR. But their common ground is also in common with this piece.
3. How to do so? I agree with Russ Pulliam below about 'Pursue Community Strength', etc.
Finding people who share similar values is helpful and mutually reinforcing, especially if they are near you. Important both as a reinforcement for me, but also as an inspiration of what could be.
But also I've noticed something in the rarified air I sometimes move in with my consulting work - 98th percentile income earners, center to far left - they actually are intrigued by the life we've chosen to live (no debt, retire early, deep community, walkable) and *say* they want to pursue that too. Another person in my circles - not a person of faith, I think - made a commitment to only working during 8-5, so he could be with his kids. Deeply countercultural in his field, but people are drawn to it. (A Hindu friend from a coastal city pulled me aside 3 weeks ago and said: I'm going to do what you did - retire early, start a nonprofit, get engaged in my community.)
3a. So, Aaron, you might be right that dialing back the expectations could cost you in some circles and make you stand out in a negative way, but I've found that largely to not be true. I am but a data point of one, though.
Thanks for this post and many others.
I find this consumer problem and keeping up with the Joneses a deeply rooted western world problem especially in America where we believe in the rugged individualism. Other cultures don't believe that BS. A lot of muslim families operate as business units where they all pour their resources together in a pile and share stuff like Ferraris and big mcmansion. The average American family unit does not operate like this hence why most Americans are 666k in debt trying to upgrade their life to whatever magic TV man says they need to get.