Toyota Land Cruisers.
I first came about these cars while reading a thriller series written by a former Navy Seal, Jack Carr. The main protagonist drives a 62 series Land Cruiser for durability and reliability. Turns out the United Nations believes Land Cruisers are incredibly functional, too, as they are the vehicle of choice for their humanitarian services in some of the harshest and hard to reach places on the globe. It doesn’t hurt that they (in my humble opinion) are darn cool looking, too.
The outdoor adventures that could be partaken in a Land Cruiser began to dominate my headspace for long periods of time: visions of nights spent around a campfire with our young family and epic off-road wanderings. The great outdoors was there for our taking and the Land Cruiser was our gateway.
I saw a listing for a Cruiser and went and checked it out. Being a 30-plus year old car, it had a classic look but definitely would need a lot of work. While thoughts of tackling the rugged Anza-Borrego desert danced around my head, the owner said something that jolted me, “You don’t buy these for utility. You buy these for status.”
That statement struck me. I’m the type of person who prides himself on staying off the pedestal of life. $6 t-shirts from Target and a home cooked meal – that suits me just fine.
And while I didn’t purchase that particular Cruiser, a few weeks later I was signing a bill of sale and taking possession of a black 1991 HZJ77 Land Cruiser.
Status.
I always did a double-take when the well-outfitted off-road vehicle drove by. We all have different goals with our money and time horizons to see them take shape. Problems arise when we take someone else’s goals, time, and money and make them our own.
Lifestyle creep happens when you spend more on living expenses and nonessential items as your income increases. What was once a luxury is now a necessity. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had drifted off track from where I wanted to be.
That’s exactly how lifestyle creep works. Social comparison quietly slips those dollars out of your wallet. You don’t know it while it happens, but when you hit a bump in the road or a life event, you ask why your savings aren’t where they should be.
The inability to deny a desire will eventually catch up with you. Like it did with me and the Cruiser.
The drive home from purchasing the “new” Cruiser was the start of a continual string of mis-happenings. The car budget that was for a replacement vehicle was now a Land Cruiser money pit. The Cruiser has never seen a campfire or a desert sunset. It’s currently waiting on new fuel injectors and a “For Sale” sign to be added to its back window.
The idyllic visions in my head were easy and fun. Experiencing the reality of owning a 30-year old car with a business to run and two young kids at home is something entirely different.
The American Dream.
I tell this story to bring to light a common human experience: lifestyle enhancement. Yes, even financial planners experience it too.
Maybe, just maybe, the bigger, shinier, off-road-camping-setup-pursuit-of-the-American-dream isn’t the key to happiness for everyone. At least, not anymore for us.
Pick your poison. It’s probably not cars or off-road vehicles but it might be something else: what house you live in and where, the clothes you put on, the boat that fills your garage, the vacations you take, the sporting events you pay to see, the home renovation you’re planning – these are all signals to the outside world of who we are and what we want others to see (or deeper yet – what we want to see in ourselves).
The paradox is that most people aren’t thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves and how they can achieve what you have. I know I was!
Morgan Housel, in his book The Psychology of Money says, “You might think you want an expensive car, a fancy watch, and a huge house. But I’m telling you, you don’t. What you want is respect and admiration from other people, and you think having expensive stuff will bring it. It almost never does – especially from the people you want to respect and admire you.”
Or here’s Thomas Stanley from The Millionaire Next Door. He says, “Our consumer society propels the average person to spend far more than is necessary or healthy. The average plumber retires far sooner than the average lawyer, even though lawyers make more money than plumbers. Why? Because the attorney “must” drive a nicer car, live in a nicer part of town, buy more expensive clothes, and take more exotic vacations than the plumber.”
And finally, here’s Juliet Schor in The Overspent American: “This is not to say that most Americans make consumer purchases solely to fool others about who they really are. It is not to say that we are a nation of crass status-seekers. Or that people who purchase more than they need are simply demonstrating a base materialism, in the sense of valuing material possessions above all else. But it is to say that, unlike the millionaires next door, who are not driven to use their wealth to create an attractive image of themselves, many of us are continually comparing our own lifestyle and possessions to those of a select group of people we respect and want to be like, people whose sense of what’s important in life seems close to our own [emphasis mine].
I was comparing my lifestyle to that of an off-roader with family in tow. One who loved adventure and wanted to bring new experiences to his kids. None of this is bad! The point isn’t to abandon the pursuit of adventure, cool cars or family trips. Both are great.
But as the budget continues to stretch to match those of people we respect, we may find ourselves feeling anxiety and behind on savings. We have all the trappings of ‘what’s important to us now,’ but we have that nagging feeling in the back of our mind that we aren’t putting enough away for the future. It’s a never ending cycle of new lifestyles and possessions all costing us more money adding to the stress and guilt.
I don’t offer very concrete solutions because this is difficult.
Going through this Cruiser experience has reminded me that hard work, kindness, fiscal responsibility, and integrity will bring you more enhancement than any lifestyle or possession ever will.