You know, people wouldn’t be so eager to buy stuff if you were required to put your credit car balance in large letters on the rear bumper of your new car. You see the Joneses’ stuff, not their debt.
Most people don’t finance their car with a credit card. They’ll get better rates from the dealership.
But anyway, I think part of the problem is that you see one neighbor with his nice camera, and another with his cool car, and one with his swimming pool, oh and one co-worker went to Hawaii this year, and another took a cruise through the Panama canal…
Any of these things on their own is (depending on the income) a reasonable and affordable expense, but you see all of them happening, and suddenly you seem left out (even as your new addition to your home is creating the same envy in your neighbors).
And I’ve done it. I bought a new computer so I could play the same games my friends are playing. Of course, I say that I bought it because I will derive enjoyment from it (I do), and because I can afford it (I can), but there’s definitely an aspect that I see people playing all sorts of cool games that won’t run on my computer, and gee, I’d like to play some of those too.
We probably all do this, to some degree but…
For years my wife and I have noticed we seem to be a little behind our peers (in our age group). To be honest, we’ve gotten reluctant to invite folks over, because we haven’t upgraded to a bigger house, the home theater, the corian (sp?) countertops, and our furniture is beginning to look a little dated too. We’ve just figured they were better money managers.
And now we’re all reaching retirement age, and holy crap! These fools are in debt up to their necks and haven’t been saving much of anything. The old house we were a little ashamed of is now paid off, while our “peers” have 25 years of payments left (with only 5 probable years of work). We never seemed able to afford the new furniture and Lexus because things were always tight. There never seemed to be enough remaining after doubling up on the house payment, and putting the minimum 15% back for a rainy day.
We’re shocked at the people we know who have reached retirement age with nothing set aside. I guess we’re the Joneses now.
I’m not much of a consumer, so no KUWTJ for me in that realm.
I do recognise the phenomenon, though, in my work. I’m a scientist, and just pottering along doing your own thing is not really possible in this day and age. It’s a sad fact that you need to be aware, and responsive to, how trends drive funding. Keeping up with them is not a million miles away from the same mentality that drives Jones-ish consumerism.
“Keeping up with” and “trying to out-do” both require using the Joneses as a benchmark for comparison, holding them up as some kind of standard against which to judge one’s own choices regarding material possessions.
If you see all your friends enjoying their smartphones and think to yourself, “I should get one because that looks like it could be useful/entertaining,” that’s not KUWTJ.
If instead you say to yourself “I better get one so I don’t look like a cheapskate luddite dork in front of all my fancy friends,” that’s KUWTJ, regardless of whether it’s the same model of phone as theirs or one that’s nicer.
Relevant Wikipedia page: Keeping Up With The Joneses
Which, in it’s own way, is just the same. It is trying to establish your status by the value of things. In your case, it is the perceived value vs. the actual cost. But really, it’s all the same.
I did say “credit car” balance. (Yeah, that typo was deliberate. 
) But a person who buys a luxury car he can’t really afford has probably bought lots of other stuff he can’t afford also. The neighbors see the assets, not the debt.
You and I will be able to hire all those spenders to mow and water our lawns and serve our dinners when we retire with money and they have none.
It is not a matter of affording it, it is a matter of priorities. Spending an extra $10K on a car so it will warm my butt? I think not. I’d rather save or spend on one of the few things which is important to me. I just got an S4 because the last phone I got - for free - was a piece of crap and getting a good one seemed worth it - which it was. Value versus cost.
Some people get a kick out of buying stuff. I know someone who died with three DVD players in his garage, still in boxes - and he could have used the money. When I get the urge I go to the thrift store where I can buy all the $1.99 jigsaw puzzles I can carry.
Okay.
It’s not? You survived just fine without a smartphone until you saw the Joneses using one, and only then it becomes a necessity? Sounds like finding an excuse for keeping up, to me.
The quaintness of the phrase tends to hide as much as explain it. The entire cycle of having to have what your nominal peers have, or be judged inferior, is pretty much the same no matter what the nuances of “influence” or “keeping up” or “outdoing.”
There used to be a mentality that you had to keep up out of fear of being thought of as less-than, not properly living the American Dream. I haven’t read the Wiki article, but to me it seems like a GE- or GM businessman way of thinking, or better yet, as demonstrated by the Stevenses on Bewitched … or on Mad Men. You had to have the boss over to dinner, and let him see how hip and modern and with it you were, and how well your wife could cook a pot roast. Everything you did was for appearances’ sake, to save face as the Japanese put it.
That’s the emptiness we now reject. I think we all want to have nice things in order to 1) enjoy them and 2) be well thought-of for having them. I just don’t think there is the societal pressure that there used to be to project a certain image, if you were in the middle class in America.
Hmm.
You don’t think the pressure has become so universal that we no longer perceive it as such? That it’s not just an affliction of social-climbing suburbanites, as it might have been in the 1950s-60s?
I guess you’re right: nobody can ever objectively find that something is useful; their actual motive for acquiring any material good is always merely the fact that their peers already have it, and they fear being perceived as lower-class if they don’t also have it.
:rolleyes:
To me, KUWTJ is not that fundamentally different from conforming to what’s around you. Since most people conform to what’s around them, it strikes me that KUWTJ is quite widespread. At least more widespread than what the Dope would suggest.
No, it’s not a matter of swinging to the other extreme and dismissing all new products, either. But somewhere in the middle is the truth in each case: in between “I truly must have this on its own merits” and “I want one because everyone else has one.”
Finding the merits only after you are convinced to buy one becomes questionable.
I guess not - I have lived in the same house for 25 years and drive a 22 year old car.
I think living below your means comes close.
Why should there have to be a phrase for it? Why is only living “to your means” or even above it free from a need to explain your choices?
Look at Jerry Brown’s first term as governor. He eschewed nearly all the trappings, refused to live in the sprawling Governor’s Mansion Reagan had built, lived in a modest apartment, drove to work in a fleet Plymouth… and had to justify this every single day, in nearly every press conference.
LIving “below your means” indicates there’s something wrong with you, so you’d better have a damned good explanation on the quick draw.
No. I buy for quality, utility, and good design. I don’t buy things to impress people, with the possible exception of dress clothes. Even there, I buy for quality above all. I would never buy an off-the-rack Armani, for example, when I could spend the same money for a bespoke suit and get better quality and fit.
Imagine you were the type who felt he had to keep with your neighbor, and your neighbor was Bill Gates.
I think there are certain careers where keeping up with everything is no longer a big deal. In the '60s you had to be an artist of hippie to avoid this, now it is more acceptable. On the other hand, where I work clothes and cars don’t mater much, bug gadgets do a lot more.
<fx serious Adama face> “So say we all!”
The problem with debating statements like this is that we’re all sock puppets here and can say pretty much whatever we want without having to prove any part of it. I can’t in any way disprove your claim. FWIW, I believe most folks here are honest in their posts and about themselves… but this is a topic that’s just a wee sma’ bit subjective and as prone to ingrained self-deception as sexuality.
I have yet to meet a person in the real world whose life was available for examination who could uphold any variation of your statement. (Well, one, but he’s as close to the hypothetical man from Mars as you can get.) We all want to believe we make only rational, uninfluenced decisions. We are all wrong.