Spending is fun, saving sucks

At some point in time, a "saving ethic" will re-emerge in this country. By the looks of this story from CNN/Money - Life and debt in suburbia - it won't be anytime soon.

Americans are apparently only going to go kicking and screaming back to the ways of their grandparents and great-grandparents as exemplified by free-spending Dave Mendell, one of the three subject families for the report, who noted "We're not penny pinchers, but we can't spend without thinking about it either. That would be a nice goal."

Without pulling back the veil of polite secrecy that neighbors maintain about their financial status, it's hard to tell.

This story helps pull back that veil on three families on a street called Willow Lane in an idyllic upper-middle-class American suburb.
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The Wrights, the Steins and the Mendells are strikingly similar at first glance. They moved to town recently, are in their late thirties and early forties, grew up in middle-class families, graduated from good colleges, have professional jobs and are raising young kids. All three earn a comfortable living and borrowed about $300,000 to buy their homes.

In terms of their financial security, however, they are at quite different places. What's more, none of the families had an accurate picture of how they are doing, in part because they unconsciously measured themselves against their neighbors, and their assessment of those neighbors is wrong.

Reason number one why most people will never be wealthy (i.e., a high net worth) is that they care too much about what other people think.

Write that down - it's important - then read the story.