Love More. Live Better. A Southern Couple's Guide to Successful Living

Sure, eventually, by living below your means for many years, saving your hard earned dollars in well chosen investments, and paying cash for a new sports car you too can have a neighbor who envies your success. The punch line is that for 20 years your neighbors thought you were flat broke because you drove a beater to work everyday and didn’t go out to eat at Applebee’s every night. And even funnier, when you can finally truly afford the shiny toys you’ve always wanted, you might find that your priorities have changed and you value your hard earned financial security over some overpriced driveway eye candy.

My first car was half 1985 Ford Tempo and half 1986 Mercury Topaz painted 1993 Geo Polynesian green metallic (pretty close to teal). I drove it until I wanted to get to and from my college dorm and its transmission didn’t. After that, I drove a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu to and from work and school for 10 more years. And this car way by no means in good shape- rust everywhere, busted air conditioning, crumbling interior. I paid less than $1000 for each of these cars.

Over the past few years, my wife and I have eliminated our credit card debt and were able to save up the cash to pay for a gently used 2006 Chevrolet Equinox when it was time to replace the Malibu earlier this summer. We needed the ability to tow stuff- lumber, furniture, etc.- so we didn’t have to rely on expensive delivery services and the kindness of friends and strangers. It was really hard to drive our old cars while everyone else was buying new ones, but the strength we found in our plan to become and stay debt free got us through it. Now, we have a car just as new as our neighbors’ cars, but we have the fantastic advantage of having no car payments! (Yes, we’ll talk more about our 5-year journey to debt freedom at length in future posts.)

I can’t imagine anything that people are more obsessed with than cars. I can’t begin to count the times that friends and co-workers gave me grief over the decaying car in the parking lot. “When you are going to buy a new car?” was a common question. I was actually told to take the the University of Kentucky (our alma mater) sticker out of the window because it was embarrassing! It was as if people actually thought I hadn’t noticed that my car was 30 years older and a fair bit rustier than everything else on the road! They actually thought they were doing me a favor by informing me that I wasn’t driving the “right car” given my job in the electronic security industry… like they were giving me permission to take on a car payment to save my dignity. Sure, some of them were just having fun, but more than a few were deadly serious.

It was interesting to see how people were uncomfortable with the apparent mismatch between the car I drove and the job I drove to every day. I was challenging how they defined success without saying a word, and people were not happy. Now, after years of “sacrifice” and delayed gratification, I finally have that car, but without the monthly obligation to a bank that most people just accept as “normal.”

So, rather than spending time trying to define your own personal success by other people’s standards, you would be better served by spending time thinking about what “success” means to you. If you are one of those who define success as conspicuous consumption at or just beyond their means, then get ready for a long ride. There is always something newer and shinier. The target is always moving away from you. If your are accumulating debt to chase those toys, then you are are wasting a lot of your income on interest payments that could otherwise be used to pay cash for the newer, shinier toys later. If you are in this trap, you have to figure out how to break the cycle. Sometimes, you just have to skip Applebee’s that night and keep driving that rusted out beater for a few years… or maybe even a decade!

If you are investing your hard earned dollars in what you think are your friends’ opinions of you, the outflow of cash and the inflow of stuff will never end. At some point in time, you just have to decide that you “have enough” and let the world go by. Decide where you want to be and make a plan to get there… and stop there… or make a new plan. Surround yourself with cheerleaders, not critics. Surrounding yourself with critics makes reaching your goals that much harder. And don’t let other people define what success is for you. Success is a very personal thing. Nobody else has as much of a vested interest in YOU as you do.

Next week: Jack of all trades, master of none.

A lot of people make the mistake of defining success by saying, “I would be successful if I had what that person over there has!” That neighbor with a shiny new sports car in the driveway may indeed appear quite successful. But would you wish for that kind of success if you knew it came along with crushing debt and high maintenance costs? A friend who appears to have a happy marriage when she has you over for dinner, may cry herself to sleep at night because of her husband’s philandering indiscretions. If you think having, for example, a Coach purse on your arm or a shiny new Ford Mustang Shelby in the driveway is a powerful demonstration of success, I hate to break it to you. It means exactly nothing!

The problem is that it’s a lot easier to feign success than it is to be truly successful in your life. In decades past, when a person was doing well financially, they would have nicer things. Designer clothes and accessories, fancy cars, and a large, fine house were all indicators that someone had “arrived”. Nowadays, it isn’t possible to tell who is growing their savings accounts and who is growing their debt to income ratio. Thinking of success in terms of what other people have carries two problems.

The first problem revolves around how you make yourself feel when you obsess over other peoples’ possessions. Think about our society these days. Everyone, and I mean everyone, 3rd grade children included (I work in the public school system, so trust me it’s true), want Coach purses, Nike Air Force One tennis shoes or whatever material item symbolizes status for them. Then, they want 10 of that item. Given that the money people make for themselves eventually runs out, they make themselves miserable racking up credit card debt (which, incidentally means the BANK owns that Coach bag, not you) or worrying about how to make more money…NOT to save for retirement, but to buy more stuff. Think about that… They worry, as in put great amounts of thought and effort into, figuring out how to make more money to buy stuff to impress other people!!! I am all for owning luxury items like a boat or a pool etc…if you can pay cash for these things. They are status symbols to me, but not in the traditional way. They are status symbols of how a person likes to spend time with loved ones (be they friends or family), making memories and sharing laughs.

The second problem is the result of the first problem. By spending all of the money you earned by the sweat of your brow, you then have less money to live how you “dreamed” you would live when you retire. People generally daydream about retiring in a nice paid for house, with a paid for car, on some land, maybe in the country, or on a boat, on the ocean, or in a condo at the beach. They don’t generally daydream about debt, and that would be because we all assume that when we retire, our debt will be paid off. Why would we ever assume that??? If we don’t pay it off ourselves, who is going to pay it off for us?? The government?? Why would they do that? Did they accrue the debt?? Are they driving the Lincoln Navigator?? Do they have your Louis Vuitton and your Hermes Birkin bag at the Pentagon, passing them around the water cooler?? No, obviously, they are not. So, if the government is not paying off your debt, then I guess that would leave you to take responsibility. Now, most people would want to pay off said debts when they are young, to get it out of the way. OH NO, BUT WAIT!!! That means I can’t buy those Jimmy Choo shoes I am DYING to go buy this weekend. That’s right. It is a hard lesson to learn, but in the words of The Rolling Stones, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. And therein lies the problem. Save for retirement, or spend for the day. I guess people have to make that decision for themselves, but at least, everyone knows where we stand.

Next week: Success is personal

If you are hoping to find a concrete definition of success here, you aren’t going to find it. My personal definition of success is going to be pretty different from, say, someone who wants to become a movie star. I think I would have to feed some poor paparazzo his camera if he invaded my family’s privacy. But someone else might consider permanent flash blindness some measure of success.

So, how could a self-proclaimed “Guide to Successful Living” not define “success?” You see, I refuse to define success for you. I don’t want to take your hopes and dreams and replace them with mine. You wouldn’t be happy and you would have every right to write us off as yet another empty “I’m happy! So, why aren’t you?” piece of garbage on the Internet. The aspiring movies stars out there can breath easier.

I would like to welcome all the budding rock stars, the housewives, the millionaires in the making, the hard working mentors, the aspiring pro athletes, the selfless Peace Corps volunteers, and everyone else who has a goal in sight and is taking steps (even small ones) in the direction of their dreams.

I would also like to welcome those of you who take a look around and don’t really like where you are. You may be jealous of your neighbor’s new car, struggling with debt, languishing in a dead end job, unhappy in a relationship, or anyone else who laughs in the face of someone who dares to utter the words, “American dream.”

Success was the first renewable natural resource and will be around long after every oil well runs dry. But like every other natural resource, it’s not just lying on the ground to be picked up and put in your pocket. That would be too easy. It has to be mined, worked, and polished before it reaches its ultimate potential. And for those of you who think gold comes from jewelry stores and meat comes from the grocery, this means that achieving success takes work… and sometimes, a lot of it.

The truth is that you probably already have some idea of what success means to you. The problem is that there are a lot of people out there who aren’t taking steps toward reaching their goals. You may be too busy, or you might not even know where to begin. Well, while nobody but YOU can tell you how to be successful, I think we can help. In the weeks to come, we’ll walk you through writing down your own definition of success, writing down a plan to accomplish that success, and providing some encouragement along the way to living successfully.

Is there anyone still listening out there? If so, let us know. If you are really winning at life, leave a comment and shout it from the rooftop… If you are struggling, leave a comment to let us know you need someone to put an arm around your shoulder. Every week we would like to customize out blog posts to the previous week’s comments. Since we’re new around here, we want to know who’s out there.

Next week: I’ll have what’s she’s having!

My wife, Emily, and I would like to welcome you to our blog!

We’re a southern couple who are REALLY WINNING at the game of life, and we wanted to start this blog to share our winning insights with others like you.
We want to share how we work together to build a strong marriage and enjoy financial success.

Hopefully, our blog posts and newsletters can help bring those things to your relationship too!

Thank you again for visiting. Bookmark our site. Comment often and let us know what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. We’ll talk to you soon!