Did You Leverage Your Lifestyle?
Posted on July 27th, 2011
The American consumer lifestyle has many of us constantly striving for bigger and better things to show off our success to our peers. This is especially true for young professionals that are rising through the ranks at their company. While it is nice to treat yourself to some nicer things once you have met a goal and saved up for them, some people get carried away and borrow more than they should to live the life that they desire, effectively living a leveraged lifestyle.
Some companies have noticed the trend and encourage their young professionals to leverage their lifestyle with the promise of future benefits to come, as long as the professional works hard to make profits for the company. In some of these companies, young professionals work long hours and sacrifice their social and family lives to achieve coveted positions that allow them to earn more money and live the lifestyle that they see the current employees in those positions living. The appearance of success becomes important to achieving actual success, encouraging these young professionals to borrow heavily to pay for tailored business suits, luxury vehicles for driving to business meetings, and luxury apartments for hosting dinner parties.
This trend of a leveraged lifestyle is not confined to young professionals. Some families borrow heavily to ensure that their children can do all of the extracurricular activities that their peers are doing. College students open student credit cards and rack up large amounts of debt ensuring that they are wearing similar clothing to their peers and attending events with their friends. Few people are willing to have the oldest vehicle on their block and many employees purchase expensive restaurant lunches simply because they are going with a group of their fellow employees.
The first step in overcoming a leveraged lifestyle is recognizing the problem and resolving the mindset that causes you to purchase items unnecessarily. If you have friends that are big spenders, invite them over for a night in instead of going out. Replace items because they are broken or completely worn out, not just because you see a new one that you like. Convince yourself that having the same things or better things than everyone else is not worth going into debt and save up for the things that you desire.
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Tags: Lifestyle
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