Have you ever sensed that liking a certain thing makes you sophisticated or cultured or cool? Like dry white wine, the opera, kale, velvet smoking slippers, football brackets, Elizabeth Olsen movies? And even though it seems like everyone else agrees the thing is great, you secretly find it to be totally overrated.
But you don’t say so, no, no. Maybe it's because you lack empirical evidence that can stand up to popular opinion that craft beer is great when you know in the depths of your soul that it is disgusting.
I’ve felt this way a lot in my life, about small stuff like the examples above, but also about really big things where I felt pressured to do what everyone else was doing, instead of staying true to myself and what I valued.
One of the most amazing things about being human is that we're unique with widely varied interests and priorities, living in a big, big world with enough diversity for us to find what suits our preferences. Even though Earth is big enough for us to relish our uniqueness while coexisting with other human beings with entirely different preferences, humanity loves nothing more than trying to jam everyone into one-size-fits-all spaces.
“If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets.”
Resisting the pressure to follow the herd is an essential skill that will help you build an incredible life, and it's also a key element in growing your wealth. If you let the herd tell you how to spend your money, you will likely end up where the herd goes, which is living in debt: as of writing this, the proportion of Americans in debt is on the rise and currently at roughly 77% of the adult population, with an average of $38k owed to lenders.
The solution sounds easy: all you have to do is decide what you really value and spend only on that, and use the balance to grow your savings, retirement, investments and other growth accounts. The problem is that it's so hard to do in a land of lemmings who are constantly telling you what to think. How many times have you seen an advertisement telling you that you "deserve" something? Or felt pressured to buy or order something so you don't seem "cheap" or "stingy"?
Here's a universal truth: every single human being has dealt with that pressure, too - but the 23% of Americans not living in debt and the 12% of Americans who are millionaires know how to resist it and make better decisions for themselves.
Learning how to do this for myself was the best financial investment I have ever made, and it was free - all it took was time to read and reflect. I'm going to bring it to life for you by sharing some personal examples where I've followed the herd, regretted it, and lost wealth, and then share what I learned to do in order to resist the herd and grow my wealth because of it. Hopefully it inspires you to rethink some of the ways you spend your money to set your future self up for more success.
Where I've followed the herd and lost money:
If you're married or recently engaged, you may be familiar with the cost of a ring and a wedding. Somewhere in recent human history, a bunch of marketers got in a room with merchants of the dying diamond trade and said to themselves, "how can we boost sales?" One guy said, "let's make it like a dowry, but easier than trading in a couple of cows for a woman." Another guy piled on, "and it should be expensive, because cows are expensive… what's the lifetime value of a cow?" And so they calculated the milk-making potential, the meat, the prestige of a couple of cows and landed on "at least three months worth of salary." And so the new age dowry that we call "engagement rings" was born, reinvigorating the diamond trade and draining bank accounts across the world to get a clear stone that looks exactly like everyone else's at the cost of maybe doing better things with that money.
Had Wes and I omitted the diamond ring purchase, and invested the money instead (which, to be fair, Wes wanted to do but knew I was not mature enough to handle that conversation), we'd be exponentially richer today (and hundreds of thousands of dollars richer over the course of our marriage) thanks to the principles of compounding returns on interest.
Let's say that instead of spending $20k on a diamond ring, you decided to invest it for your future. A typical "good" investment will give you a 15% annual return, and compound over time. Had Wes and I made that decision 8 years ago when we got engaged, here's what we would have made:
Year 1: original investment grows to $23,000 or a ~$3,000 gain
Year 2: now it's worth $26,450 or a ~$3,450 gain
Year 3: still compounding, we're at $30,417 or a ~$4,000 gain
Year 4: and now we're at $34,979 or a ~$4,500 gain
Year 5: here we've doubled our money, it's at $40,226 or a ~$5,240 gain
Year 6: look at the money just growing, it's now $46,260 or a ~$6,000 gain
Year 7: and here we're at $53,200 or a ~$6,940 gain
Year 8: today it would be $61,180 or a ~$8,000 gain
Do you know how much a physical diamond ring is worth after you spend $20k on it? It's worth less, whatever a jeweler is willing to pay, typically 25-50% of the original purchase price.
I started thinking about this after I developed an allergy to platinum and had to stop wear my real (and very beautiful) engagement and wedding rings. The jeweler told me to rotate wearing my rings, so I've been wearing a $50 fake diamond set in white gold as a stand-in (which I was sent for free by Modern Gents Trading Co. when they found out about my plight, so figured I’d give them a shout out here).
Is it just as beautiful and unique as the one Wes bought for me all those years ago? No, but it earns plenty of compliments and holds that spot on my left hand finger just as well as the real deal. And got me thinking about what I would do with an extra $41,000 in my bank account (which would be nothing, because I'd want the interest to keep compounding, obviously) instead of owning an expensive ring.
Another financial decision I made in my 20s because I followed the herd (and now regret) is trading in my trusty Honda Civic - which cost $38 a year to maintain - for a BMW X5, that is literally the most high maintenance, high cost, zero return thing I have ever purchased. Like diamonds, cars lose their value the moment you buy them.
These decisions aren't right or wrong, it all depends on what your priorities are. There are people reading this who think it's ridiculous that I wouldn't want a fancy diamond ring or a BMW. And that's ok! We don't have to be right or wrong, we can just be who we are and rest in who we are, invest in our preferences, and forget the rest.
I share these examples because I think we all have made purchases that, if we thought about the value proposition of that money used differently, we might not have made the decision in the first place.
Although it's age-old advice, I think it's worth repeating here: do not allow anyone or anything to influence you to spend your money in ways that put your financial well-being at risk, period. Every time I feel an impulsive push to spend on something, I ask myself two questions:
Would I buy this if it cost five times as much? Am I positive that this will add value to my life, to who I am? Will it be useful to me in 10 years?
What is really driving this impulse? Am I feeling uncomfortable with myself in some way and want to turn that feeling off? Am I allowing myself to believe this will earn me more love, respect or admiration?
Deciding on what we value, spending ONLY on that, and saving or investing the rest is something that Wes and I learned to do early on. It's a skill that has given us more freedom in life, including the ability for me to take a six month leave from work in order to pursue a creative, passion project (more to come on that later).
Although I am far from a finance expert, I'll be spending more time on the topic of money mindset and wealth-building going forward because I think it is so important to living a fulfilling life. If you're still here, thanks so much for reading this post and I'd love your thoughts on it in the comments.
Also, please do me a little favor and share this post with one person who you think would like it, because there is a good chance it will help them.