Hey, Jealousy!

As I have navigated my way through the increasingly crowded field of financial bloggers, I have noticed a disparity in those people I see.  Let’s start with the obvious:  some of y’all are closer to FIRE* (or have already achieved it) than I am.  Also, for me and my particular circumstances, making progress toward FIRE is incredibly difficult.  And those two truths lead to an unfortunate third one:  it is far, far too easy for me to come down with a serious case of financial jealousy.

What “financial jealousy” is (though you probably know)

For me, what started me thinking about this was a recent post from Your Money Geek (a.k.a. Michael Dinich) entitled “High-Income Bloggers are Ruining Personal Finance”.   What he said is that some financial bloggers make way more money with their day job than the national average, while a different set of bloggers cannot necessarily relate to the first group’s topics of discussion.  As he says:

Of course, they are going to respond with “must be nice”. They are not sneering, they are not jealous, they are not envious, they simply cannot relate.

I really want to say Mr. Dinich is right.  I want to.  But I can’t.

I’ve developed a raging case of financial jealousy.

To continue stating the obvious:  when you make well into the six figures, your financial situation is vastly different from, say, a 40-something dad making…less than six figures, and who is the sole earner in the family.  Yes, we chose this for our family, but that doesn’t change our present situation.  And I want what those well-off bloggers have.

Continuing on the Road to Envy

The second post that got spurred my train of thought was from Partners in FIRE entitled “How I Made $16 My First Year Blogging”.  It was a little different from the typical “How I Made $1,000,000 Last Month” posts that some bloggers like to post (and, yes, that I like to read…sometimes)…but it did remind me that a lot of blogs are more successful than mine.  I’ve talked about this before.

And when you get a bazillion clicks on your blog every day, as some of these bloggers do, you are going to think differently from, say, well, me.**

I wish this sort of thing didn’t bug me so much.

Finally, the third post was by Simplistic Steph, entitled “Don’t Feel Bad If You Can’t Retire Early”.  She pointed out, in the midst of hitting a lot of the some points as Mr. Dinich, that the story of FIRE, as presented by so many of the more successful people in this vein, is simply not relevant to the lives of the rest of us:

The mainstream Mr. and Mrs. FIRE say they save so much by downsizing, giving up international travel and moving to a lower cost of living area. A lot of us can’t just up and move to a cheaper city, we need our jobs in the city. And we need a vehicle to get to our jobs.

Hey, wasn’t I supposed to grow more content?

I wrote a post a few months ago saying that I wanted to be more content with my own situation.  And I meant what I said.  I just don’t seem to know how to be more content.  I try to practice gratitude, but it seems insincere at times.  Instead, I’ve found myself feeling more envious in recent weeks.

Someone has reached FIRE?  Envy.

Someone won a big jackpot in a trivia app?  Envy.

Heck, someone went out to eat, something I have not done in a while owing to our budget being out of balance once again?  Envy, envy, envy!

So…how do I change this?

How am I moving from envy to gratitude?  The first thing I did, and the first thing I suggest, has been to find a trusted friend who also wanted to work on gratitude.***  Now, we text back and forth (it’s supposed to be every day) with three things for which we are grateful.  These things don’t have to be really deep; I’ve been thankful for a good commute to work more than once since we’ve begun this.  The point here is that I have a lot to be thankful for, and that’s true regardless of whether I reach FIRE anytime soon.****

This is proving not to be a quick change for me.  I’m still stewing occasionally when I see someone achieving the brass ring that is way out of reach for me.  But the hope is that, eventually, I will be content with what I have now.  And maybe, at least for now, that will be enough for me.

* Financially independent, retire early. I’m 0 for 2 on those things.
** No, I will not be saying how many hits my blog gets per day…though it is not presently a bazillion.
*** I am trying hard not to use the phrase “attitude of gratitude” simply because I find the rhyme utterly cheesy.
**** Which I won’t.
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