The Reason For The High Cost Of Living and How To Defeat It

In 1974 I was born into a middle class family. For anyone that was born into a middle class family it use to mean that as you grew up you knew there were certain rules or standards that you had to live by because money was not unlimited. This meant that you learned that you had to budget your money and make wise choices. Now if you have started to follow this blog and read my postings it is obvious that I do not believe in living in blame or living with a victim mentality. The topic of this article is The Reason For The High Cost of Living and of course arguments can be made that the high cost of living is through no fault of our own. Many would say that it is due to forces outside of our control. While I am not arguing that there are no forces outside our control that have contributed to what the cost of living is today I am also aware that the cost of living we are experiencing is to a certain extent to our own making and design. Unfortunately, In this situation we have created an undesirable reality.

Earlier, I made mention of rules or standards that one had to live by when they were in the middle class. There was a time in this country nt very long ago that people knew what their limits were and adhered to them. We are experiencing today the result of an abandonment of those rules or standards and middle class people attempting to live as if they were rich. Our problem as humans collectively is that we are always looking to blame something outside of us for what is really an internal problem. Anytime established rules or standards that produced a knowable result are abandoned and replaced by a lack of standards or no standards while attempting to achieve the same result we reach an undesirable outcome. Undesirable outcomes are often painful and the undesirable outcome of families today struggling to make ends meet is in no way anything less.

Now there is no doubt that government spending is out of control. For many decades in the past an now in the present those in charge simply lost their mind when it came to being good stewards of money. However, just because we see people out of control who are operating in high level positions it does not justify us becoming out of control. An abandonment of standards at any level will produce an undesirable result. The result we are now facing as a nation is a national debt that exceeds twenty trillion dollars with no end in sight. A large percentage of news headlines today which represent the current state of affairs we are in are negative and the reason for this is that we are not individually holding ourselves to rules and standards. For anytime anyone wants to improve their lives individually all they need to do is raise their standards and pay the price to maintain those standards by way of effective habits and persistence. 

The new standard today is leverage and the means to achieve that leverage are an abandonment of savings and the high use of credit.The old standard was that if you could not afford something then you did not buy it and the new standard is the credit card. Middle class families across our country once knew there place in society. They knew that they were not rich and could not chase the lifestyle of the rich. I remember growing up what a treat it was to go out to eat once in a while because back then living within ones means meant that you were truly living within your means. Living within your means for the middle class use to mean that you saved a certain percentage of your income, lived on a conservative budget, and were not chasing every new shiny object. We are where we are today as a nation because mass numbers of people can no longer control themselves let alone control there individual finances. Of courses there are various degrees to losing control of ones mind with the worse cases ending up in prison or dead.

For anyone that has even the slightest understanding of economics it is well known that an increase in demand leads to increased prices. The reason prices continue to rise faster than wages is because people have decided to spend more than their wages. We have decided that we will give up on any standards that came along with making ends meet when people were in the middle class in the past to having no standards and wildly spending money. If someone behaved like this back when the average working man or woman was sensible they would have been viewed as someone that had lost their mind and had gone crazy. However, nowadays this is a widely accepted practice. Corporate profits have exploded as more and more people lost their minds and could no longer control their desires and spending.

The incessant desire for the lifestyle of the rich and famous which manifested into constantly dining out, going on fancy vacations , buying expensive automobiles, purchasing bigger and more expensive homes, and an overall lack of self discipline got us to where we are today. The reason for the high cost of living is our wildly out of control spending and the cure or way to defeat this is to return to what once worked. The faster the middle class cut back the faster there lives will begin to improve. If we continue to fuel the insanity of corporations and politicians that cannot control spending by acting in concert with them then nothing will ever improve and your quality of life will get much worse. If you feel like you are in quicksand stop blaming everyone else and admit that you helped at least in some part putting yourself in the position you are in. 

At the end of the day we often create the conditions we find ourselves in. It is one thing for something to be completely outside of your control but before you decide that make sure you are not just thinking and saying that as an excuse to not be accountable. We are now a nation in much pain and are trying to find someone to blame. While it may not be easy to accept personal responsibility that does not change the fact that we are to blame because we did not live up to the standards of our ancestors who believed in saving for a rainy day and as my father would tell me to make sure I turned off the lights or the pizzas would get smaller. He meant that if he had to pay a higher electric bill then he could not afford the pizza we would have once a week. 

Yes, The rich are getting richer and it is because people by the millions have deiced to abandon standards and give all their money away to corporations who happily obliged. Big Corporations and Wall Street is just feeding off of our lack of self discipline. When we decide to start feeding ourselves first then everything changes. It use to be a well known fact that the first person you payed when you got paid was yourself by going to the bank and putting a percentage of your earnings into savings. This will mean less eating out, less extravagant vacations, driving a basic car, and living in a modest home with basic cable while investing in you and your family. Short term pleasure and long term fulfillment are two entirely different things. The quick high from buying another new and shiny object will not lead you to the long term high of the peace that comes with making good choices. The easiest way to not find yourself in the quicksand is to become self aware that it is there and not head in that direction.

If you want to defeat the high cost of living invest more in you so you can earn more, live within your means, save more, and take care of yourself so that you can stay healthy longer. People will tell me all the time that they just wish they could be comfortable but do not want to accept that the way to comfort is some level of discomfort over a long period of time. In life we get what we pay for and if you want to get to a comfortable life then you must make the sacrifices to pay for it. It is nice to think of winning the lottery or fantasizing that money will just suddenly drop into your lap. This is however, not the case just as it is so that you will never alleviate to any degree the high cost of living by participating in making the cost go higher.