Inspire ME Friday ==> Letting Go of Keeping Up

"Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults."

Good Morning Folks,

Imagine a nightmarish vacation where you had to pay for every single activity in cold hard cash - every margarita, every slice of pie, every towel for the pool. Forking over cash hurts so much that economists have given it a name: the pain of paying.

When asked to list all of the things that they deem essential for a happy retirement, the cost of people's wish lists (a luxury car, vacations, and so on) far exceeds their projected income from their retirement savings.

Why the shortfall? The problem with saving, of course, is that - if we're being honest - saving seems no fun at all. It requires us to put off the fun we could have spending that money today for potential fun we could have with that money once we retire. And why put off until tomorrow the fun you could have today?

Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com.

Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults.

Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all.

Although it might not be your problem it is the problem of the folks who work for you and it weighs on their work.

So how can you help them keep up?

In today's inspiring share, Carnegie Mellon University's Assistant Professor of Cognition, Mina Cikara suggests, maybe we should reexamine the need and value of "keeping up." Maybe....

==> Letting go of keeping up by Mina Cikara

Everyone's heard of the phrase, "Keeping up with the Joneses," which refers to the phenomenon of using one's neighbors as a standard of comparison for the consumption of material goods. (For example: it's hard not to notice when your neighbor buys a luxury sports car, and it's even harder to keep yourself from wondering whether it might be time for you to upgrade as well...even if it means reducing contributions to your retirement fund to pay for it.)

Our neighbors, however, are no longer our only salient standard of comparison. Reality television shows, lifestyle magazines, and gossip websites inundate us with stories about which celebrity bought what and how much he or she paid for it. The problem is this: not only is conspicuous consumption ubiquitous, it may negatively affect our financial behavior and how we feel about ourselves more generally.

The tendency to compare oneself to other people is fundamental and often occurs whether or not we intend it. Think about it: when you meet someone new, you may not be able to say with certainty how tall the person is, but you effortlessly register whether he or she is taller than you are.* In many cases, social comparison is useful. In the absence of objective standards of success, social comparison with others helps us to evaluate and improve ourselves. But sometimes, social comparison reveals that we're inferior on some dimension (e.g., wealth, intelligence, attractiveness), which may make us feel envious.

There's nothing wrong with envy per se-it's a natural human emotion that manifests in cultures around the world; however, envy has significant negative side effects: not only on people's satisfaction with what they have, but also on their saving and spending behavior. For example, people will pay to reduce the earnings of others in order to avoid feeling inferior.

They also prefer to quit bargaining and walk away empty-handed rather than accept an unfair deal.

Even capuchin monkeys reject rewards if they see other monkeys receive relatively greater rewards. What's more, the negative effects of envy do not stop at self-defeating financial behaviors. Constantly worrying about what higher-ups have or do not have negatively impacts our mental health and maxes out our biological stress response, which can damage our cardiovascular and immune systems over the long-term.

As the population grows older, it is increasingly important for people to start saving for retirement early on, but it may feel like an uphill battle. In addition to all the other environmental and psychological factors that make it difficult to save, we are bombarded by depictions of sky-high standards of consumption. Being aware of the hazards of social comparison and envy may help inoculate younger generations against the effects of these depictions. Until celebrities start flashing their retirement savings portfolios, I'm doing my best to let go of keeping up.

Though we tend to compare ourselves to similar others (e.g., we compare our salaries to a co-worker's, not Warren Buffett's), we often turn our attention to people, to whom we aspire to be similar. This tendency coupled with the assertion "Stars: they're just like us!" may lead people to compare themselves to more distant standards.

Our thanks to Prudential who is spending big bucks hiring academia's brightest thinkers to fill their social media needs on BringYourChallenges.com, one of which we so much benefited from together, this morning.

Enjoy football and the crisp weekend.

Make a difference folks!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE STRONGEST ARGUMENT"
~~Socrates (Greek Philosopher)

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