‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is such a well-known phrase but are your neighbours leading you into bankruptcy?

Some people are obsessed with outsmarting their neighbours and always have to buy bigger and better. The only thing this can lead to is the destructive path to debt. While obsessing over their neighbours, people forget that the family next door have different lives and different incomes, they have a distorted view that they can always do better, so if the Joneses buy a boat, the neighbour immediately feels that he/she can buy a bigger and better one.

But are your neighbours really as well off as you think?
Your neighbours could be living off of credit and have very little in the form of savings. When the well of credit runs dry, they could be left seeking IVA help rather than seeking a new yacht.

The Joneses don’t always live next door…

Some people become obsessed with TV characters and try to replicate their lives, they find it hard to separate fiction from reality and will spend hundreds of pounds trying to duplicate a state of existence that is too expensive to maintain, getting themselves in a heap of personal debt in the process.

How can you stop living up with the Joneses?
It doesn’t really matter what your neighbours think and the needs of your family should always come first. Do you really need that overpriced car when you could put the money towards little Susan who needs extra maths tuition? Put your family first and the Joneses last.

Live your life for you and not through someone else then if you hear that dreaded knock from the debt collector, it will not be at your front door that he will be calling!