Is it really worth it to try to keep up with the Joneses?

I think it’s alive and well….and sad.

Depends. I kind of “keep up with the Jonses across the street. Not by money or cars, but because their yard is always so darned nice and neat and I want my to look that way!

Dutchess II, I forgot to mention the lawns. One lady is so particular, that I swear I saw her picking up leaves with tweezers. This woman is something else.

I just pay someone to take care of mine. They do a better job.

I like it when we all paint our houses at the same time. It makes me feel like we all care about our homes and the neighborhood. Same with gardens.

Cars? Well shoot. If we’re all getting Priuses, I like that too. Makes me proud of the neighborhood.

You can look at it as keeping up, as a status thing, and I don’t have a problem with that, but you can also look at it as learning from each other and approving each other’s ways of doing things in the sincerest way: copying them. Granted, if you feel you have to do things because someone else did—that’s a problem. But if you feel like you want to because someone else is doing a damn good job, then I don’t see why you should have a problem.

If you are doing it because you need to “keep up” then I’m sorry, but that’s on you. If you can’t make your own decisions about how to live, then that’s pretty pathetic. Maybe now that your neighborhood is older, people have finally realized that they can make their own choices for their own reasons. Better late than never. But don’t assume people are keeping up with each other for negative reasons. Very likely it is because they admire their neighbors.

I’ve been known to weed my lawn by hand… but that’s the back yard and only my next door neighbors know—and they don’t care. One doesn’t have a lawn, and the other clearly doesn’t give a shit.

The Jones’s can’t keep up with themselves. I live near the Jones’s and my wife teaches yoga out of our house and the subject of teaching a class for the neighborhood came up and a woman whispered to my wife to please keep the cost of the class down….you know there are quite a few here who are struggling right now! HS! Did not expect to hear THAT!

Never unless you wish to keep up with their debt level as well.

Nope, they’ll always be one step ahead….a big one too!

This sort of thing makes me dream of owning a big fortified tank & the where with all to use it with impunity….KERBOOM!!!