prosperityseeker

All my life I was taught that anyone, regardless of their creed or nationality could obtain the American Dream.  The dream of the nice 3-4 bedroom house, white picket fence, 2-3 luxury cars, if they wanted it bad enough. What I am now realizing is that you can’t just want it bad enough, you have to work to get it and make smart financial decisions.  That is, you can’t just buy a house simply because you think you can afford it one day or because your best friend bought a house and you want to keep up with him. Heck, you can’t just keep up with the Joneses – the Joneses are just as broke as the next person. They make bad financial decisions because they think they “deserve all sorts of things.”

The only thing you deserve is to not be in debt. Financial stupidity is what got us all in the mess we’re in now - making bad financial decisions based on the “American Dream”. Right now, people are waking up from this “American dream” and realizing that they are living the “American Nightmare”. They have houses they can’t afford, they have mountains of credit and unsecured debt and they see no way out.

Well, I am here to tell you that living beyond your means will keep you in this nightmare state. Instead, we need to wake up, focus on paying down our debt and living below our means. Only then will we stop suffering from this nightmare.

So, if you have to live in a studio apartment and pay rent for awhile – so be it. If you have to shop at Aldi and other discount stores then so be it. If you have to take the bus or drive a beater then so be it. If it means not keeping up with the Joneses -so be it.

In essence, living the American Dream means squashing debt like no body’s business so that you can live the American Dream and not the American nightmare.