Guest Post: Don’t Keep It In… Relief Comes When You Let It Out

I just finished reading an article in Conde’ Nast Portfolio Magazine by Michael Lewis who moved his family into a New Orleans mansion they could ill afford. He pointed out the problem with the upper middle-class, the problem that has gotten us where we are today. A problem I lived through my whole life growing up.

A problem Lewis so clearly illustrated by describing the story of Lilia and Jesus Garcia of Stockton, California. A middle class couple making a combined $130,000 a year each who moved into a mansion-like house they bought for $535,000.Of course they ended up in foreclosure. They couldn’t afford the house. It was a symbol of how well they were doing. But, they really weren’t doing that well at all. Not well enough to live in a mansion.

I knew it was time to sell my house when someone offered $625,000 for it (it was 850 sq. ft.!) and my hairdresser and her bartender husband bought a $750,000 townhouse in our neighborhood.

These people couldn’t afford the houses they were buying. I could see what was coming because I’ve been there. I lived this reality.When I was 7 years old, my parents moved into a show house, like the Garcias’. It was the Old Spanish house at the corner of Old Cutler and Ludlum in Miami, Florida. Everyone knew the house. I never had to use my address. I could just give the cross streets and people would know my house.

I felt special. I’m sure my parents did too. And they bought it to make up for the fact that they had less money and less security and less of a future than the rest of their friends who truly were upper middle class and some of whom were uber-rich.

What people didn’t know about our house was that the kitchen was full of cockroaches. The electricity would frequently get turned off when my dad didn’t pay the bill. We couldn’t really afford to live there. My dad had to borrow money from my grandparents to buy the house. Money he never was able to pay back. My mom always blamed him for that. Didn’t she know they couldn’t afford it? If not, why?

Something tells me my dad didn’t even want that house. My mom pressured him to keep up with the Greenberg’s, the Markowitz’s and the Little’s. That’s why they bought the house.

So, what do you do when you take on a lifestyle you can’t afford? You either find a way to make more money or you take a big step back and start to rebuild.

It’s not the end of the world. You aren’t going to die. Well, maybe a part of you will.  Your ego. It may die. But, that’s not such a bad thing.

You move into a rental in a less desirable neighborhood (in Miami, that was Kendall where the solidly middle class live) and you give up your fancy cars. Your kids get jobs and buy their own first car. Mine was a 9-year old Honda Civic I paid $1,600 for out of my work money and loved. You start shopping at Target (back then Kmart) instead of Nordstrom’s or Saks. You do more with less. And you find out that it’s okay. You are alive. You don’t need all that stuff.

Now that you’ve tasted the good life, you can have it again if you really want it. You’ll just get there on a solid foundation next time. If your marriage is built on deep love and trust, you keep your family together. You don’t blame each other. You take responsibility for your part.

If your marriage is built on the same facade that your life was built on, it falls apart too. My parents’ marriage did. My mom’s crumbled expectations were too big a burden to bear on their marriage. My dad could never give her what he had promised. And on the other side of all of it, you find something new and fresh. You find the truth of who you are. You find what matters.

With any luck at all, one day you look back on all of it and thank God for it because you realize it took losing everything to find yourself.

Written by Alexis Martin Neely, America’s Personal Family Lawyer and the bestselling author of Wear Clean Underwear! A Fast, Fun, Friendly – and Essential – Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com