Chapter 1: Return To Preschool, needs vs. wants

Get in your single file line and let's go talk about how you screwed up your middle class existence: you forgot the difference between a need and a want.

I was selected for a government study on first time home buying. I had to take some online training from which I remember one thing:a game where I got to pick if something was a need or a want. Brainpop Jr. has the game! Yes my dear friend, you are 35 years old and the best thing you will do for yourself this month is check out BrainPop Jr. If you win a little robot pops up and tells you great job! Tell me that's not worth it.

"Wtf? I'm clicking on the Iphone and it's telling me that's not a need! This game is broken!" No it's not and the Starbucks your clicking on isn't a need either.

Let's have a refresher of needs. A need is something that you have to have in order to stay alive. The short list of needs is this:

• Shelter and clothing
• Transportation
• Food/Water
• Health (mental and physical)

Would you believe that I cannot find a bullet point list of needs on Google? This is the problem! Oh my god guys... I'm looking further. This list has "car payment" on list of needs. WHAT THE Fuhhhh..... It's 11:00am on a Sunday and I feel like I need a beer. Ok, ok..... deep breaths... mental health was on the list of needs........... I am telling you guys this is the problem! You can own a car without a car payment! You can transport yourself without a car! We will talk about that in brief here, and in detail in a future post.

Let's go back to the middle class list:

• House that costs $250k+
• Newer cars for self and spouse
• Family vacation

Are these needs or wants? 100% these are wants. These are wants that are founded on needs, but because you're middle class, they have been blown out of proportion. A house could cost $150k and still meet the requirement for shelter. You could live in an apartment. WTF? I can be middle class and live in an apartment? Hell yeah you can! There are a ton of benefits to living in an apartment. Remember that $150 faucet replacement from the first blog post? I bet you don't remember if you live in an apartment because one call to the front office and that bad boy is replaced. My dish washer broke! No it didn't, because you live in an apartment and the apartment's dishwasher broke. They will fix it for free! Well it's subsumed in your rent but, certainly you do not have a surprise expense.

A car falls into transportation. But so does a bike. So does a pair of shoes. In fact, a bike and shoes also fall into the health category. "WHAT!? I can be middle class and WALK PLACES?!?!?!" Yeah, and statistic show that since your middle class you're probably overweight so you probably should be walking places. Public transportation is not as scary as you think. In the end, it's about fulfilling your needs, not dodging public transportation because it's "only for poor people" (which it's not). When your other middle class friends give you crap for taking the train, propose a toast and indicate that the beer you're drinking is thanks to public transportation.

A family vacation is probably the closes thing on the list to a true need as it falls into the mental health category. If you work in the office check this out: The next time there is a long time between holidays note how on edge people get as you progress into the time frame. By month two or three, everyone will hate everyone. Tempers will flair. They need to escape from that cubicle and smell some tasty mountain air! Again though, vacation does not need to be hopping onto a plane and flying to some fancy destination. Pull up Google maps and look around you. In fact... that's what we'll do in the next blog post!

You might want a particular house, or you might want a new car, but do you really need it? If you're car goes when you press the gas, and stops when you press the brake, you don't need a new car. If you are living in an apartment, you don't need to buy a house.

When in doubt go back to the list. You don't need nice transportation, you need transportation. You don't need $250k shelter, you need shelter. You don't need Vegas baby!, you need a 30min drive (1hr bus ride) to the lake for the day.

Think of the toll that these owning these so called "nice" things will take on your mental health. If you're worried every week about paying your debts, is it really worth owning them? Probably not.

Intro: You're Either Not Middle Class Or You're Doing It Wrong, the surprise $400 expense

I was driving home the other day when there was a guy on NPR talking about how it wasn't fair that he was middle class but couldn't afford a surprise $400 expense. To this I angrily shouted to myself

"You're either not middle class, or you're doing it wrong!"

This guy was funny: he spent a solid amount of time defending that he was a solidly middle class professional writer.

We can talk about how to define middle class later, but he indicated middle class was:

• Owning a house that was $250k+
• Newish car for you and spouse
• Family vacation once a year

To which I responded, "Oh.... oh my...."

He went on to muse about his facet that failed and how it cost $150 to repair... to which I responded, "Oh... oh no.... that's......  oh goodness."

If you don't see it yet this will be a great blog to read because this guy was blatantly doing it wrong. As a recent first time home buyer I can confirm that houses are expensive. They generate many $400+ surprise expenses. But I can also confirm that I had four faucets fail in the first month of owning my home and I spent $80 replacing all of them. So how the fuck did this guy spend twice as much money replacing a single faucet as I did replacing four? Because he fell into the ultimate middle class trap: entitlement. This guy should have known that faucets fail. If he can't save enough money to replace the $150 faucet, he shouldn't have bought such an expensive house.


What's the point? This blog will be about well, being middle class. I want you to be happier in your life. Life is short and having to be stressed about money all the time does not make for a fun life. I want you to be comfortable in your home. A house is a great investment because you basically get to save money while also having a place to live. The focus of this blog will be on solutions to this entitlement problem in the middle class, and the first step:relearning preschool.