Book Review: Green With Envy

I read a book within the last couple weeks called Green With Envy - Why Keeping Up With the Joneses Is Keeping Us In Debt. It was a $3 find at Big Lots :)

This book was a pretty quick read and serves as a great reality check for us to remember that "the grass isn't always greener on the other side". Unless you are walking in the other person's shoes, you really have no idea what their financial situation is, and you shouldn't concern yourself with it.

The book showcased a few couples who racked up an astonishing amount of debt just trying to keep up with their peers because they felt like they "needed" to. They "needed" better clothes, "needed" bigger houses, "needed" more vacations. So they started to buy those things, even though they didn't really have the money for them.

Each couple seemed to be able to juggle their finances for awhile so they could keep up their new-found lifestyle, but eventually it caught up to them and had a moment of panic when they realised just how much debt they accumulated.

Through the process of getting their feet back on the ground with their finances, each one of them wished that they could just go back in time, when they didn't have the debt, when they didn't spend all their money on "stuff". They were scared of what their friends would think of them when they found out, but they realised that their value isn't held within the stuff they own.

In conclusion, I found this book to be a good, quick read. We all need to remember that instead of keeping up with the Joneses, and thinking we will find contentment and that value is in the stuff we posses; we need to live within our means and remember where true contentment comes from, the stuff we cannot buy.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?