Reply #48: the Jones´disease

[Summermoondancer]

competing with the Jones´family gets a lot of people in trouble. Having a few luxury items are fine but not everything. We don´t have the biggest house in the neighborhood and we don´t have the biggest house amongst our friends. However, we are about the only one´s who are not on the verge of losing everything now. Why? when we bought we made sure it was a mortgage that just one of our incomes could pay, we based it on the lowest income of the two. We have a used car that is great economically and a new Nissan pickup. We did buy the Nissan Titan, but it has ethanol flex system and we use E85. We bought it because amongst trucks in it´s class it had the best mileage and was a flex system, it was also made in the USA. However, we can justify a big vehicle like that because our profession demands a large vehicle and we keep the small one for in town stuff like grocery shopping. While our mortgage is low we can still afford gas, groceries, and taxes..and we are enjoying ourselves while our friends are about to lose their homes. My husband thanked me the other day for not letting him buy a house with a 2k a month mortgage even when he begged.