Because I grew up poor, I can’t tell if people are more materialistic now, or is it just the people I associate with.

Everyone I talk to these days seems obsessed with keeping up a certain image.  One friend has to have a five bedroom $2.5 - 3 million dollar house in La Canada.  Another just has to have a full time nanny.  My colleague, the food pusher is going into credit card debt to maintain that South Pasadena lifestyle (and I have no idea what that could be).

Many of my acquaintances are doctors and lawyers, and feel that they should live a certain lifestyle, no matter that they’re in one of the falling down professions.  Whether it’s HMOs and insurance companies squeezing the money out of medicine, or whether it’s permanent temp work or salaries in the mid sixties for many of the lawyers I know, we don’t have the money to live the lifestyle that we imagined for ourselves in college or graduate school.

But there’s a great push to keep up appearances.  They borrow equity to send their children to private school, go into credit card debt to pay their nannies, and who the heck knows how they’re financing those three-week-around-the-world vacations.

People should be more honest with themselves.  I am.  I made a choice with an expectation of a certain income and lifestyle.  It was a foolish choice.  It didn’t work out.  I am where I am.

Now if I could get my private kindergarten, SUV obsessed friends to utter that mantra.