How Rich Are You??

It's Good Deed Tuesday and I've been (briefly) considering over coffee how fantastically weathly we really are. Besides the wealth of my beautiful and healthy family (a richness worth far more than anything else I can imagine), it seems that on a global scale, we have A LOT of money.
The very fact that I'm sitting --in my kitchen (electricity running) sipping hot coffee (fresh, that we just bought yesterday and ground this morning) at my expensive laptop, wearing pajamas that are less than 6 months old - is a sign to our wealth as a nation. Even though we struggle to pay bills sometimes (irony in the fact that our "necessities" are: cable tv, cell phones, car payments, etc) and luxuries are few and far between, the simple fact of our posh existence is testament to our richness and surely puts things in perspective. We are a spoiled and undeserving nation, too quick to whine when we can't get that iphone we so desperately need, or the new car that we've been drooling over, or new furniture for our homes when there are so many other people that have nothing. Seriously nothing.

And it gets me thinking (which I've been doing a lot of lately)...how can we cut back? How can we prioritize? How can we change our way of thinking that we NEED the next newest thing, that our houses MUST have cable, must have luxuries, we must have the newest thing?? It's a hard habit to break, this idea of "being normal".
WHAT IF...you told your family that you weren't going to buy the newest model of cell phone when your contract is up for renewal? That you'd be happy with the baseline model?....if you decided not to buy new furniture...for the next 15 years? Because the stuff you have is FINE structurally, albeit dated?.....if your main purpose behind working so hard at your job wasn't to "improve" your way of living - goals of bigger and better houses, newer and cooler cars, exotic vacations? "I could do that", you think. But then....I'd feel self-conscious when people would come over and our rug is old and ugly, or people would tease me about my crappy cell phone when I text my friends, or...people will wonder why we're still only in a 3 bedroom house.

Just a peek inside my brain this morning.

Wanna see how rich you are on a global scale??

Go HERE to see how you rank on the global rich list. It's humbling.