A couple of weeks ago we did an episode on the concept of Enough and I talked with our

guest a career coach Cynthia Pong about the insidious comparison game.

So we'll link to that in the show notes.

But for now, the jury is still out on the psychological net effect of comparison.

There have been times in my own life

where seeing someone else's financial choice

inspired me to right size, to make a better different choice.

Like when I was prepared at 22 to shell out $1,500 per month

for a one bedroom apartment on my drum roll

$52,000 a year salary, while my friend who earned $100K refused to spend more than $1,000 a month on housing.

That comparison was a huge reality check that allowed me to keep my housing expenses around

900 a month and contribute to a Roth IRA instead.

There have been other times, and if I'm being honest, more frequent times, when comparing my

financial position to someone else made me feel less than, as I shared in that enough episode. Often I did not earn as much or have as much as some

upwardly mobile peers in my comparison games chosen set, which by the way isn't it funny how we tend to only compare ourselves to people

that we perceive as doing better than we are? Like, we gloss over everyone else, all the lesions of

people who we perceive to be doing worse.

I know this emotion is also common because some of you have told me so.

When we started sharing interesting findings from Rich Girl Nation, we received a handful of messages from people who said

seeing how much more other people were earning made them feel like a failure. And at first, this really

broke my heart. Then I thought, hmm, maybe this could be an opportunity.

Could we explore these numbers in a way that is expansive and insightful so we can see what else is possible.

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