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COMMENTARY | The American Dream is not dead; it’s still alive and urging us to exit the realm of surrealistic fantasy. We’ve experienced the results of fantastical dream-weaving during the past decade. Now reality is demanding a return to a more lucid dream state. The wise will learn to retain realistic control of personal finances. What I’ve learned during the past decade is this: while I still need to set high goals for myself-and dream big- I also need to keep my feet on the ground and measure what appears to be common knowledge against the principles of reality.
The bursting of housing bubble seriously impacted my personal finances and future plans. It was created by false and unrealistic valuations of property values. In reality, the housing market crashed because we were sold lies about what homes were really worth. They were falsely appraised at values well beyond what was ever realistic. For many of us, buying into this falsehood meant losing those overvalued homes. Of course, there have always been economic fluctuations; downturns that are devastating to some give way to upswings that lead to greater opportunities for affluence. But those who suffered the least during this particular downturn were those who saw it coming. Unfortunately, this time, most of us didn’t. I’m keeping the dream alive by doing my best to stay in my home, despite its drop in value.
Credit has also ruined things for millions of people. Some of us overlooked impossibly high interest rates and bought into that have-now pay-later mentality. After all, we assumed, the future will be always be better than today. That isn’t realistic, though. History shows time and time again that fluctuation is the norm. The balance will always shift toward an opposite; good economic times lead to tumultuous ones. And then things turn around again. The people who use this truth to guide their personal finances fare better when the tides turn; they save during prosperous times so that the excess can keep them balanced (and sometimes even afloat) during leaner ones. I’m using credit very conservatively as part of my effort to keep the dream of future prosperity alive.
The America Dream is alive and well for those of us who can manage to return to the by-the-bootstraps mindset of our founders and not those get-rich-quick values of Wall Street. As we’ve seen time and again, those who win big through unscrupulous means find that the house they’ve built of dreams becomes a pile of cards collapsing. Many unsuspecting others are knocked down by those cards as they fall. To keep the dream alive, ironically, we have to wake up from it. We have to understand that a credit-based culture gives corporations control of our collective personal finances; we have to dream a dream that’s greater than just having the stuff we want right now at the cost of our futures.