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The people, places, and things we surround ourselves with have a huge effect on what we view as normal. And if we’re not careful, it’s easy to slip into normalizing with our surroundings without really evaluating the impact doing so will have on our lives.

Unfortunately, TV counts as our surroundings, and TV gives an especially skewed view of “normal”.

For example, have you ever seen the TV apartment of a supposedly middle-class person who lives in Manhattan? Most of us have. But have you ever seen the REAL apartment of a middle-class person who lives in Manhattan? Let me tell you, they’re worlds apart.

(I’ll give you a hint: middle-class apartments in Manhattan aren’t spacious 2000sf lofts with large kitchens containing tons of cupboards and counterspace.)

They just aren’t.

Watch enough TV though, and you might start to believe that that’s what everyone has. Worse, you might start to believe that you can afford “what everyone else has” on an income that can’t support that kind of spending.

The same kind of thing happens with cars. If you’ve spent any time driving around Southern California you’ll see Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, Hummers, and every kind of SUV on the planet. (Or heck, even Phoenix — there’s a Maybach parked in a nearby garage.) And they all look so shiny and new.

See it all around you, and you might think it’s affordable. But is it wise to buy or lease a car that costs more than your annual salary? Not unless you have a ton of cash in the bank, and are just working for fun.

If you live in a less extreme area — a place where getting a new car of any type is an unusual event, not something that happens every year or two like clockwork — your view of normal is probably more in line with financial realities.

Be careful of inadvertently normalizing with your surroundings, especially if your surroundings don’t match your financial reality. Manage your money more conservatively and realistically, based on actual facts.

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