So this topic today came to me out of the blue. The concept of friends affecting your lifestyle decisions isn’t mind blowing to anyone I wouldn’t think but I’ve only recently noticed a few changes in myself and how directly they’ve affected those I’ve chosen to keep around me either knowingly or unknowingly.
“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” – Jim Rohm
Most of us have heard this quote before somewhere, right? But have you ever stopped to think about who those 5 are in your life? Have you put them there intentionally to help you reach your goals? Or are they the same 5 they’ve been since childhood because that’s what it’s always been.
Do you ever assess the value or affect each of these people has on you?
So I’ll give a little bit of a background on my 5 and how it has changed over the years. First off, I’ve never been super close with any of my friends I’ve always had good friends and people that I spend my time with but every time I’ve moved cities or changed jobs it has never bothered me that these friend circles changed with me – I know this isn’t the case for everyone.
When I was younger, just coming out of college my 5 were all young males who were in very similar positions to me. We are all fairly intelligent I’d say, hard working and had goals in life however we were all obviously broke with student loans and whatever other debts we’d racked up.
This group of 5’s average was someone who showed up to work every Monday – Friday, went to the gym 6 to 7 days a week, got drunk Friday and Saturday nights and woke up Monday to do it all over again.
At this point in my life my fitness was at an all-time high, which I would say is the case for a majority of young 20’s males but my bank account was not (again- “normal”). I had student loans, a line of credit, a job paying roughly 30k per year and my friend circle were all in roughly the same spot.
How much time did we spend talking about debt, increasing our earning power, getting on a budget or anything else productive to help change our paths? ZERO.
Let’s fast forward a few years now to the present. I no longer talk to 4 of my old 5 due to moving to a new city, starting a new job and just drifting apart over the years. I now earn a salary that would likely be considered upper middle class as do all of my peers at work. It doesn’t seem like it would matter what you talked about at work or which friends you chose you’re life automatically gets better and easier with more income right? I thought that until I started hearing people at the new job talking about working until 65 and paying off their boats, cabins, corvette’s and the like.
That’s when it hit me that it didn’t matter how much or how little you made, if you didn’t think about what you were doing and just spent on auto pilot sure you’d have more nice stuff but you’d still be just as broke as the young kids earning next to no money living in basement suites trying to figure out their path in life.
It was at this point that I started choosing my relationships a little more intentionally, I wasn’t going to be earning 6 figures in my late 20’s and still have to work until my 60’s unless I absolutely loved my job. So I started paying more attention to the people around me, listening to their thoughts on topics like debt and savings and investing. I had always quite an interest in finance and investing so I would try to sneak these topics in whenever I could. In my field of work we spend 12+ hours a day together with our co workers so there are quite a few hours of banter throughout the day.
The result? My current 5 as I’m reflecting are all invest first, live off the rest oriented. 4 of the 5 have net worth’s far exceeding my own built up of owning land, rental houses, stock portfolios and not a single one of them drives around in a Corvette or a brand new jacked up truck that they trade in every second year. These guys drive Honda’s and trucks they’ve nearly mile’d out and kept their lifestyle in check throughout the process of making good money.
The best part? They all talk about having a number or a timeframe to when they plan on pulling the plug, or at least the awareness that they can in fact leave the job if it’s something they no longer love doing.
I can’t help but wonder as I’m looking back on the 4 years I’ve been at this new job, what kind of impact this has had on me and what the alternative could have been had my lunchtime and late night coffee breaks been filled with talks of the newest gadgets, iPhones, big screen TV’s or which cars we were buying next as opposed to now where we exchange stock picks, try to find great opportunities to buy land or uncover low cost areas to buy the next rental property and things of that nature.
Do you ever stop to think about who your 5 are? And if so are these people challenging you and helping you grow as an individual? It’s an interesting assessment to put yourself through and for myself I can actually say that I truly am probably the average of the 5 people that I spend all of this time with.
Let us know what your thoughts are on this topic and if you’ve noticed any changes in your circle either intentional or not. Do you have a mentor in that group? Are you looking to surround yourself with more like minded people?
Thanks for stopping by,
FIC.