Measuring your standard of living

When it comes to standard of living, I generally think of my kids having more or less the same kind of upbringing that I had.

In most simple terms, we're middle class. We do well enough that we're able to have a few nice things, but we're not in a position to make lavish expenditures. We own modern technology, but not necessarily the latest technical gizmos. We can dress nicely, but our kids will soon learn that they will surely lag behind some of their friends when it comes to the latest styles. We can take some small trips, maybe save up to go Disney World once in a while, but we're not jetting off to Europe on a regular basis.

As the years go by, I hope my kids will learn — as I did — that there are things more important in life than possessions and material things. That's the general sense that I have.

But then, when I look back on my own youth, and think about the things we had back then, and then think about what we have now, the differences are rather striking.

Growing up, we had one television. It only got four channels, and if you wanted to change what you were watching or adjust the volume, you actually had to get up and walk across the room to do it. Today, we have three main TVs, each hooked up to satellite so we can scroll through about 100 channels. Each has its own remote control, so we don't even have to get off the couch if we don't want to. Besides that, we can now pause and rewind live TV, so we don't miss a second of our favorite shows. We actually also have a fourth television, a mini-unit we use only to watch DVDs.

Speaking of DVDs, we hadn't even heard of such things when I was growing up. In fact, for many years, we didn't even have a VCR. I remember when the VCRs first came out — we would actually rent the players right along with the tapes from the video store. When we finally did get our first VCR, it was a monstrosity compared to today's sleek models. Nowadays at our home, we have a VCR and a DVD player attached to two of our three main televisions, in addition to the afore mentioned mini-unit.

The home I grew up in had one telephone. It was a rotary-dial unit we rented from the telephone company, that plugged into the wall in the kitchen. We got an extra-long cord so that we would talk on the phone in another room. These days, we have two "land-line" phones in our house, and both are cordless. (Can you even buy non-cordless phones anymore?) Both are touch-tone units with programmable dialing and a built in answering machine. In addition, we also have two working cellular phones, in regular use.

We only had one car in my youth — a 1975 Pontiac station wagon, with wood-paneling on the side. My dad pledged to keep it until it reached 100,000 miles, which it finally did well after my sister and I had left for college. Our household today is home to two cars, both with more than 100,000 miles and climbing. But it terms of amenities, our cars today are really not much different than what I grew up with. Air conditioning, power locks, AM/FM radio have been a constant then and now. About the only difference is that our cars today have CD and cassette players, replacing the eight-track player we had in the old Pontiac.

So quite obviously, it terms of standard of living, my kids have a lot more than I did. But this is something that holds true for every subsequent generation. Just as my kids are growing up with mobile phones and MP3 players that I didn't have; I grew up with microwaves and color TV that my parents didn't dream of. Older generations grew up with cars and indoor plumbing that their parents didn't have. This is the mark of progress.

But standard of living is not only a comparison to those who come before or after you; it's also a comparison of those those live the same time as you. And in that sense, I think my previous assessment still holds true. My kids are more or less in the middle of the road when it comes to the amenities of their lives, just as I was.

And I think that's a pretty good way to live life. There will always be people with more or less than you have. And I think understanding that, and learning not to define yourself by it, is one of the keys to a happy life.