We are early into the year so this is one concept which I wanted to reiterate again to readers on the importance of personal finance and not keeping up with the joneses. This strategy helps me a lot in my personal finance, especially in my younger days when everyone was partying away with their youth and money while I kept a distance to keep my balances in check. I'm glad that it's a habit that keeps me going until today. Spending money on status symbols and brands has been overly emphasized by the media and society as a symbol of success. The media called this the conspicuous consumption, which means the ability to keep up with whatever is in the trends right now. The lesser the supply of these branded good circulating around, the greater the demand because everyone wants to be the person everyone else looks up to apparently......