Challenge the Common Wisdom
We tend to take the things that “everybody does” as being the accepted way of doing things. And that makes sense on one level, because those things are the accepted way of doing things in our world.
But that doesn’t mean that the things that everybody does are necessarily good ways of doing things. They’re just the ways we’ve gotten used to observing, hearing about, or experiencing.
As an extreme example, take someone who has been abused. In their world, many abusive behaviors seem “normal” to them, because that’s what they experience on a regular basis.
On a much less extreme note, take car payments. So many people buy cars on credit that most people think nothing of having a car payment. It’s “normal”.
But avoid having a car payment, and a whole new world opens up. When you’re not making payments, there are more opportunities available to you. When you’re not paying interest, you have more money. You also don’t get caught up in the completely unnecessary cycle of “my car’s paid off, time to buy a new one”.
There are many, many more areas where it pays to challenge the common wisdom. Maybe you’ll decide to step outside the common wisdom because you’ve found a way that works even better — even if not everyone is doing it.
I like this point since it goes so well with your post on looking at the third option. My husband and I are just now getting rid of our last car loan and it feels amazing. The weird thing for us though is that it won’t actually open up any money since we’re just going to make the payment to ourselves so we can hopefully buy our next car with cash, lol.
Yeah but it’s possible that it might be a long time before you need to buy that new car with cash, so there could be a period when you have extra money.
I love your post title. We should challenge the common thinking on all kinds of things. Just think how much our culture has changed in the last 50 years and was is accepted (or common) now would have been unthinkable then.
That’s a great point. There are so many things that have changed over the years!
It’s fun to keep challenging conventional wisdom for sure. We grow stronger and wiser because of it.
It keeps us on our toes, at the very least :)