As humans, we are obsessed with being, at least, somewhat extraordinary. Somewhat better than average. That is a healthy intrinsic bias, really. We should all have some positive perception of ourselves and our natural abilities and achievements to maintain any level of self-esteem. However, we are constantly sold by society the narrative that we need to be “successful,” and by that, they mean more than average. After all, success in the material world means you have all you want and need in excess, right?
In this pursuit of success, we may look at the average as the bare minimum that we should have attained. Average income, average house, average car, average retirement savings, average wardrobe spend, average BMI, average relationships, and all the other superficial averages that make up what we perceive as a normal, aspirational, or even successful life.
So, let’s burst a bubble before we go any further. By the averages, if we packed Wembley Stadium with people who have a $0 net worth and then brought Warren Buffett in, the average net worth of those in attendance immediately becomes nearly $1.5 million. All of a sudden, averages seem pretty problematic and not representative of the situation. Median is often a much better measurement for these types of comparisons, giving us the value in the middle rather than factoring in the outliers as heavily. Warren Buffett may feel a bit humbler in that case.
Moreover, you are likely very average, just the way you are, as a more cynical Mr. Rogers would point out. I am here to argue that it isn’t a bad thing. There are lots of reasons to embrace and not to fear this statistic, because despite a lifetime of efforts, you will likely fall within a standard deviation of the average for most things in the US. So, how could being average actually be a good thing?
It’s Attainable
Using Average as a benchmark for how the rest of society is performing is actually pretty useful. We don’t all start out with the average of anything right out of the gate, except for things like height that require little input other than the biological basics of living to achieve, but we can’t really change those things anyway. However, it gives us an initial focal point to aim for.
Income is probably the first place most of us will look to see where we stack up against the masses. The average personal income is around $38,000. Remember our average example, though. This is factoring in many Americans who may not be full-time employees or even work at all, so we can consider the median, since it has been rising faster and more consistently, sitting at around $42,000 today, or about $20 per hour full time.
While there are exceptions to every sweeping statement, I will dare to say that the majority of our citizens can clear the $42,000 mark every year. Does that mean that everyone can get a job making $20 per hour and work at least 40 hours per week? Absolutely not, but if your target is to clear that $42,000 threshold, it is attainable with employment, side hustles, assistance programs, etc. If you aren’t making that today and want ideas, please consult your guru of your choice; there are tons of resources out there, and maybe they will come in a later article. One strategy that I may suggest is a healthy pairing, because the average household income in the US is roughly $78,000. As an individual, that can be lofty, but with the power of love and combined finances… well, you get the picture.
These attainable averages sometimes require some work to attain. The contrarian today will bring up cars and housing, to which I say, “Check yourself.” Check your expectations. Today, the average size of a single-family house is 2,500 square feet and comes in at around $500,000. On $78,000 per year, that is not a great fit. Do you know how big 2,500 square feet is? Pretty large. The average single-family home in 1970 was 1,500. A common housing metric is cost per square foot. You are generally going to run about $200 per square foot nationwide. Move out of popular areas, and it drops. So, can you afford a big house in a popular part of town on an average salary? Probably not, but could you afford a modest house in a decent neighborhood in a suburb, probably. The truth is, expectations have risen much higher and faster than inflation. You may not want to settle, but owning a house and thriving in the average, is possible if you really want it.
Not all average metrics are desirable, though. Our modern economy has no problem letting you have all the things you desire, paid for in debt. From a money.com article, the average debt an adult is holding, excluding mortgages, is about $22,000. That is more than 50% of the average annual income for individuals. I don’t need to harp on the problematic nature of this statistic, but it is important to point out that the average person lives bigger than their means. The Average person would struggle to pay a surprise $1,000 expense, and the average person will struggle to retire since only about 30% are saving anywhere near enough. You can achieve this too, at your own peril.
It’s Predictable
Life is pretty uncertain. We crave that excitement to some level. We are pretty quick to call a good but uneventful day or function as boring. We have flashing screens, clever advertisements, and compelling TV shows at arm’s reach at all times, providing us with cheap thrills constantly. No wonder a book, a quiet dinner with friends and family, or a steady job with minimal deviation feels unfulfilling. This isn’t how life is like for the influencers or characters in our shows. We deserve more, don’t we? I don’t know if we do.
The average day and lack of excitement hold so much potential. Potential for clarity, realistic expectations, less stress, and increased mental health. If you really think about the times in your life when you had the least certainty, when you lost a job or all your plans fell apart, it came with a lot of stress. It is normally correlated with poor decision-making. Risk and volatility can be fun and is an important part of the human happiness experiment, but there are set times and places for that. Namely, when most everything else is stable.
In work, one key thing that most people look for is a good manager. A good manager should be able to help provide you with a safe, stable work environment where you are heard, valued, and productive. Compensation doesn’t hurt either. Introduce some instability into that scenario. Product failures, angry customers, scheduling mishaps, and throw in a payroll delay. The excitement isn’t so fun, then it is stressful. These are problems that you or even your manager can’t necessarily solve. You fix what you can and feel somewhat accomplished, but everyone would have been better off if none of it had happened in the first place. As employee dissatisfaction rates and turnover continues to climb, paired with the spree of recent layoffs, a boring job with a decent manager where you are needed is something of a gift, boring or not.
Predictability with your investments is not something that you generally associate, but it absolutely is. If you consume any content at all on finance, you can’t escape topics of booms and busts in the stock market. People who got rich overnight and those who lost it all. That is what makes investing so scary and is sure to be a contributing factor in the number of Americans not invested in the market. The cure, consistency, and time. Dollar cost averaging is possibly the most boring way that you can invest, but strangely enough, it produces arguably the best and most consistent results. For those who may not know, the simple definition of dollar cost averaging is to invest the same amount on a routine basis, say $500 per month, in an index fund. The market will go up and it will go down, so sometimes you are buying low and sometimes you are buying high, but you maintain the position for a very long time. This produces consistent growth, minimizes panic selling, and emotional buying. It is simply riding the market long term, since over time, the stock market has always gone up. When compared to portfolios that tried to time the market and even those that do perfectly, the performance of a dollar cost average approach tends to win every time, and why it is the method of choice for the average investor.
There is a ton of data on the averages. As an average person, doing average things that other average people have and are doing, you get a real insight to your expected results. What are the average grades for time studied, what is the average pay for someone with your experience, what is the average rate of return for a 401k, and the list goes on. The data that goes into generating average performance helps reduce the unpredictable nature of so many of our stressors. Know the numbers to play the numbers.
All The Studies Are About You
Greetings, fellow average American, we have conducted numerous studies on people just like you for your benefit to help you make better purchasing decisions, help you be healthier, and better manage your time, money, and life overall. All media is generally designed to capture the largest audience possible, and in that, appealing to the masses is the best strategy. While niche content is great in hyper-focusing on a segment, how things stack up to the masses is the best method of presentation. Want to show someone they are special? show that they are slightly better than the average. Want to trigger action in someone, paint them as lower than average. Marketing, science, and most of all, educational content is geared towards putting people into nice little buckets and solving problems for the average person in all of them in hopes of relating to the most people.
Education, specifically, is built for you. There are some institutions that try to hold on to some level of elite recruitment, but for all its negatives, education has been turned into a product for the masses. Student loans, fraught with their own side effects, are still available to almost anyone who wants to fund an education but can’t afford it today. Colleges are highly incentivized to take in as many students as possible, and they must keep up with success rate benchmarks, so the chances of passing are higher than ever. Not interested in formal education? Great! There are tons of certifications and extracurricular learning out there to level up the average person starting with zero knowledge on a subject. Want to go old school and read? Most books are encouraged to be written at around a 7th-grade reading level, when the average adult reads at a 9th-grade level. Yes, it seems like a majority of our learning systems are designed specifically to elevate the niche knowledge of someone average.
There are many more complicated aspects of modern life. From technology, to finance, to mundane required tasks like taxes, and how to access and manage your hundreds of logins that used to require a higher level of knowledge and expertise,e and could have left you to do without or in need of expert help to complete. Now, with technology, the focus of it all is to make life easier for everyone. There is likely an app for whatever you need or want to do, and one that is focused on ease of use at that. The modern world is working hard to democratize every task possible, and the focus group? Again, it is generally the average person with limited niche knowledge and technical aptitude.
These benefits are often overlooked. Life is more complicated than it used to be. There are more tasks, details, risks, and costs than ever before, but also more opportunities and fewer barriers for the average person to pursue knowledge or a career they want. As for those risks and costs, there are tons of resources to mitigate them with stories and content by average people for average people. Are you guaranteed to exceed your averageness and achieve wild success? No, but no one is. Average, though? You can do it!
Embracing Average Leads to Less Stress
You hear and have likely felt the weight of being in the rat race. Constantly striving to achieve success at work, meet deadlines, get the promotion. Then there is keeping up with the Joneses by ensuring your house reflects your desired status, your car is one that others envy, and you attend all the social events. Keeping up all the signals that you have it all together and are successful. It’s stressful, maddening, and frankly unnecessary. The promotion you want is more pay, sure, but it will likely come with more responsibility and hours that take away from your free time and peace. Besides, the average tenure at a job is 2–4 years in many sectors, and if the last year has shown anything about the workplace, it’s that company loyalty is dead on both sides. As for the Joneses, they carry a ton of debt, their marriage is hanging on by a thread, and they are terrified it will all fall apart.
There is nothing wrong with striving to advance in your career or own nice things. There really isn’t. Those are normal, healthy impulses. Issues only come in when we start to overextend our means. One of the bedrocks of personal finance is to spend less than you make. Other bedrocks are tried and true advice like keeping your housing cost around 20–30% and your car between 10–20% of your income. Sometimes it is hard, and there are times that you fall out of those benchmarks for one reason or another, but one thing is pretty consistent: if you ignore these simple formulas, things can get really stressful. Financial trouble is linked to career setbacks, health problems, shorter life expectancies, poorer relationships, higher divorce rates, and later or even no retirement at all. All these are stress compounders and the enemies of happiness.
I can say from experience, having at least a six-month safety net for expenses and having luxuries I could quickly cut to save money has brought me more peace than any pay increase that I have ever received. Oddly enough, it made me a better partner to my employers as well. It allowed me to focus on bringing my true self to my work, to bet on myself, and voice my opinion without fear of being let go. This confidence has led to those promotions and pay increases organically that I used to chase. I also don’t wake up, knowing I have to work a job I hate to feed my family. If things go south, I am prepared and have the means to survive to recover quickly without poor emotional decision making.
While a humble life with simpler things is not as lavish or even quite as comfortable, it can lead to much more substance and deeper meaning. At least it can lead to less suffering. Without the pull to be so extraordinary and flaunt status, you actually become somewhat extraordinary and achieve status. Maybe not what the wider world sees, but your immediate network does in a much deeper way. That is a peace and level of success that money can’t buy.
Flexibility In Optimizing and Diversifying
Applying your average powers can present you with amazing opportunities. Many of us spend a large part of our lives honing a particular skill set. You get degrees and certifications for it, you spend years in niche jobs, develop niche talents and if you are good, you advance in your field and achieve a level of expertise. This is a great and natural progression, but what happens when your niche is disrupted by technology, or worse, AI? Your experience in the marketplace can be devalued, and your skills can be less in demand. I watched this happen to some of the older people in my life. Computer programmers know that the languages they memorized have become obsolete. Mechanics who didn’t keep up with modern cars slowly ran out of old engines to work on. It is devastating and happening faster all the time, thanks to technology.
A high level of expertise and dedication is a way to break the average cycle. It has many strong arguments and payoffs in favor of extreme specialization and dedication. Many of the people we see as successful have dedicated massive amounts of resources to that success and have achieved extreme success at a very limited number of things. Life has cycles, though, and one day we wake up not the same person we once were. It happens all the time. Say you spent your life dedicated to your niche. You sacrificed time and other opportunities, now the spark is gone, and you want change. Did you spend enough time establishing other areas of your life to fill the void left by your niche? Depending on the survey, about 30% of job changes are career changes, different industries or fields, maybe even to or from a stay-at-home parent (yes, that is a career move). The average person in their late 30s and possibly again in their fifties will attempt a career change. How that transition goes is going to depend on transferable skills. It will likely require a setback in an otherwise linear career progression. By taking the non-committal route of not developing an extreme niche, you can increase your chances of making these transitions more smoothly, and, in a way, those transitions could be your niche. Having a wide array of skills is sometimes hard to convey to others, but those that land you get a deal because of your diversity in skills and adaptability. As Shakespeare said, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
It comes down to the fact that extreme success and being more than average requires a maximization of accumulation. It takes more knowledge, more skill, more risk, more resources, more upkeep, and more stress. There are many comforts that come with such success, but assured sacrifice and success is not guaranteed. A steady life is more about optimizing what you have to apply it to its fullest potential without taking on more than necessary. We could use a bit more of that in many aspects of our world of excess. At some point, you start to experience diminishing returns, and you condition yourself to the grind. It’s like a drug, you can’t stop. More wins, more money, more stuff, more work. You go far enough that it takes a catastrophic change to break the cycle because you have long passed the point where you “can stop whenever you want.”
Goals are great! Set some goals, but make them realistic and attainable, and have a contingency plan in case you achieve all you ever wanted and it is not what you thought it would be. Make room for a diverse life and leave yourself open to change. The most important thing, though, is to envision the life you want, not with stuff but with substance. Don’t overlook or look down on the average life.
Something to keep in mind. Per Gallup, the average annual income per capita in the world is around $10,000, and the median is closer to $3,000. Your average US income of $40,000 puts you in the top 10% of the world. The difference that we see is not the cost of goods or quality of life. It is the cost of goods to have the quality of life we think others have.
I hope you can see value in your average nature and the opportunities it can afford if you can show some gratitude toward it. We are all average in more ways than not. We are the masses, and the average cannot be insufficient; otherwise, the system truly doesn’t work. We are not there yet. We still have choices and opportunities. Make good choices and remain humble.
Accepting being average is not weak or giving up. It is a testament to your wisdom and the first step to a sustainable and valuable life, bigger than the statistics.