I want it now.
I want a new car.
If you have been reading this column for a while, you may remember that it really wasn’t too long ago that I traded in my trendy SUV and joined the mini-van club (It was 2017, if you don’t remember). But I’m tired of the mini-van. I’m ready to move on (but with four kids, I’m fairly limited on what I can actually drive).
I blame several things for my recent dissatisfaction, none of which are my fault. In the 14 years of my marriage, we’ve traded our cars in about every four or so years. Yes, I know, that isn’t the wisest of things to do, but regardless of knowing it isn’t wise, my brain has been conditioned to think it’s time for a new car. I blame my husband.
A friend recently hit a deer. Despite her car not being very old, the deer must have been a close relative of a moose, as her car was totaled from the impact. She now drives a new car with bright LED headlights. I blame the deer.
And another friend recently joined the mini-van club. But rather than slowly making the climb to the peak vehicle, she went straight to the top and has a beautiful dark blue Honda Odyssey. She definitely needed a larger vehicle, but her shiny car has me staring at mine in disgust. I blame her three kids.
And to top it off, my sister just got a new vehicle, complete with the new-car smell, built in DVDs players and a lack of food crumbs in unreachable places. The signs are all there. I need a new car.
I started searching for cars online, and then finally brought the subject up to my husband. I’m fairly certain he didn’t think I was serious, as he didn’t respond to my text message. So I gave it a few days, and broached the subject in person.
“Are you serious right now?” he asked. He went on to point out that my car is only 5 years old. It has less than 100,000 miles on it, and there’s actually still original plastic protection film on one of the seatbelts. “It isn’t even paid off yet. There is nothing wrong with your car. You don’t need a new one. You just want a new one.”
Challenge accepted.
I went on to point out all the issues with my car. “The check engine light is on. When I turn the left blinker on, the right one blinks first. The air-bag light comes on and off. One of the sunshades is broken. The seats need cleaned, and the upholstery is wearing thin on the driver’s seat and the seam has split. Plus there’s a ding in the back door and the paint is chipped away, and it’s starting to rust. We need to trade it in before it loses any more value.”
His solution is to pay this car off, and continue to put aside the monthly car payment for a year or two, in order to purchase a new car and put down a sizable down payment.
As much as I would like to pass the blame on everything that is wrong with the car, and all the other issues that have made me unhappy, the truth of the matter is I’m the problem. It isn’t the car. It’s me. It’s my desire for instant gratification rather than delayed gratification.
What is delayed gratification? Delayed gratification is turning down an instant reward with the understanding and hope of a better reward for waiting. It’s saving money to purchase something to avoid financing and interest charges. It’s working on a project early instead of putting it off to go to have fun. It’s making a homecooked meal instead of grabbing something from the drive through. If we are honest, we all prefer those things we have to wait for. We are just impatient.
Our culture is an instant gratification culture. The media tells us we can get whatever we want, whenever we want it. And the pandemic has done nothing but feed into this mindset. We can get someone to do our grocery shopping for us, we don’t have to go to the movie theater to watch a new movie, and now we can have more than pizza delivered for dinner. With just a few clicks, we can live our entire lives instantly without leaving our couch.
But there’s a problem with instant gratification. It sacrifices life skills that are actually necessary for success. Delayed gratification tends to lead not only to better self-control, but also to better self-motivation. Kids that practiced delayed gratification during the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment were found to ultimately have better grades in school as they got older, and also had fewer behavioral issues.
Delayed gratification is also indicative of better impulse control, which plays a huge role in decision making and managing emotions in a healthy way. The kid with impulse control is the kid that is more likely to try to talk out a problem instead of solving it with a fist. The kid with impulse control is more likely to look at the potential consequences of a decision before actually deciding.
When it comes to choices in relationships, teens need to know that instant happiness is actually not true lasting happiness, and it never will be.
A study done by The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found “Men and women who only slept with their (future) spouse prior to marriage reported higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. Further, for women, having had fewer sexual partners before marriage was also related to higher marital quality. This doesn’t mean that sex before marriage will doom a marriage, but sex with many different partners may be risky if you’re looking for a high-quality marriage.”
When it comes to intimacy within a relationship, delayed gratification seems to be a key to a happy and successful marriage.
Fine. I admit that I don’t need a new car. It is definitely a want. And I recognize that my husband’s plan of saving money to get a car really is a better financial choice. But it’s hard to wait. I know it is. But true love is doing what is best now and in the long term. And as much fun as it would be to come home to a new car in my driveway, I do know that it really will be much better if I save the money and wait. Because think of how much better a new car will be in 2025 than in 2021. It’s all about looking toward the future…