I am 35 years old. I have a steady job that pays the bills and lets me save a little each month, but not much more than that. There are no vacations, no splurges, and no big leaps forward. Just the same routine every month — work, bills, and a little left over.
I try to be grateful that I am not drowning in debt or struggling to make rent, but it is hard not to look around and feel envious. Friends are buying homes, taking trips, or getting help from their families to build the kind of life I can only imagine. I know everyone’s situation is different, but sometimes it feels like I am doing everything right and still falling behind.
I hate feeling this way. I do not want to be bitter or resentful, but I also do not know how to stop comparing my life to people who seem to have it easier. How do you come to terms with being someone who is just getting by? How do you stop feeling jealous of people who seem to have more room to breathe?
You’re not broken for feeling jealous. You’re human. And being human means you’ve got this annoying built-in feature called comparison. It’s what helped your ancestors figure out who had the bigger cave and more berries. The problem is, in the modern world, comparison doesn’t help us survive — it just makes us miserable.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you’re doing fine. Not “Instagram fine,” but real-life fine. You pay your bills. You save a little. You aren’t living on the edge of disaster. You’re stable. That’s a bigger deal than you think. But because the world constantly shows you everyone else’s highlight reel, your brain thinks you’re losing a race you never actually signed up for.
What you’re really craving isn’t a house or a vacation. It’s validation — that your effort matters, that you’re not invisible, that all this grinding day after day means something. And it does. But meaning isn’t going to come from owning a home or taking a trip to Italy. It’s going to come from the small, unsexy stuff you build into your life right now: relationships that matter, time spent doing something that challenges you, taking care of your body, finding a tiny bit of peace in the chaos.
Stop comparing your insides to everyone else’s outsides. Most of the people you’re jealous of are secretly stressed, overleveraged, and scrolling Zillow at midnight wondering why they still feel empty.
You can’t control whether you’ll ever buy a house. You can control how you define a good life. And if you can pay your bills, save a little, and look yourself in the mirror knowing you’re doing your best — that’s not “just getting by.” That’s being okay in a world where most people aren’t.