When I came home from Bhutan last week, there were four new cars sitting in the driveway for my homecoming. A brand new Jeep, a Volkswagen and not one but two sparkling Mercedes. My extended family has always enjoyed splurging but after leaving a country where laundry is still washed almost entirely in buckets or a river, this ostentatious display of wealth made me queasy.

So, now people can’t buy cars? No, that is neither the point nor the question at hand. Whether or not people need to or should buy new cars is not what I am here to argue—not in the slightest.

We, particularly Americans, are at the great liberty to do just about anything our heart desires. I am just here to ask this question: why do we buy new, expensive, shiny things? Is it because it is what our heart truly desires or is it because we want our car to be newer and more expensive and shinier than our neighbor's?

One of the Mercedes in the driveway belonged to my aunt. I teased her about trading up from her Volvo to the status symbol that now sat proudly outside the house. She was quick to tell me she had gotten a very good deal and it was, in fact, a used car. Perhaps she was attempting to curb any judgment on my part. I told her I did not doubt she received a good deal. I know you are an intelligent person, I told her, but why did it need to be Mercedes, I asked, clearly fishing for an answer.

My obvious fishing did not go unanswered. My aunt told me that in reality, no one in her wealthy suburb drove a Mercedes anymore. Today it is all Range Rovers, Audis and BMWs, apparently. I sensed two things from my aunt during the course of this conversation. The first being she had purchased a Mercedes rather than a Honda in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. The second thing I noticed was that despite her best efforts, she still felt her car was lesser than her neighbors. For that reason, she carried a chip on her shoulder—a feeling that she too was less important and successful than her neighbors who drove Range Rovers.

To keep up with Joneses in America means to define happiness by wealth and material items. But happiness does not come as a reward at the finish of line of the rat race that is our society of consumerism because in such a race there is no end in sight. It is a never-ending vicious cycle. Every two years you must buy the new iPhone, your car shouldn’t be more than eight years old, your kids should go to five different camps every summer, you should dye your eyelashes to look hip and young.

I say divorce the Joneses. This union was doomed from the start.

For me, I am a happier, more fulfilled person as a result of my disunion from the almighty Joneses. This is not to say I never want a new iPhone or to be seen driving a shinier car, but not feeling the pressure to do so eases both my conscience and my wallet. If driving a Mercedes makes you genuinely happy, then so be it. But try to remember that your children might not be able to afford the insurance on such priorities.