This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Layton Cox, 35, a consultant based in Rosemary Beach, Florida. Business Insider has verified his country club membership and income. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.
My wife and I moved from Dallas to Rosemary Beach in the Florida Panhandle at the end of 2021. A big goal of ours was finding our tribe in this part of the state.
When we found out about a local country club, we joined in late 2023 with the expectation that we’d meet a bunch of people who were like us.
It turned out to be my No. 1 financial regret. We spent almost $50,000 on the experience, only to learn that we didn’t fit in. It sure was an expensive way to learn a lesson.
We wanted to find our tribe
I work for a small boutique consulting firm. My wife and I earn about $300,000 annually, the majority of which comes from my salary.
We wanted to live somewhere with a beach and my remote job means I can work anywhere, so we moved to Rosemary Beach.
Some people we met invited us to visit a country club about four miles from our home. It had a golf course, fitness center, pickleball and tennis courts, a resort-style pool complex, and a beach club with restaurants. There were no other places like it in the area, and it seemed pretty cool.
A partner at a consulting firm I used to work for was a member. He pitched joining as a good way to network, which played a small part in our decision, but we mainly joined for social reasons.
The joining fee was $45,000
After living in Rosemary Beach for almost two years, we finally decided to join the country club in October 2023, because the initial entry fee of $45,000 was due to increase at the start of 2024. I had recently received a bonus, and we hadn’t spent it on anything yet, so we said, “Let’s just do this.”
The club had an instalment program that would allow us to pay the entry fee gradually over several years, in addition to our monthly dues. In our first year, we paid $15,000 toward our $45,000 joining fee. In 2024, we paid an additional $10,700.
When we first joined, we tried to go as much as we could. If we wanted a meal, we’d eat at the club, and we used the gym a lot.
I also got back into playing golf and was meeting new people through it, but a lot of them were much older than me and running small businesses or local car dealerships, as opposed to working a corporate job like mine. I could have forced myself to make friends with them, but we probably wouldn’t have had much in common.
We also weren’t politically aligned with other members, and there were a lot of social dynamics we just didn’t care for.
It was an expensive way not to make friends
It took us about a year to figure out that there was a high likelihood we wouldn’t find our tribe at the club. My golf game wasn’t getting any better and we’d made other friends outside the club at bars, through Facebook groups, and local Democrat clubs. Plus, the membership was cramping our budget.
We quit to give us more financial flexibility, no longer needing to spend more than $1,000 each month on the dues. By that point, we had paid more than $25,000 in instalments toward our joining fee. In monthly dues, we paid $2,850 in 2023, $13,800 in 2024, and $3,600 for the first three months of 2025.
In total, including the $25,000 we spent on the joining fee, we had spent about $46,000 before factoring in court reservations, food, and drink.
Fortunately, the country club didn’t make us pay the full $45,000 when we quit, so we had some leftover money. We used what remained from the money we had set aside to redecorate our house, and we plan to go to the South of France for three months later this year.
Still, spending all that money on being a country club member was definitely an ego blow.
I’ve since learned that to find your tribe, it’s important to know who you are and what you enjoy. Just because some people are doing something doesn’t mean you should too. It’s important not to fall prey to the “keeping up with the Joneses” trap.
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