So how much do you make?
If I asked you that IRL* you’d look askance as though I’d asked when you had your first sexual experience or to recount the details of a loved-one’s death.
I learned the money-taboo early. Although I grew up in an environment where we would discuss politics and religion and sometimes both over a meal, money was never, ever, ever up for discussion. Indeed, my father was so uncomfortable with the subject, he grabbed every bill that ever landed on the table before anyone could discuss divvying it up. Such situations were too unseemly. My mother recently told me that when my paternal grandfather left medical school in the mid-1920s in the UK, he expected to receive some family money to buy his first practice. Instead, he was left empty-handed and had to eke out a living in partnership with someone he reportedly didn’t like. I can only imagine hearing of this experience contributed to my ever-practical dad’s disdain for intergenerational wealth and quite likely his general discomfort with money. Rumour has it dad turned down a chance to have a relative buy him a farm in England in the late 1940s, and instead came to Canada alone to work as a farmhand with barely a penny. From my earliest memory, I knew money you earned was more valuable than money you were given. I recognize I’m lucky to have the skills and the privilege to earn enough to live the life I want.
But I would still be gob-smacked if anyone asked me point-blank how much I make. I’ve been thinking about why. On the one hand, I feel guilty when I imagine I make more than many other people. To know it with certainty, though, would make me horribly uncomfortable. On the other hand, I know I’d be irritated to know by how much others’ salaries or financial fortunes outstrip mine. The socialist in me would question how that could possibly be fair?
I’ve seen this avoidance of money-talk in my work. Many who live in non-profit and co-op housing have rents geared to their incomes. Calculating RGI, as it’s called, draws on housing providers’ resources to safeguard the financial information necessary to figure how what’s owed. Keeping financial info confidential is mandated by privacy law of course but that law was written to reflect the sensitivity we all have about our means.
Bashfulness about discussing financial circumstances means many people fail to develop financial literacy skills. There are the rare naturals at figuring out how to track ins and outs from a bank account and to forecast personal cashflow based on known income and expenses. I think I may be one of them - I can get very jazzed about all that ticking and bobbing and reconciliation in Excel. But if it’s not innate and if even families don’t discuss it, how are you expected to learn about a taboo subject? You’re stuck with muddling along.
Most people cannot imagine living without a cell phone, computer, and internet access. The take-out food habit is ubiquitous (I write this eating takeout in my yard, despite having a fridge jammed with food). Everyone expects to enjoy a regular away-from-home vacation. Not long ago, we saw all these things as treats, not rights.
The result of all this spending? Not good. Even before the substantial increase in the cost of living, in my legal work doing evictions I saw a lot of people get behind in their rent payments. We need to start educating people in financial management. If dialling back overconsumption were to result, then our planet would thank us too. But let’s at least give people the tools to better manage what they have. Let’s make them financially literate. The muddling-along approach isn’t working.
Next project? Improved death literacy. I’ve got a LOT to say about that.
And by the way, I make more than the photo shows. But that’s all I’m saying.
*IRL = In real life
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