A mortgage is said to be under water when a homeowner owes more than the house is worth. Calamity struck Wall Street and the federal rescue was praised and derided as a bailout, a term that brings to mind steel buckets of sloshing flood waters being passed from hand to hand. Lately I have been reflecting on how appropriate these metaphors are when it comes to my own bank account. I have been struggling with a personal financial crisis for nearly a year now and the all-consuming torrent, the undertow of frustration, worry, and shame can only be described as a kind of drowning.
Credit card debt, student loans, car payments, tax debt, cell phone contracts, daycare, home repair, and just generally living above my means; each dollar owed is a drop in a slowly, steadily-accumulating deluge.
But this post is not intended merely to be a confession. I want to pose a question: what is it about money, the abundance or the lack of it, that has such a profound affect on our state of mind? What – who? – gives it the power to make or break our mood, to shape how we view our self image, our potential, and our capacity to be generous in ways that have nothing to do with economic currency?
I’ve been following the weekly “Do-It-Yourself Bailout” series on NPR’s The Takeaway and one of the early segments asks: Why do we find it so hard to talk about money? Psychologist Stephen Goldbart offers a response:
People feel that when you ask about money, you’re asking them: do you have or do you not have self-esteem? Have you made it? Are you likeable? Are you dressed for success? How well is your life going? In effect in this country, money over-determines who we are, our self-esteem, and what we are as people.
Among the solutions that Goldbart proposes to distinguish “our financial worth from our self-worth” is to acknowledge the discomfort that we have when it comes to discussing money, to begin learning the financial basics, and to consider “the guiding principles that you want to have driving your life.”
The costs of failing to address these issues were brought home for me last month when the Insight Center for Community Economic Development released a study on wealth and women of color. (Wealth = total value of one’s assets minus debts.) Headlines prompted by the study seemed to suggest that single black women were “worth” five dollars. But after taking the time to read the Insight CCED’s study and its executive summary, I was more troubled by the finding that in all types of households, “prior to age 50, women of color have virtually no wealth at all.” The exponential impact of this wealth gap is rooted in multi-generational socio-economic policy and even cultural expectations that, according to the study, encourage women to neglect their personal financial goals in favor of family obligations.
In her forthright commentary on the Insight CCED study and black women’s spending habits, Kimberly Foster at The FreshXpress notes that “mental stability and health are inextricable linked to that of our bank accounts.” Which brings me back to my original question. How can we rise above the paralyzing silence in which we track our dignity in accordance with our debt?
Should we begin sharing facts and figures: our paychecks, our credit balances, our overdue notices? Should we form financial support groups and track our progress the way we count points at Weight Watchers? As convinced as I am that the seas of suffering can, indeed, be crossed “without pushing forward, without staying in place,” I am still striving to become financially literate in ways that unanchor material wealth from well-being.
How about you?
The images in this post are from the magnificent underwater sculptures by Jason de Caires Taylor.
Posted by giovanna on April 30, 2010 at 12:59 PM
oh, what a fabulous piece of writing. i’m speechless.
i confess that my sense of self-worth is not connected to money in the direct way you mention, though i’m sure money and self-worth are connected in me somehow cuz that’s just the way our culture is. i don’t know that my culture (italian) prizes money less (i wish), but the credit culture that dominates america is still pretty foreign to italy.
having said this i, like most americans, am in plenty debt myself, but, as i said, i don’t think this affects my self-worth in any significant way. what it does affect is my peace of mind. plainly put, it scares me shitless. i see myself having a destitute old age and i want to crawl under the kitchen sink and stay there with the cockroaches.
something that *does* affect my self-worth is my job — being an adjunct prof. more than financial worth, what affects my sense of self seems to be status.
anyway, this is not what your post is about. again, claudia: some pretty darn good writing and thinking here. wow.
Posted by Claudia on April 30, 2010 at 8:30 PM
Thanks, gio. I appreciate the feedback. I think the the issues you’ve raised about status do share interesting similarities with my concerns about how I relate to money. Both are too frequently driven by the way others perceive our choices and rely on collective investments in some kind of (arbitrary) standard of “doing well” in order to work. Speaking personally, I feel like I’ve been taking these standards for granted for too long. I just can’t keep up! It’s exhausting. And I want to feel more confident about what I am able to do. So here’s wishing us both a better way to grow old, not being scared shitless, and feeling good about who we are!
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Posted by giovanna on May 1, 2010 at 4:28 PM
“So here’s wishing us both a better way to grow old, not being scared shitless, and feeling good about who we are!”
hear hear, and thank you!
Posted by kjenblues on May 5, 2010 at 4:38 AM
It wasn’t until I started undergoing my own financial distress that I began to consciously consider the importance of money in my life – what I was willing to do to get it and eventually how much I wanted to end up with. I had kind of been in a fog before – money wasn’t ever really an issue to me before, plus I half-halfheartedly believed that ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ and that ‘god will always provide’ meant that essentially i would be able to maintain the life which my parents had grown me accustomed to. LOL
Not so. It was/is still a harsh wake up call. I have had to divest from some of my thinking about status and outward appearances – i have a fully functioning car, so what how it looks, etc. Harder still was admitting to people about my situation. Essentially, being broke makes you more dependent upon others. I hadn’t realized what a ‘quiet’ existence I lead until my financial distress. A committed introvert who has few safe spaces, I find myself having to speak up more and more, ask more questions, demand more because otherwise my -very, real financial needs – would not be met. Its been a painful and humbling experience. But also kind of exciting. I never knew that my voice could be so (respectfully) forceful, that I could persevere, and that more people than I ever gave credit for are open and willing to help.
Posted by Claudia on May 6, 2010 at 5:28 AM
It is a harsh wake-up call, kjenblues! And hard to talk about with others. Thanks for stopping by and weighing in.
Posted by conseula on May 5, 2010 at 1:18 PM
Hey Claudia–
What a great post. I too, for the past year or so, have been dealing with serious financial issues and working really hard to separate how I feel about myself and things I have accomplished from how wealth I do (or in this case, do not) have. It’s really hard work, work I haven’t mastered at all really. I’m looking forward to not being scared shitless.
Posted by Claudia on May 6, 2010 at 5:32 AM
Glad (and not so glad) to hear that you can relate, Conseula. We’ve got to get out from under this, girl. ‘Cause I don’t see a windfall in my future and I don’t want to feel like crap for another year!
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Posted by Carleen on May 9, 2010 at 5:49 PM
What a service you have done! Sometimes it feels like everybody else but me has their financial shit together. It’s especially embarrassing to be broke when your work is public. People make assumptions & dispelling those assumptions can sometimes make me feel like something is indeed wrong with me, that I have fucked up
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