How We Relate to Money
A couple of weeks ago, I posted something about the resentment and frustration currently brewing against the rich and privileged, and the ensuing dialogues helped me clarify for myself what I see as one root of the problem in the U.S. across all income levels.
It’s not the amount of money that people have that is the biggest problem; it’s people’s relationship to money.
I was telling a friend of mine who is an economist that they had done a survey to ask people how much money they would need to feel comfortable, and on average, most people said 20% more. This was true whether they made $10,000 or $100,000 or a million dollars.
He told me that a similar attitude was evident when people were saying why they weren’t saving 10% of their income for retirement. People making $40,000 a year said they couldn’t possibly do it because they couldn’t afford to; people making $80,000 a year said the exact same thing.
Now, clearly these ideas on how much money is enough are subjective. The person making $80,000 who says, “I can’t save 10% of my money,” is clearly wrong, because there are plenty of people who survive on $72,000 a year. The person making $50,000 who thinks, “Oh, if I only had $60,000, then I could relax and be comfortable,” has a different idea of comfort than the person making $20,000 who thinks that $24,000 would meet all their needs.
Until this relationship to money changes, no matter how much more money people get, it will never be enough.
It reminds me of a hungry ghost, trying unsuccessfully to fill the emptiness inside with more and more consumption.
I suspect that years of advertising and glossy Hollywood movies and TV shows have done their work. Watching Mad Men really drove home to me how much advertising is based on appealing to our subconscious desires and fears. “Buy this, and you will have love,” is the message repeated over and over and over again. And when I watch movies and TV shows, I am often struck by how incredibly rich the people in the show are, even though their wealth is rarely mentioned as something unusual or special. Modern Family is a great example. All three families have so much money, yet they don’t sit around talking about how privileged they are, and how can they help share their wealth with others less fortunate. They are instead focused on their relationships, and how to get along with the people in their lives.
I don’t know if it’s right to say that greed is a foundation of U.S. culture, yet I think that always wanting more, and always thinking that what one has isn’t enough, looks a lot like greed on the outside. I think that what is really going on is that people are searching for happiness and contentment, and U.S. culture isn’t particularly adept at teaching people how to create happiness for themselves. Because we’ve allowed advertising to proliferate, and the media to do its thing, we’ve been getting the message for three or four generations that money and buying the right thing can lead to happiness.
This is insidious. It’s like telling someone that eating chocolate cake can lead to happiness. Sure, there’s a momentary high, but after awhile the person has to eat another piece of chocolate cake. Pretty soon they weigh 300 pounds and aren’t any happier…in fact, that person might be less happy because of how their body feels. Because eating chocolate cake doesn’t really create lasting happiness, telling someone it does just leads them down the wrong path. (Disclaimer: a healthy relationship to eating chocolate cake can lead to recurring happiness, even if not lasting happiness.)
It’s the same way with money. Any rational thought would suggest that at some point, a certain amount of money would be enough to get someone’s needs met. Yet the surveys suggest that for most people, there is never enough. No matter how much they have, they want more. This is what suggests to me the hungry ghost, an endless appetite for something that people are trying to feed with money, but they never get full because money is not what satisfies that appetite on more than a temporary basis.
My intuition tells me that what would fill that appetite is more human connection, a greater sense of community, and more interactions with nature. It’s not enough just to be around people; my sense is that what really fills us up is to be around people with whom we can drop our social mask, with whom we can show our gooey centers and feel acceptance and love. Being creative could also be one of the things that fills us up. Living a life that we feel has meaning and purpose could be one of the things that fills us up. I suspect that the more we accept others, even if we don’t choose to emulate them or hang out with them, the less hungry and dissatisfied we’ll feel.
I know that those things work for me. I suspect they might work for others. I see a growing culture and community of people who value those things. I hope that culture can get its message out, so people can hear something besides what advertising and mass media have to say. The overall relationship to money most U.S. citizens have is just one symptom of a deeper issue.
