Talking about your wad of cash in public/on VJ

[brnidokiegurl 0]

Hummmmm lets see its almost 3 here im still broke and there are still 8 of us poor people that responded any of you rich guys want to throw some our way since it seems to be causing everyone so much trouble

[RaspberrySwirl 20]

Anyways, I saw some people bragging about money more than once in VJ and I kinda think that is how it is in the land of the free...

Welcome back, Rey! Been wondering where you've been.

Migrating to the US took a lot of my time, I guess....

with all the canadian geese in the skies nowadays, i can see why it would take so much time to migrate.

You follow me around from thread to thread. The post I made about you was in response to you chastizing me for having a lugh on HOPE's "deportation" thread. As far as I'm concerned, you can do this

BTW, Lisa, I'm straight and married. Stop stalking me.

Which is it? Are you straight? or Not? It's getting hard to tell.

does that mean you are contemplating that offer?

:lol:

Females, constantly trying to get and keep my attention. I know I'm attractive, but . . . that's weird.

Yeah it is.

We don't discuss it. I think it's in poor taste.

[Ban Hammer 13,340]

Charles, don't be silly. People can be individuals. That said, we live in a society with norms. Some are worth following and others are questionable. You choose which social mores are worth breaking.

perhaps silly to you, but that's advocating censorship on a person's right to free speech by insisting on society norms and such. if someone wants to talk about it, then as far as i care they can feel free.

now i'll go hunt for another social more to break

[Alex+R 0]

Charles, don't be silly. People can be individuals. That said, we live in a society with norms. Some are worth following and others are questionable. You choose which social mores are worth breaking.

perhaps silly to you, but that's advocating censorship on a person's right to free speech by insisting on society norms and such. if someone wants to talk about it, then as far as i care they can feel free.

now i'll go hunt for another social more to break

Advocating censorship? Ha. Ok, Charles, whatever you say. I'm not sure how the words "choose" and "questionable" have anything to do with censorship. I never said people from hereon out will not be allowed to talk about their money. I just think those people are making the choice to be tacky.

[Alex+R 0]

Don't get touchy just because you told us exactly how much you've made this year earlier today. Yes, I think that was quite tacky. And yes, it's tacky even if someone doesn't make a lot.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I was criticized for saying I'm a trust fund baby, but how is that tackier than saying you're a doctor or a corporate CEO? Other people INFER how high or low that places you on the social and economic scale. Since most of us don't know each other, you have no idea how we live, what we wear, what we drive, or how we treat others who have perceptually less. The problem is with people who make the inferences and, off of that, level their criticism, not with someone who makes a simple, innocuous statement that sets someone else off.

Edited March 5, 2007 by Green-eyed girl

[Cassie 8]

my husband and I are "comfortable"

(how's that for a financial euphemism!! )

[Alex+R 0]

I was criticized for saying I'm a trust fund baby, but how is that tackier than saying you're a doctor or a corporate CEO? Other people INFER how high or low that places you on the social and economic scale. Since most of us don't know each other, you have no idea how we live, what we wear, what we drive, or how we treat others who have perceptually less. The problem is with people who make the inferences and, off of that, level their criticism, not with someone who makes a simple, innocuous statement that sets someone else off.

The difference is that saying you are a doctor or CEO tells someone your profession. Saying you are a "trust fund baby" tells someone how you got your money, and in quite a cavalier way. It doesn't say what you spend your day doing. I would not respond to "how do you spend your day?" with "oh, spending my trust fund." How about "volunteering" or "looking for a new job" or "working as x"?

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The topic of the thread that I posted that one wasn't "What do you do all day?". It was about the possible correlation between political affiliation and finances. I answered in that context, not because I go around "bragging" about my perceived status.

Being a doctor is a way to make money. Having a trust fund is a way to make money. Six in one hand, half dozen in the other, but I see both as honorable. Perhaps the stigma you're responding to is that one is perceived to be earned and deserved, while the other is perceived to be unearned and undeserved. BTW, when I say I'm a Ph.D. social scientist, a profession, I'm criticised for that too, although lots of people say what they do too, without blowback. After a while, I have to chalk such disparities up to class envy, even if I find that conclusion distasteful myself.

Edited March 5, 2007 by Green-eyed girl

[Ban Hammer 13,340]

Don't get touchy just because you told us exactly how much you've made this year earlier today. Yes, I think that was quite tacky. And yes, it's tacky even if someone doesn't make a lot.

ah so that is what this thread is about. you're irked cause i make more than you.

btw, that amount given is incorrect. so no, it's not me telling exactly how much i've made this year already. it does not include my military retirement pay

[E&K 0]

I think people shouldn't be talking about how much money they make in public, either to boast about it or to whine about it. I'm really not sure what's worse.

I certainly don't like it when either case drives away valuable VJ members though

[bostonparis 0]

The topic of the thread that I posted that one wasn't "What do you do all day?". It was about the possible correlation between political affiliation and finances. I answered in that context, not because I go around "bragging" about my perceived status.

Being a doctor is a way to make money. Having a trust fund is a way to make money. Six in one hand, half dozen in the other, but I see both as honorable. Perhaps the stigma you're responding to is that one is perceived to be earned and deserved, while the other is perceived to be unearned and undeserved. BTW, when I say I'm a Ph.D. social scientist, a profession, I'm criticised for that too, although lots of people say what they do too, without blowback. After a while, I have to chalk such disparities up to class envy, even if I find that conclusion distasteful myself.

The "trust fund babies" I know would never call themselves that. They probably think it's a distasteful term to themselves.

[KarenCee 3]

Tis my business and that of my husband but no one else. I was raised that way.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The topic of the thread that I posted that one wasn't "What do you do all day?". It was about the possible correlation between political affiliation and finances. I answered in that context, not because I go around "bragging" about my perceived status.

Being a doctor is a way to make money. Having a trust fund is a way to make money. Six in one hand, half dozen in the other, but I see both as honorable. Perhaps the stigma you're responding to is that one is perceived to be earned and deserved, while the other is perceived to be unearned and undeserved. BTW, when I say I'm a Ph.D. social scientist, a profession, I'm criticised for that too, although lots of people say what they do too, without blowback. After a while, I have to chalk such disparities up to class envy, even if I find that conclusion distasteful myself.

The "trust fund babies" I know would never call themselves that. They probably think it's a distasteful term to themselves.

If you have to think about it, then you don't know. Anyway, context counts.

Some folks have lost their sense of humor.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Envy, Anxiety, Secrecy, Taboos: The Subject Must Be Money

ALINA TUGEND

New York Times, February 3, 2007

Many consumers are propping up their elaborate lifestyles with hidden debt. It’s something no one likes to talk about.

I’M as guilty as the next person. I’ve sat around with my pals wondering how a neighbor, a colleague, or, yes, a good friend, can possibly afford to put that huge addition on their house. Or take those many overseas vacations. Or pay for the private schools and the fancy summer camps and the second home.

Some people we just write off as trust fund babies or hedge fund zillionaires or lucky dogs who got into the stock market at the right time and cashed out.

But others are more perplexing. They look like us. They seem to come from roughly the same backgrounds as us. But they sure don’t act like us.

I don’t exactly envy them; I’m fairly satisfied with our lives. Oh, occasionally I wish we had that house on Martha’s Vineyard, or didn’t have to choose between remodeling the bathroom or taking a summer trip, but generally I know how fortunate we are.

But I do sometimes burn with curiosity about how they do it. And wish that talking about money was not so fraught in this society so I could just ask them to explain it.

For years, economists, academics and psychologists have written about how money is the last taboo. It has become a virtual cliché to say that people would rather talk about their sex lives or child abuse than their finances.

Elissa Schappell was a co-editor, with Jenny Offill, of an anthology called “Money Changes Everything” (Doubleday, 2007), a compilation by 22 writers, many fairly well known, discussing how money, whether it disappeared over generations or arrived in a sudden windfall, affected their lives. But the contributors had to write under their own names and some could not do it.

“We lost a good one,” Ms. Schappell said. “He had written about his drug addiction, about a nervous breakdown, but he would not write about money.”

That instinct, however, might be beginning to change. The inability to address issues of money — and the envy it causes — is creating more financial and psychological distress than we can imagine, psychologists and social scientists say. We overspend to keep up with neighbors and friends; take jobs we’re not happy at to keep up a lifestyle we think we should have; and compulsively watch television shows that flaunt multimillion-dollar homes and exotic vacations.

Although grappling with issues of money is certainly not solely an American experience, the paradoxical way we treat it is peculiarly our own and stems from our contradictory history, said Dalton Conley, chairman of the sociology department at New York University.

“One string is consumption, social status and competition,” Professor Conley said. “That’s a strong part of the social fabric in America. Another is the Puritan string in American capitalism: to save, to lead an inconspicuous life.”

The saving and the discreet lifestyle, however, Professor Conley noted, have been somewhat lost in recent times. Instead, no home seems to be big enough and increasingly fancy cars idle in front of us on the school run.

Sometimes it seems as if we must be doing something wrong because we can’t possibly afford what they can — even if we don’t want it.

The truth is, however, that we don’t know the truth, said Shira Boss, author of “Green With Envy: Why Keeping Up With the Joneses Is Keeping Us in Debt,” (Warner Books, 2006).

“The accessibility and availability of debt has created a fiction that wasn’t there 20 years ago,” Ms. Boss said. “We don’t have a grip on who can afford what. Your external lifestyle is a lot lower when you’re living within your means — you can see extravagance, but not financial security.”

Ms. Schappell said that editing her book made her realize that “all the ready credit gives of the illusion of living the American dream.”

In the introduction to their book, Ms. Schappell and Ms. Offill note that “economists report that middle-class families are now carrying record levels of credit card debt, going without health insurance and filing for bankruptcy at several times the rate of the early 1980s.”

“Turns out those McMansions and shiny S.U.V.’s have us mortgaged up to our eyeballs, but until the wolf is truly at the door, you won’t find many of us admitting it.”

Ms. Schappell said she now believed, however, that the old-fashioned ideal of working hard, saving and gradually making it is a bankrupt one. Instead, the way people envision growing rich, she said, is through a windfall: “a malpractice lawsuit, the lottery or going on a reality show — it’s the new American dream.”

But envying people is part of human nature, right? It is one of the seven deadly sins, one of the Ten Commandments. We’re always going to want what we don’t have. There are studies and surveys that show people never feel they have enough; for example, in 2005, PNC Advisors — now PNC Wealth Management — asked 792 of its rich private-banking clients what they would need to feel financially secure; virtually all said they needed to double their wealth.

Twenty-nine percent of those with more than $10 million to invest also said having more money generated more problems than it solved.

“For Americans, it’s all about the pursuit,” Ms. Boss said. “It’s a question of degree. Envy is so evil-sounding — there is a release in just saying it. I try to say right away, ‘I’m so envious.’ We shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it.”

Others say the problem is more one of society and less one of individuals. That the drumbeat to consume more all the time is so deafening that few can resist.

“I strongly disagree that it’s human nature,” said Allen D. Kanner, a psychologist and co-editor of “Psychology and Consumer Culture” (American Psychological Association, 2004). “Our nature is being molded pretty powerfully by the media. If we started a trend to extract marketing from our lives, it would go a long way to reducing money anxieties.” Mr. Kanner is also a co-founder of the nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org).

Tim Kasser, an associate professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., said the answer was to want less.

There is a small movement, he said, heir to many such groups in the past, called voluntary simplifiers who have chosen to make do with less. This doesn’t mean they live puritanical lives without modern conveniences, but rather they have consciously chosen to make less money and work fewer hours to spend more time with families and friends.

A study in 2005 of 200 “voluntary simplifiers” in 48 states compared with 200 similar people in the same geographical areas who lived regular lives found that the simplifiers were happier according to a variety of criteria, said Professor Kasser, author of “The High Price of Materialism” (MIT Press 2002). (Details about the movement can be found at www.simpleliving.net.)

Even though we do tend to compare ourselves with those who have more, not less, it does help to remember that there is truth in clichés: money does not buy happiness.

“I’d like to have a lot more money,” Ms. Schappell said. “I’d like to use a credit card and not cross my fingers. I don’t want to be a waitress again and I don’t want to deliver balloons again. But money doesn’t make you feel smarter or more attractive.

“You have to look at what money is standing in for in your life. Is it safety? Does it make you socially acceptable? Does it make you important?”

Attitudes about money may also change as the baby boom generation moves toward retirement, Professor Conley said.

“The biggest birth core of the 20th century is now at its peak earning years and about to retire,” he said. “As this group leave their earning years, will they set a leisure and consumption culture for the rest of us or will they move into a more frugal mode of life and the whole dynamic will change?”

Talking about our finances may also become slightly less loaded, Mr. Conley predicted, as there is less and less stability; most people no longer work for the same company for years, nor have standardized contracts or receive defined pension benefits.

“With the increased volatility, people feel more desperate,” he said. “They may not say, ‘How much do you make? How much did you pay for your house,’ but, in a more subtle way, I think people feel the need to find that out more than they did 15 years ago.”

I can see becoming more open about our finances with friends and family. It is not that we have a lot to hide, but occasionally I’ve wondered about certain issues like how our income stacks up next to my sisters’ families’. Maybe I’ll bring that up at the next family reunion. And I’ll suggest that they go first.