Money is one of those topics that is either an expression of love for it – when one has it – or a hate of it – when one doesn’t have it or has a jealousy of others having it.
It is also one of the major stressors in relationships: marriages, partnerships, consumership, and even friendships.
For the most part, I try to be as upfront about money matters with people as I can to avoid having a “financial elephant in the room”. With honesty as one of my top values, which can only be expressed through communication, I believe that if one is not given the opportunity to at least talk about a topic, then there is no way to move forward.
On the flip side, I also do not think that everyone needs to know everything about one’s financial situation – whether positive or negative.
My husband, on the other hand, likes to talk about money. It is, after all, and always has been, part of his professional world. As a financial advisor, he needed to get people to talk about their financial goals, current financial situation, and everything else around how to invest their money for their future. Now, as a fund manager, he talks about money all day. He is not afraid to share how much he/we make a month nor is he reticent to share how he/we spend it – 99% on our house payments these days due to not easily qualifying for a mortgage.
In contrast, I only talk about money as it pertains to maintaining positive relationships. If I owe people money, I talk about it. If they owe me money, I talk about it. However, I never talk about how much I/ we have or spend.
The other day, we had a discussion about M’s ‘oversharing’ (in my opinion) because he tends to share with perfect strangers. Personally, I don’t think that anyone needs to know how much our payments are nor that we can pay them – barely – nor that this will only last until June and then we won’t be struggling at all. In his mind, he thinks he is sharing the struggle and providing a bit of comic relief around the idea of money. In my mind, everyone’s idea of money struggles varies and so him talking about our enormous house payment as a challenge, which a majority of the world cannot imagine such figures, is a form of bragging. Also, logical follow up includes others knowing that we have a very healthy income.
For me, then, I question whether we have friends because they now know that we have money, or if they actually like us.
Also, since we are currently struggling to make the smallest of payments to others once we make one large payment a month on the house, I do not feel it is proper to underhandedly – whether intentional or not – talk about our money matters so nonchalantly.
Perhaps he finally understands my point as we met some new people this past weekend and he notably did not share specific numbers. Funnily enough, these people would have not been phased by the numbers since they were people who run in high circles, but in any case, I’m appreciative that I did not need to worry about that. π
Anyway, while I hate to love money and love to hate money at times, I know that we are fortunate to have such a very first-world problem to debate on the talk of it!
~T π₯πβοΈ
