Quotes - Money, Status, Freedom
May. 9th, 2006 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
From "Money Changes Everything" in the New York Times:
-o-
For "power" I would substitute "freedom". People for whom a car breakdown or layoff would be disastrous are scared. Having an emergency fund* to handle repairs or give you a few months' living expenses provides a breathing space. Beyond that, having money and knowing others who have money is like travel - it can broaden the parochial mindset you didn't know you had. (So can creativity, curiosity, and a can-do, experimental attitude.)
*Not that an emergency fund requires a trust fund! It does require not spending everything you have...which is part of why some trust-funders don't have an emergency fund.
[A former lawyer working on] her M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia [found] her diamond engagement ring attracted particular attention from her new group of friends. "When I was working," she said, "I never thought about the ring, it seemed unremarkable."I see this with my jewelry. "Wow, you have lots of different colored jewelry", can be delivered in very accusing tones. My usual response is "Yes, a friend of mine is a jeweler who specializes in colored stones." People tend to unbend then. Perhaps they assume I don't pay for it, or don't pay retail, or they assume I'm helping a friend.
But at school, she said, "People said things like, 'That's a really big diamond,' and not necessarily in a complimentary way." So she began taking off the ring before class.
"We are allegedly a classless society, and that's obviously completely untrue, but people don't want to acknowledge that those differences exist," said Jamie Johnson, a 26-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.
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"The real issue is not money itself, but the power money gives you," said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, who studies issues of wealth and class. "Money makes explicit the inequalities in a relationship, so we work hard to minimize it as a form of tact."Tact again....
For "power" I would substitute "freedom". People for whom a car breakdown or layoff would be disastrous are scared. Having an emergency fund* to handle repairs or give you a few months' living expenses provides a breathing space. Beyond that, having money and knowing others who have money is like travel - it can broaden the parochial mindset you didn't know you had. (So can creativity, curiosity, and a can-do, experimental attitude.)
*Not that an emergency fund requires a trust fund! It does require not spending everything you have...which is part of why some trust-funders don't have an emergency fund.
"I call them 'money pods,' " [said Suze Orman]. "Look at a group of female friends walking down the street. They're often all dressed identically: the same shoes, the same belts, the same handbag."I don't think of it as "keeping up with the Jones", because we're not - at least, not always in the typically spiteful, "I'm-as-good-as-you-are" way. It's ok, I'll wait while you're in Lush. Hm, the stuff smells good, maybe I should try some. I can get this for $2 or $5 or $10 or $20. And after a while, you expect to be able to use Lush all the time. Or get a mocha every day, or eat out three times a week, or what-have-you. You build habits that don't fit your checkbook. Heck, they may not fit your friends' checkbooks either - but who cares if you're having fun and the bills are paid and your car doesn't break down?
But what is not easily apparent, Ms. Orman said, is that one of the women may have saved for months to buy her one expensive handbag, or more likely, put it on her credit card. Her identically dressed friends, meanwhile, may have the salary or the family money to afford a closet full of designer purses.
"That is how we get in trouble," Ms. Orman said. "We think our friends are just like us, and if our friend can afford something, we fool ourselves into thinking we can afford it, too."