Money – We Need To Talk About It
Money – We Need To Talk About It
December 4, 2019 By Machinist
Let’s talk about money.
There are few things that people avoid talking about more than money, yet we probably spend most of our time in pursuit of money. We could all benefit from a better understanding of it, but sadly, we are mostly left to find our own way with money. We rarely even have the chance to learn from other’s experience, so we are bound to repeat the same mistakes.
I get it; there are some good reasons not to talk about money. We think that letting people know how much money we have or how much we earn will complicate our relationships and interactions.
Strangely, even though we don’t want people to know our financial situation, most people spend a lot of time and effort trying to appear as though they have more money than they actually do.
I’m not sure how this deception makes interactions any more comfortable. Maybe people inflate their perceived financial status in an effort to avoid having to interact with people of their own income level.
Silence On Money Causes Problems
Because people are so unfamiliar with money topics, just living normal lives inevitably leads them into financial conflict which they are unprepared to resolve. The inability to identify and avoid financial snares and navigate out of mistakes causes crisis situations for many individuals and for society in general. For example:
The Student Loan Crisis
Most kids receive almost no instruction about money at school or home. They enter college with a poor understanding of its costs. They are ignorant of the burden a student loan will be – possibly delaying the major milestones of adult life for decades.
Most kids choose their college based on factors of prestige or fun but may not consider which institution will provide the best value for their money or the best employment opportunities upon graduation.
Most entering freshman have not chosen a major, so they spend valuable time and money “exploring their options” before buckling down. They often realize that their initial school choice was a poor one, so they decide to transfer. All of this leads to more years spent in college and greater expenses.
In addition, many kids aren’t even aware of options other than college. For all of these reasons and more our educational system is failing students and the student loan situation has reached crisis level.
Money and Divorce
Because most people participate so rarely in discussions about money during their youth, they don’t develop the skills to talk about money – let alone use it effectively. It should come as no surprise then, that when people join their finances with a partner, they struggle to communicate about money differences. Is it any wonder that money is a leading cause of divorce?
The Retirement Crisis
It used to be that people were forced by reality to plan for how they would support themselves in old age or in case of disability. They may have built a farm or business, acquired rental property, or just had plenty of kids. These long-term planning skills were lost after a generation or two where everyone had an employer-provided pension and government-provided social safety net. Now that employer-provided pensions have mostly disappeared, we have a crisis of under-prepared retirees and unsustainable social security system.
We Should All Make Money A More Open Topic
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