You can't get help if you are hiding.
If you watch old episodes of I Love Lucy, you'll see Lucy and Ricky sleeping in separate beds. Thanks to the sexual revolution in the 1960s, we now share nearly everything about our sex lives. It's time to have a financial revolution and start sharing our financial lives as well.
Somehow money ended up being the last taboo topic in America. But does this really serve us?
By keeping our paycheck secret from our coworkers, we allow managers to pay us differently from our peers without having to explain the reasons. Does Jack make more than Sue because he's taken on additional responsibility, been in the job longer, and gotten additional career-related credentials on his own time? Or is it because the boss thinks he needs more, because the boss is stuck in old thinking about who the breadwinner in the household probably is? When everything is hidden, it allows bad practices to continue without being challenged.
Imagine if we knew what our co-workers made, and even more juicy, how that compares to what the CEO made. In fact, the Dodd-Frank reforms required companies to start reporting the ratio between the pay of their median employee and the CEO. Perhaps this will be the start of a trend toward greater disclosure and sharing, thereby breaking the last taboo.
Let's start turning to our friends and family for financial advice the way we turn to them for career and relationship advice. We'd be able to kick around ideas, brainstorm solutions, and share what we've learned. Instead, many of us hide our finances, pretending everything is fine when in fact we are surviving, not thriving.
Some of you do share what's going on in your financial life, either publicly or with the people in your life you trust most. Many bloggers post statistics of what their earnings were for the month, and many personal finance folks share the value of their investment portfolio or their net worth. These fearless folks are putting it all out there. I think one of the bravest is Gwen from Fiery Millennials, who keeps her readers up to date on her relationships, career, spending, and net worth with her status reports.
Last Saturday night we had friends over that I've met through the Financial Independence community. The talk ranged across a variety of topics – movies, music, and money among them. Not of us had all the answers, and each of us had different areas of expertise. But it was fun to weave finances into the conversation the way we should – as just another area of life we are figuring out – rather than ignoring it completely as if we never think about it.
What would change in your life if you started talking more about money?
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