People generally don’t like to talk about finances. It makes them uncomfortable about the same as the word moist makes me uncomfortable. Even with close friends and family, people will talk about their exercise habits and intimate bedroom details before ever bringing up the health of their finances. On one hand, I get it. Conscious or not, we each have an association of money and what it represents for our own worth and position within society. It is our means for doing and getting what we want because most things in life are not free. Even if we don’t care about making a lot of money, conversations about finances could force us to encounter other people’s views of money and face things in ourselves we didn’t even know existed. I recently felt this when I left my corporate job to pursue a talk show career. I found myself trying to internally justify leaving a well paying job to pursue something where I haven’t made a dollar since the money alone didn’t prove I made the right decision.
On the other hand, I think it’s really weird that we will talk about just about every other aspect of our lives except this, and our resolve to not talk about it confirms an unhealthy relationship that needs to be further explored. Bold statement? Maybe. But I think we need to go there, especially as a generation with the extremely high debt levels that are going to take people decades to pay off. I don’t think it’s quite as uncomfortable as it sounds, no more uncomfortable than I can imagine having to explain where babies come from to your kids is. I envision it like this: being open and honest about what you believe about finances and discussing it with close friends or family. That’s it. No intimate details about what you made this week or what you got in your bonus. Just general details about your financial health, your beliefs about your finances… and then, discuss. I think like other areas in our lives where our friends help provide guidance and insight to improve our standard of living, we could be of service to each other here.
I had a conversation with a millennial Uber driver which started my desire for a financial transparency movement (hashtag away! #FTM). He told me that he did not like American Express because it made him pay off his balance in full every month. He revealed that while he knows he pays some interest (but was not aware how much), he would rather a card that only requires him to pay part of his balance. He could pay his credit card in full but why would he if he doesn’t have to. I understand that not paying off his card could be to use the money elsewhere and maybe the interest on the card is cheaper than what he would get on a loan…There are definitely financially responsible reasons to not pay off a credit card, but after talking for a few minutes, he expressed he hadn’t really understood how much money he was wasting by not paying it off until our conversation. I know he’s not alone. Limited conversations with some friends who haven’t worked at a credit card company have taught me they too, don’t understand all the complexities of credit cards. So let’s just talk about it. We all bring different knowledge and habits and could definitely help each other save a dollar or two… as a generation who enjoys sharing cars and apartments, let’s also share our financial knowledge.
Leslie Delery 