How Financial Shame Makes Financial Problems Worse. The financial woes of Neal Gabler, as he tells them in the May issue of The Atlantic, underscore one simple fact that should never be overlooked: Although money mistakes often arise from innumeracy or simple planning errors, they at least as frequently result from more intimate reasons of psychology and our personal histories. How we manage our money is a surprisingly freighted matter, touching our relationships with those closest to us. Issues of control, trust, closeness, and boundaries lead us astray and hinder transparent planning. Money troubles also humiliate in a way few other things do.
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I see this among my students, who share Facebook passwords and old- boyfriend secrets with their partners, yet remain close to the vest regarding their Visa bills. I see that among my colleagues, who are embarrassed to frankly address their underwater mortgages or to get help with their underfunded or poorly invested 4.
Akerlof and Shiller cite the example of financial guru Suze Orman. As one fan told them, . Yet it is often helpful to millions of people. Because it speaks to the reality of how many of us lead our financial lives. When she reminds people to stay out of debt and live below their means, she warns against the head trips and relationship traps that lead many into life- altering financial trouble.
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She might have saved Gabler much heartache with some timely advice. Gabler calls himself financially impotent. The reader can sense what he means.
An outwardly successful person, he faced a series of worsening family financial troubles. His increasing difficulties keeping up appearances led him into even deeper financial trouble. To take the most obvious example, Gabler. She left the paid workforce to raise her children. By the time she was ready to return, her old career was no longer an option. I kept her in the dark. Many couples experience similar difficulties.
There is even a Financial Therapy Association at the intersection of financial planning, mental health, and relationship therapy services. Much of what Gabler experienced was worsened by the psychic turbulence of downward mobility. Downward mobility is especially hard. My own family experienced a financial crisis when my mother- in- law died suddenly and her son, who lives with an intellectual disability, needed to move in with us. My wife needed to leave the workforce to care for him. That foreclosed the possibility that we would become the dual- high- salary affluent couple we expected we would someday be. We experienced real challenges and some heartbreak.
Yet we never needed to sell our home or remove our children from school. We never came down in the world in ways visible to others. That would have been yet harder. For Gabler, the shame of that downward crash seems to have pushed him away from the counsel of others.
Had he not tried to hide his desperation, he might have slowed his descent. He might have discussed the challenge more frankly with his wife. He might have sought help, made a reasonable plan. Over time these became worse than they needed to be. When a person struggles through his financial turmoil alone, isolation begets despair, and mistakes too. Honest financial communication is especially necessary when one considers another reality reflected in Gabler. Serious financial problems can.
You can stop going to Starbucks or taking nice vacations if you have a professional setback or a family member falls ill. These big things (not to mention your children. Addressing the big things requires genuine life changes, with their accompanying tradeoffs, admissions, and disappointments. They bring important implications for everyone involved, and, as a result, require that everyone. But, like many Americans, I wanted my children to keep up with the Joneses. After all, he enjoys myriad blessings. He is a prominent writer who has won prestigious prizes.
He has extensive TV credits, is the author of several respected books. The safety net provided by his parents.
He received help in the way of a loan modification. And perhaps his best luck of all: He is apparently healthy.
But even with all those blessings, he still made serious mistakes, which were compounded by bad luck. Indeed, I suspect that the gap between his social and financial status made such mistakes more likely. He over- invested in real estate, and then got stuck with two mortgages in the insanity of the New York co- op economy. He took a financial hit over a missed book deadline. So now he counts his pennies. He eats out once every few months.
He drives a 1. 99. Toyota. These lifestyle changes are unavoidable. They are nowhere near enough. Gabler quotes reams of national economic statistics in an effort to explain his situation, noting that most Americans possess meager assets beyond the family home. Indeed the Federal Reserve.
Like the displaced steel worker, he had the bad luck to work in an industry that has contracted if not collapsed. The glossy media economy no longer generously supports non- superstar, respected senior figures such as himself. So Gabler is making far less money than he would reasonably have predicted from the vantage point of 3. Add a little age discrimination (widespread in both serious journalism and entertainment) against both Gablers in their respective realms, and you have a family financial disaster.
Had Craigslist, Huffington Post, and the rest arrived 2. I bet Gabler would have been fine, despite his gambles and blunders. By his own admission, Gabler is an atypical, rather unsympathetic protagonist in any story of American economic woe. I fear his essay will receive a cruel reception. Millions of people get sick or are otherwise unlucky.
They fall prey to larger economic forces. For any or all of these reasons, millions of us will approach our senior years as the Gablers are now doing. His choices may have been idiosyncratic and even foolish, but there is a common tale underneath it all. His errors and misfortunes underscore the necessity, the difficulty, and ultimately the fragility of prudent financial planning as a foundation of stable middle- class life. Thank goodness for Social Security.
Many of us, even famous writers, could never survive without it.