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Demystifying the Power of Moolah
By Sheerly Avni, AlterNet
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| Photo credit: Steven Pressman |
So we may be more comfortable with our material expression, but we sure haven't figured out how to live within our means. And part of that is because we still get confused between what we need and what we want.
Can you give me an example of something you think you need, when really you just want it?
Oh my god. A double oven. All I want is a double oven. And to get that double oven I would need a new house! I have this tiny kitchen, I'd have to get rid of a bathroom to make room for the oven. So I know I just want it, but I tell myself I need it. How am I gonna cook this pot roast, and dessert!
But you know, people have managed this crisis for thousands of years.
OK, so to take the bigger issues of how money plays out in a marriage to something smaller, like a date. What would be the ideal way to handle the dinner check?
I think the healthiest thing is if people don't even make it an issue. Look what it's doing, it's carrying all this emotional freight. What is it, for real? It's a dinner check, it's not anything else. There is a whole industry that has built itself around the idea the fact that we are all too happy to let gifts do the talking when it comes to love. Or sex. Or lust. The ideal thing for a dating situation is to see that dinner is dinner and it costs something, but that's it. There's nothing else to say.
You wrote this book for women. If you were to write a version of Money: A Memoir for men, what would you have to say?
You are more than your wallet. Start valuing yourself by contributions that have nothing to do with what you earn.
You know if I were a man, I'd have an answer for that: "Easy for you to say -- every woman I meet wants to know how much I make."
Sure, and you'd be right, but this is where social change comes in, with the awareness that there is a social prism. Gloria Steinem said, "No social change without men, too." And money is definitely a man's issue as well.
I think men's ambivalence comes from the fact that on the one hand they want to be evaluated by the money they make, because it creates a very clear hierarchical goal which is comfortable and easy to tell where you stand in the pecking order. And also they are very aware of being short-changed because they don't get honored for other things, things that they don't get compensated for. You need a lot of inner strength to make a lot less than your wife. You've got to think well of yourself.
So men are split in two different directions as well, but the conflict plays out differently?
The point is that we all need money to survive. We all want money to be comfortable and secure. And we all desire money because it creates social mobility, power. I would like to see that desire go gender-blind.
How relevant do you feel arguments like this are to women who are not members of the middle class? In lower-income, inner-city communities, for example, where the woman is usually the primary breadwinner?
Well here's the thing, when you're writing about money, there is not one truth, except that we all need it. But you're right, and that almost stopped me from writing the book. I called my agent and I said, "You know, I can't do this. I'm giving the advance money back, I'm writing this middle-class book "
And my agent said, "AND? These people don't need to wrestle with these issues?" He was right. The middle class are the people going into debt. They're not planning for their old age, they're raising children on credit. Basically, just because you're middle class doesn't mean you're not fucked up.
And if you're working class, you don't have a lot of these problems, you have other problems, which trump them. There's a food chain of issues. If you're working for survival, you're not going to be dealing with guilt. You're going to be dealing with sustenance. So there is a hierarchy to these demands. And maybe it was self-justification, but finally I realized that my feeling so guilty about writing a book about self and women, was just another form of guilt about money.
Sure -- the first thing you were going to do was give the publisher his money back.
There you go, and what was it? Guilt over being a member of the class of disposable income.
You write a good deal about how questions of what you were entitled to played out in your own divorce. And of course this goes directly to the way we do or don't value child-rearing and taking care of a home as work. Not on the level of feelings or self-respect, but literally on the legal level, when you start talking about divorce settlements.
It really varies state by state. We live in a country that has a very uneven playing field regarding divorce. If I had gotten divorced in California, I'd be a very wealthy woman. California, and the other equal property states come closest to recognizing that you don't need a pay stub to work, that the assets which accumulate in a marriage are the product of everyone in that marriage.
I know many wealthy women -- there's one woman I interview in my book -- who got divorced a couple of times, who will be paying huge amounts of alimony to her ex-husbands. It cuts both ways: Very fair, gender-blind makes sense. Not always fairly meted out, but in principle it makes sense.
But then you go to a place like Connecticut, or New York, or other states which are not equal property states, and you have to prove that what you do is work. Because we're still on the gold standard. We only accord the appellation "work" to something we pay taxes on.
But look, I work as hard at home as I do in the office. I'm not paid for it, but in a divorce I'd better look at what I'm doing as work, and not be ashamed of saying so and asking for it.
Where does that shame come from?
Well, as I said, it's this very schizophrenic feeling about money, where they feel ashamed to ask for it, where they feel that it's a handout in some way -- because someone else has the pay stub. But the fact of the matter is that frequently the person wouldn't have that pay stub without your hard work. And until you can look at that without guilt or embarrassment, you're not gonna be paid for what you do.
Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based writer.