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I’ve recently stumbled upon this deeply entertaining and well-written Substack about everyday life and the chaos of parenting. It’s hilarious and brutally honest. What turned me from an interested reader to an obsessed one is how casually and honestly the author talks about money. I also read this great post on The Cut which talks about how don’t need “all that” to have kids. I have been thinking about my own beliefs about money and how they were shaped.
I belong to the privileged-upper-middle-class-university-educated-white-collar circle where no one talks about money. We only signal the presence of it.
We don’t talk about the reality of money. We only signal the presence of it.
We choose fancy restaurants and cafes when meeting our friends, we carry name-brand accessories, and we post pictures of our fancy vacations. Even women who tell their girlfriends about the most intimate details of their life will not know how much money that best girlfriend makes.
As a society we have deeply held beliefs around wealth, money and “success”. We expect property values to appreciate infinitely, accumulate wealth and leave a nest egg for our children. Home ownership is considered to be a key milestone in life like learning to learning to walk is for babies.
Our relationship with money is deeply personal but how we think of wealth is very much impersonal and shaped wholly by the wider world around us.
When I examined my own beliefs about money and wealth, I realized that I have a strange relationship with money. I’m obsessed with having money. Not making money, not spending, saving or growing but just the situation of having it.
Growing up, my family had an interesting relationship with money. We had little of it until I was about ten years old (just one decent salary had to pay off a home loan and feed 4 mouths). We were not poor by Indian standards but we certainly didn’t have any money left for extras. We rarely went on vacations or bought stuff that we didn’t absolutely need. My sister and I lobbied our parents for a FULL YEAR before we acquired the coveted board game of Scotland Yard which was nearly 300 Indian Rupees (around $7 in today’s parlance) in 1996.
However, we did experience the freedom and joy of “having” money. We got monthly pocket money that we were free to spend as we wished. No questions asked, but no extras either. We usually saved some of it for birthdays and anniversaries. And spent it on eating samosas and gobhi manchurian. I spent 10 Rupees on a piece of chocolate every month that I ate alone. This was my treat to myself and I never ever shared. Not having too much money didn’t seem to make for an unfulfilling childhood.
The freedom of having money was more significant and joyful than the amount of money I had.
From the time I was 12 years old, we seemed to be comfortable. Money (or lack thereof) wasn’t a problem anymore. My father stopped “borrowing” from us at the end of the month to buy milk when he’d run out of cash. We had at least 5 new sets of clothes and nicer dinners outside a bit more frequently. I simply asked for a raise in pocket money which was given (instead of a year long petition process.) And when the time came, my father told my sister that if she didn’t do well in her Master’s entrance exams he could still pay the full fee (he didn’t need to, she did very well!).
This was the final sign - I was about 16 then - that there was enough. We didn’t really talk about money too much after and we always had enough and I was even given the impression that I could ask for more if needed. But nothing in the way we lived changed. My mother never bought jewellery and my parents never bought a car. My dad still rides a scooter. And we continued to not take many vacations.
I didn’t think about money until I started drawing my own salary in NYC. But the habits I cultivated during our years of not having enough seem to have stuck with me. Frugality seems to be a generational thing in my case.
- I still obsessively check my accounts every week and know how much total assets I have.
- I shop only three to four times a year. My tastes have gotten a bit more expensive over time but I still don’t buy what I want when I want. Every purchase is made after months of thinking.
This freedom I associate with having some money versus doing anything else with it - growing it, making it work for me - has been the guiding principle of how I dealt with money my entire adult life. Both Gautam and I made a decision very early in life never to take on debt and never to invest in a house. We are renters for life. A big mortgage is downright scary to us. The stability of having money is more important to us than the stability of having a home we won’t completely own for the next 20 years. And we moved around 3 continents in a span of 5 years, so clearly we aren’t “settling down” anytime soon.
The pandemic significantly changed my relationship with my career and financial “success”. We both realised that we could live small - find happiness in being outdoors, eating in, spending time with our kid & each other. I also understood in the two years that followed that we live in a safer, gentler, kinder yet more uncertain world than our parents’. We no longer expect to stay in the same companies and get promoted every other year for decades until we retire. If our careers aren’t going to be linear, why should our wealth or cash flow be? Instead of operating on the assumption and optimising for linear growth in money, I’ve realized that I might be better off taking a few more risks, understanding what being happy and successful means to me individually and chasing my own interests and pursuing excellence in things I enjoy doing.
Changing our assumptions about money and wealth has also radically changed the way we parent. Our focus isn’t on giving our child everything we never had. We are spending our efforts in letting her understand that there’s a path and place for everyone in this world as long as we’re willing to put the time and effort to find it.
I find myself being more honest and open about having/not having money rather than attempting to signal success all the time. It’s liberating to be open about how much rent you’re paying, how you can’t afford the fancy vacation this year.
When I have less and make less money, I will just spend less of it.
And I’ll talk about it.
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