Talking Money

This was presented to my students after they read and wrote about The Great Gatsby:

Many of you have a problem with “money.” You don't trust it; don't want to be too involved with it. You find it . . . vulgar. At the very least, you don't want to be defined by how much you have or how you use it.

Now, let’s stipulate that while some of us in this room may have considerably more family money than others, it is nonetheless the case that by comparison with most of the rest of the world, now and certainly throughout history, we are all filthy rich. So your high rise may be 20 floors taller than mine, but both of them tower over the shanty towns of the rest of the world.

And yet . . . we distrust money. I believe that the distrust of money is a luxury only the rich can afford because we can’t really imagine how we will ever go hungry or cold and by that I mean hungry and with no knowledge of when or from where the next meal or meals will come come. We take money for granted because we can. Remember, in this context, we’re all rich. Remember also, someone has ponied up $34K to have you go to this school when there are free schools all over the city. That $34K is more than most people will see in a lifetime. This is not meant to make you feel guilty . . . just responsible for knowing what’s up.

Money is not the problem. The problem is the stupid ideas we all too often have about money. The two – money and stupid ideas about money – are separable.

Some of you express a distaste for what is expected of you: go to college, get a job, make bank, raise a family, and the young ‘uns start it all over again.

Here’s another way to look at that process: Develop your intellectual talents because your brain likes a challenge otherwise you never would have learned to speak; apply your intellectual talents to an attractive occupation and trade those talents for the talents of others. I teach. I trade teaching for, say, dentistry.

Money is just a tool that allows us to trade skills efficiently. With money, I don’t have to find a parent of one my students to do the dentistry in exchange for my teaching. That would be an inefficient use of my time. I couldn’t teach as much and the dentist, in search of teachers, couldn’t . . . dent as much.

Developing your talents because it brings you joy is fine. Developing your talents so that you can apply them to the most profitable occupation available, is deeply dangerous. You run the risk of a lifetime, your only lifetime, consumed by boredom and little fulfillment.

I can’t imagine being a dentist. I’d maybe make more money, but I’d be bored to the point of depression after 10 years or less. I hope my dentist loves dentistry. If she’s doing it just for the money, I hope she learns to love dentistry. If she doesn’t love it or learn to love it, I pity her.

Now, also, don’t be too unrealistic about money. Some people say, “Do what you want and the money will follow?” That’s ridiculous. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

More accurately: “Do what you want and the money won’t matter as much . . . unless you’re also responsible for the lives of others . . . like your children . . . in which case you can either sacrifice the ‘what you want’ self-indulgence and maybe attend to your kids or you can work hard to convince your kids that money doesn’t matter.” So . . . let’s get real about money. And let’s not denigrate the man and woman who didn’t have the opportunity to develop their intellectual talents and must now work some soul-deadening jobs to give kids a chance to develop their talents and live a fulfilling life.

So give money a break. It’s the messenger. Not the message.

The Fulfillment Curve from treehugger.com.