Talking about money is terribly rude, no matter if you’re rich or poor. It only makes people uncomfortable.
If you’re rich, no one wants to hear you boast.
If you’re poor, no one wants to hear you bitch and moan.
I don’t even like people to ask me how much something cost me; it’s terribly unclassy to make oblique queries as to someone else’s income.
Heck, even my family doesn’t know how much I earn. We just don’t talk about it. None of my friends – except those who work in my field and hence have a good idea what everyone is earning – know what I’m taking home. Equally, I don’t know what they earn and have no desire to find out.
Like fish navigating water, they navigate issues of class and money instinctively, without thinking about it, so you’re right, they don’t “worry” about it any more than a fish worries about water. That doesn’t mean that concerns of income and class don’t affect them.
First of all, it’s in poor taste to talk about how much money you have or make. It makes people uncomfortable. If a person has more money, there’s jealous. Less money, there’s guilt. People make assumptions based on money.
I agree, it’s in poor taste. Very convenient for those with money, and also convenient for those without. But even though people don’t talk about money, they generally have ways of knowing about it…
Second, people with money don’t want other people mooching off them. Coming around asking for money, expecting them to pick up the tab, etc.
I’m not sure that’s a problem, never having been a person with money. I don’t recall asking the many wealthy people I’ve known for money. Maybe I’d have more of it if I had.
Oh, god, I said I didn’t have much money. I’m SOOOO embarrassed. I could just DIE!
Who is “they”? There are plenty of Nuevo’s with the social grace of a drunken gorilla who love to boast about how much money they’ve made.
There are also plenty of people who know (instinctively or not) that social class and money can be an issue and act accordingly.
There’s knowing that someone has money and then there’s having it thrown in your face. For example, I think it is fairly rude in mixed company to discuss subjects like which Porsche to purchase or where to get a shore house or other subject matter where someone of lower income can’t meaningfully contribute to the conversation.
Maybe they don’t want freak-shows treating them as if they were part of the “capital oppressor ruling class”. There are a lot of people who resent those who they perceive as having a higher station in life.
Awhile ago at dinner at my in-laws I was ranting about Ken Lay’s wife talking about how they were broke and didn’t know eaxtly what they were going to do. My wife’s aunt told me I should just be quiet because I was rich too, compared to the most of the rest of the world. I was quite literally without words. I have a good job and am the sole support of my family, we live in a good house in a good neighborhood, but if I lost my job like Mr Lay did, I wouldn’t be able to sell one or two of my houses to ease the pain.
A good criteria for “Are you rich?” is whether or not the answer to that question is “yes”.
Since it’s Christmastime, I’ll throw out the old canard that compared to the bulk of the world, every single person in this thread is rich.
Money is unfortunately a numerical measure of stature, so any personal wealth numbers are an immediate identification of status, which isn’t strategic socially, I guess. Kind of like penis size on guys. What if we took the posts in this thread and substututed “penis size” for “how much money”? Laughably similar…
All I said is that she looks as white as her friend Paris, regardless of her genetic makeup. If she was mixed (light-skinned black dad and white mom) I would still expect her to look mixed. That is all.
Although I freely admit that what I know about race and genetics couldn’t even fill a paragraph.
OK there is obviously some very weird problem going on right now where my posts are going into multiple threads. My message posted immediately above was meant for a different thread, and my message above that somehow wound up on both this thread and another one.
I feel for you. I posted something to the “Is Wally Dead?” thread and it popped up in the “Old Family Photos” thread (and was not deleted, despite my pleas to the Mods . . .) Damn hamsters.
This is actually the one exception I’d make for the “don’t talk about income” social rule: if a contractor is getting hired, or a coworker is looking to get promoted into a similiar position as mine, or is asking for a raise, I would talk openly about salary.
Otherwise it’s hard to know how much you can reasonably ask for (and hold out for…) and you don’t have a rejoinder when the HR rep doing the salary negotiation says “We can’t pay you more then your peers” (SNORT!).
I am the highest paid member of my social circle, not by much but there it is. It’s not a big deal, per se, but that whole “gee, must be nice” issue gets really old.
So many people seem to feel their debt is some moral badge of honor, we’re all supposed to sympathize with how badly they have it, regardless of the cause. It makes me uncomfortable talking about money with most of my family and friends because I’m more responsible/financially chicken-shit than they are, and inevitably there’s a point where this unspoken judgement thing comes in.
I am a student, so I’m not pretty poor at the moment. However I do have more money then all my friends even though I don’t work. (My parents gave me a lot of money, as did my grandparents.)
My parents arn’t particually well off, but got a lot of money in my Grandads will 2 years ago. This had led to us moving into a large house a few weeks ago. And led to the following conversation.
Friend - “Still hate living there?”
Me - “Yeah, I miss you guys. But the jacuzzi helps make up for it.”
Friend - “Jacuzzi? Are you serious?!”
Me Hugh grin “Yep!”
So basically my friends think I’m loaded, but I’m not. The fact that we used to have a cleaner doesn’t help when I’m trying to persuade them I’m not rich.
Yeah, it does. My boss is an entrepreneur who worked hard for years to build a business, sacrificing most nights and weekends in the process. He sold part of his business for an amount that would allow him and his wife to never work again if they so chose. The stories he tells about how “friends” and family perceptions about him changed immediately thereafter are chilling. Nevermind that he and his wife didn’t elect to retire and poured most of the money into a new business. There is a significant number of people who think that they are owed something in this life and are willing to sacrifice friendships and family ties to get it. My boss didn’t understand that and got burned multiple times. No wonder the first thing most lottery winners do is get an unlisted phone number.
I came into some money a few years ago after the dot-com I was working for got bought out. Even though I have always made a modest income, my friends treated me differently after finding this information out, to the point where I was embarassed to talk about it anymore… things like “Sooo, you gonna buy a new car”, “Gonna pay off those debts” (well-aware I have no debts), and other demeaning comments. I keep a tight lip when it comes to speaking about money with anyone. My good friend makes substantially more than I do and makes sure we all know it. When I did confide in her how much I made (out of sheer trust) her only comment was “YOU NEED A BETTER JOB!”…
Ugh… money can be a very socially clumsy and uncomfortable thing to talk about, whether you have it or not.
We do all remember the main exeption about income not being talked about, right? The worst offenders have to be younger men running their mouths when talking to younger women… although I’m pretty sure the trend continues with men as they get older - how else could a balding 45 year-old get a hot 22 year-old to date him?
It’s difficult to find a guy under 35 who’ll not bring up his income (grossly inflated of course) when pursuing a potential partner. Unfortunately I’ve seen waaaaay too many women that actually believe them though.
I’ve even had a woman my own age who’s interested in me proudly state that although she’s got a crumby job now (something she can’t hide), she’s used to making 6 times that - in the order of $100K/yr… but after a few months she’d let it slip that she has trouble with just about every utility and credit company there is in two provinces, has never lived on her own because she needs roomates to afford rent, and wanted to borrow $100 to pay the phone bill before it got cut off the next week.
I’m not sure if it’s rude or not to bring up income under these circumstances, but it’s so overwhelmingly common that I doubt it.
And my junior high school students laugh at me when I tell them that I’m rich. “Yeah, right, Ms. Queen, we all know that school teachers get paid crap!”
But I make $36,000, have no credit card debt, just a car payment and student loans, and live in a modest apartment, so I manage to tuck a fair amount away in savings and still buy a DVD and a bottle of wine for the weekend. I’m even making a dent in those student loans. Feels like wealth to me.
So maybe wealth is relative. I know there are people I’d seem poor compared with, but there are an awful lot who would see me as rich, too.
