Yesterday I shared a guest post from Leo of Zen Habits. His guide to minimalist money was a sort of overview of good financial skills, useful information for those in the first stage of personal finance. But some long-time GRS readers couldn't relate to Leo's post.
Today's post goes in the opposite direction. It's a meditation for those in the third stage of personal finance (or beyond), and it's probably going to seem foreign to those who are still struggling to get debt under control.
The evolution of spending
Before I developed smart money skills, I spent without thinking. I accumulated debt because I had no self-control. I bought what I wanted, even when I couldn't afford it.
To repay my debt and build wealth, I learned to be frugal. I was never able to completely discard my tendency to spend, but I curbed it sharply. In fact, I became so frugal that I would debate whether to use two spoonfuls of hot chocolate mix or three when making a cup of cocoa. (And this was just a year ago!)
I'm still frugal. In my day-to-day life, I make choices to save money in every way I know how. I clip coupons, buy store brands, borrow from friends, make do with what I have. I am a proponent of thrift.
At the same time, however, I've reached a point where it's possible to save for some very nice things. I saved for my used Mini Cooper. Kris and I are saving for a trip to France next year. And this weekend we'll receive a shipment of some nice furniture we've saved for.
Because I've made smart choices in other parts of my life, I'm able to spend well on the things that really matter to me.
The guilt of wealth
There's no question that I'm happy about my current financial situation. I'm doing well, making smart choices, and enjoying a balance between tomorrow and today. But not everything is perfect. I've found that I feel guilty about some of the things I can now afford to purchase. And I'm not the only one.
I had lunch with a close friend yesterday. Though he was raised dirt poor (way below poverty level), he's worked hard to obtain an education, to build a career, and he now owns a couple of businesses. It was never his aim, but now he finds he's wealthy. He's proud of his accomplishments — but he also feels guilty.
“I look at my extended family, and they're still poor,” my friend told me. “They struggle. And yet I have a nice house a nice car and everything I could possibly want.” A few years ago, my friend purchased an expensive car as a reward to himself for his hard work. He could afford it, but somehow over the past few years, he hasn't enjoyed it as much as he thought he would. He feels embarrassed to drive it. He worries that his kids will grow up to take for granted those things he views as blessings.
This morning, I walked across the street to pick ripe Concord grapes at my neighbor's house. He came out to help. We chatted as we plucked the juicy bunches from the vine. My neighbor has been retired for fifteen years, and through patience and smart investing has built an enormous nest egg.
When my neighbor retired, one of the first things he did was buy a boat. He spends his summers cruising from Seattle, Washington to Juneau, Alaska and back. (He's invited me to spend ten days on his boat with him next year — I can't wait!) My neighbor told me about the first summer he had his boat. One day he anchored in a little cove. Before long, several other boats had anchored in the same spot. He was embarrassed to see that his was by far the biggest boat. “I was worried about what they thought of me,” he said.
A strange new world
Both my friend and my neighbor are generous. They contribute time and money to their friends, family, and community. They've built wealth through hard work, and can afford the indulgences they allow themselves. Yet they both feel some degree of guilt over the things they have.
Believe it or not, I've begun to experience some of the same feelings. I know I've worked hard to get where I am today, but I've also been incredibly fortunate. I have a great job. I'm doing something I love, which also happens to help other people. I work from home, so can set my own hours. (I spent all yesterday hanging out with friends, but here it is Saturday morning and I'm working.) I've eliminated my debt and am building wealth. As a result, I can allow myself some of the nice things I've always wanted.
So why do I feel guilty? I never felt guilty about the things I had when I was in debt. I felt I deserved them. I don't feel that anymore. Now that my new furniture is on its way, I don't feel happy to have it, or proud that Kris and found ways to save so much money on it. I feel ashamed that I'm able to afford this while my little brother and his family are struggling to stave off bankruptcy.
Yes, I know that his situation is largely a result of his choices, as mine is a result of my choices. But I know there are plenty of people in this world who have worked as hard as I have, but who haven't had the breaks.
Does anyone else experience this? How you handle it? I've decided that the best thing I can do is to continue my frugal lifestyle, allowing myself occasional indulgences as I can afford them. At the same, I'll continue to help as many people as possible improve their financial situation. Maybe if I can help others achieve wealth, I won't feel guilty about my own.
Author: J.D. Roth
In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals.
JD, I can completely relate. I was fortunate to have a great job for many years, and, by living frugally, my husband and I paid off most of our debt (except our mortgage) and saved up a comfortable “emergency fund.” We were able to go on vacations, and we were able to purchase what we needed without building up credit card debt. We felt the same guilt about our good fortune as you do – with the result that we donated money and time to a host of philanthropies and our church – and still felt guilty. Now, I have lost my job to downsizing, and our charitable contributions have shrunk considerably (but not stopped) – and I STILL feel guilty.
Maybe this is a good thing. Perhaps guilt is a built in mechanism to make sure we don’t get sucked into feeling proud and superior for accomplishing our financial goals. Maybe it helps us understand the big picture and the challenges that others face – so that we can better appreciate and feel grateful for our own circumstances. Easier to live with those guilt feelings, when you think of it this way. They serve us as a reminder of what could be – and a motivator to take action.
I wonder if there’s more than guilt going on — maybe there’s also a continuing fear, especially when we look around and see that there are so many people who aren’t in as good a place, and there are disasters etc that aren’t in one’s control.
But I do think that establishing a committment to generosity does go a long way toward assuaging the guilt aspect. My husband has less guilt about spending money on himself than I do, and I think that one reason is that he is extremely generous; he has established several scholarships that are awarded on the basis of need, not “merit” and he donates regularly to a number of organizations he has decided to support (he’s also a regular blood donor). He makes a number of donations right away every January — and having done that, he seems able to not feel guilty about spending on himself and on us later in the year.
On the other hand, it may be that these feelings are a part of what it means to adopt simplicity — you just won’t get the same thrill from consumption anymore…
I think a lot of people have the same feelings in this economy, especially when it comes to employment. Many of our friends and family are unemployed, and those of us who are still working can’t help but feel a bit guilty.
After all, we’re still making ends meet while those we know are struggling and losing everything around them.
How do we deal with it? Like you said, everything in life is about choices. I’m not saying that people who are losing their jobs have themselves to blame. At the same time, there are things everyone can do to become more indispensable at work, and more diversified in income.
If we plant the seeds, day after day, we are more likely, not less likely, to succeed.
As for your guilt on being able to finally get the things important to you? I would focus on your reasons for spending.
After all, you’re not blowing money on senseless things – these are items that are truly important to you, and stuff that you’ve worked long and hard to save up for. Focus on why those are priorities to you, and believe that your actions are the right thing to do!
I don’t feel any guilt – though I do feel incredibly fortunate – but I do feel like I want to *help* family members and close friends who haven’t been as fortunate. I have to really hold back from offering financial help as I’ve heard that can really complicate relationships.
@jdb (#4)
Yes, this is a great point. The basic rule of offering financial help to family and friends is: give, don’t lend. That is, if you’re going to provide help, give the money without expectation of it ever being repaid. You may draft loan paperwork (and in most cases, that’s a good idea), but mentally treat the assistance as a gift. And if you can actually make it a gift (and the situation warrants), then do so.
@elisabeth (#2)
I like the idea of starting need-based scholarships. I’ve mentioned that I want to do more stuff with chairty, but one thing that holds me back is that I want my money to matter.
When I was talking with my friend yesterday, he mentioned that the only reason he was able to get an education is that some anonymous donor provided the money for him to do so. In my case, my college education was fully funded by a combination of need-based and merit-based scholarships. I would love to be able to help some other student make her dreams come true.
One thing I’ve already resolved to do is to quietly provide assistance to my friends’ children on certain things. I don’t want to make things effortless for them, but if Little Johnny wants to attend band camp and his parents can’t afford it, I would love to be able to help him do so. I’m sure that other people do this sort of thing, too. I feel like this is a way I can help people I know in a way that I can see have an impact.
First/Second stage of PF: DENIAL of wealth. People who racked up more in material riches on credit cards and mortgage notes, than most human beings have seen over a lifetime, but still think they’re broke, and are never satisfied. People who complain about how bad they have it, while they’re filling the gas tank of their family automobile, dragging a couple spoiled rugrats home from soccer practice to their aircon McMansion.
Third stage of PF: GUILTY of wealth. People who write checks to Save The Children foundations, boycott stuff made in sweatshops in Bangladesh, and start charity foundations for single mothers. Result: people in Bangladesh are unemployed and starving, single mothers never learn job skills and stay on the public dole until they bite the dust, and Africa forgets how agriculture is done, while local farmers starve to death because they cannot compete with free food shipped in by rich countries.
Fourth stage of PF: ACCEPTANCE of wealth. The best way to help the world is to put people to work, and increase global standard of living. Invest your wealth in the tools to enable all of our brothers and sisters on the planet to become better off. This will return as much money back to you as it helps individuals across the world, as they enter the global middle class of the 21’st century, and realize their own dreams. People who use their wealth to invest in a better future for the world, by starting new industries, driving innovation to increase wealth worldwide, or by solving bigger picture problems. Examples: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett.
There used to be a strong American trend of Upward Mobility, it was presumed that it was everyone’s aspiration to ascend through social classes, the lower class strived to become middle class, the middle class aspired to the upper class. But now America has become stratified with less social mobility than ever, the rich keep getting richer, but the middle and lower classes get poorer. Almost all the wealth is concentrated in about 2% of the population.
Well there is a counter to all this, I’ve heard it described as “Downward Nobility.” It can be nobler to live a life away from consumerism and Keeping Up With The Joneses. You don’t need a bigger car, house, boat, etc. and it is important to find a way to live a balanced life, with modesty. There are societies (I hear the French are big on this) where it is considered gauche to flaunt one’s wealth. Particularly in a time of recession, when the conspicuous consumption of frauds like Bernie Madoff, and the excesses of multimillion dollar bonuses for bankers that were bailed out at taxpayer expense, flaunting your wealth is tantamount to saying you live at other peoples’ expense. People are dying of poverty while the rich live in unbelievable luxury. And they don’t feel any guilt about it, they feel is is their right.
So the rich have spoiled it for everyone. Even if you saved your entire life, and your only luxury is a moderately expensive boat, people feel self-conscious and everyone looks at you like you’re Bernie Madoff. This is just another reason to restructure the economy to redistribute the wealth more equitably.
Sorry if this doesn’t address the direct issue of feeling guilty for one’s own modest luxuries. All the money in the world won’t make you as happy as JD was plucking grapes, or the guy who grew them being able to offer the fruits of his labors to a friend. I guess that is the issue, your life is only as valuable as what you can do with it. Money isn’t the primary tool in our lives. We need balance. I wish I could find it myself.
J.D.,
I think it becomes difficult to justify living in relative luxury when there are so many people struggling in the world. Sure, some are struggling because of their own poor decisions, but many don’t have the opportunities to succeed like we do in America.
The natural tendency of anyone who’s got their finances under control and learned that life isn’t all about them is to wonder how they can help others get to the point where their needs are met and their finances are under control.
I don’t, however, think it’s as cut and dry as Frugal Bachelor (#6) makes it out to be in terms of how we should help those in need. There is a place for immediate relief (the free food shipped in by rich countries) and there’s a place for developing the skills and local economy of those in need. Guilt shouldn’t prompt you to give for either type of cause. Love should be the reason for the gift.
There’s much more to life than wealth and enjoying luxury. Once you learn that truth, it becomes difficult to look at those who are truly poor and justify all the money we spend on our wants. I like the saying, “Live simply, so others can simply live.”
I’ve always associated money with guilt. When I was 5 years old I started getting $5 a week allowance, and right away I was told that it was sort of a secret because that was a huge amount at the time (1986) and my friends’ families all had less money than my family.
I still feel guilty about money. I was always brought up to be frugal, but I’ve followed that in odd ways sometimes (eating too much food when it’s free, hitchhiking and staying in the cheapest possible youth hostels even though I had the money to go to Europe in the first place.) None of my friends know how much savings I actually have (from my own earnings, no less!) If my parents give me money, I keep it separate from mine because I don’t feel I deserve it.
Incidentally, as a good but not particularly needy student, need-based scholarships always kind of annoyed me. I felt like my parents were being penalized for having saved up and making the right choices, so then they had to pay full price while people whose families had made possibly worse choices got a free ride. Do we really want to reward having questionable finances *over* doing well in school?
I actually do feel a little bit guilty sometimes, knowing that I’m taking advantage of a society that doesn’t value the work of (for example) Southeast Asian factory workers the same as it does those in America (do the exact same work and you’ll get paid more for it here), when I’m the direct beneficiary of that inequity.
But I also don’t feel like it’s my duty to fix all the injustices in the world. I live with them like anyone else does — some work in my favor, some work against me. Admittedly, for someone in my position, more are working for me than against me, so this probably makes it easier for me to be OK with it.
But the world is not a fair place. It has never been and never will be a fair place. Feeling guilty about my place in in seems a bit like the fastest wildebeest feeling guilty that the slowest wildebeest got eaten by lions instead of him. Maybe he should be thankful for his natural running ability, but that doesn’t mean he needs to go get eaten by lions to make the world more fair. That idea seems absurd to me.
Maybe I don’t feel guilty because I don’t believe that everything should always be fair. Sports and trials? Sure, they should be fair. But I don’t begrudge Prince Charles for being born into the royal family of England. I don’t feel that either he should have to give that position up, or he should have to share it with me, even though maybe that would be “fairer”.
So that’s my perspective, although it offers little advice, because my perspective is different from yours.
And I actually think the increasingly global economy will fix the inequality I mentioned at the top. American wages will come down as “third world” wages rise to meet them. Eventually, with commerce and shipping as easy as they are now and getting even easier, all these things will equalize, and you’ll get paid the same to assemble laptop computers in China as in California. Great news for the Chinese, not so great for Americans.
I think you should read “The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do” by Mark Cuban http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/13/the-most-patriotic-thing-you-can-do/
This is not a competition society. Because you have done well does not mean someone else had to suffer. You should take great pride in what you have and continue to accomplish. Just don’t boast that pride. Show it with the way in which you handle your money. Give back. Right now is a great time to spend money to help the economy get back on it’s feet.
One more thought: Sites like this are constantly discouraging us from “keeping up with the Jonses” so to speak. At what point do you reach a minimum standard of living, above which, you’re just trying to “keep up with the Jonses”? Even if, in this case, that’s J.D. Jones?
Does your brother really *need* more? Sure, he may not have a mini cooper, but he’s got a warm home, a caring family, and his health, doesn’t he? I have never read you give any advice on this blog that says “you need more than what you are living with right now”, have I? We decry lifestyle inflation and excess material possessions, but when we ourselves are able to achieve those things, we suddenly feel bad for all those who can’t? Seems a little bit contradictory.
Unless you amassed your wealth by stealing it from others, I do not understand why anyone would feel guilty. Don’t accept guilt you don’t earn. If you value something (like a charity) then give to support it. I am not wealthy (yet), but am certainly doing better than some of my siblings. However, I don’t feel guilty because of that. Why would I? It’s like feeling guilty that you an A on a test because you studied, but your best friend only got a C.
Frugal Bachelor made some very good points, all of which I agree with. I just don’t understand why anyone would feel guilty because they have been able to generate wealth through hard work and planning.
I very much identify with this article, although I am in an admitedly VERY different place than J.D. right now. Believe it or not, my husband and I are both unemployed right now (him through getting laid off; me through choice), and I feel a weird “wealth” guilt because unlike many other unemployed people in our region (metro Detroit), we are NOT having financial difficulties.
Let me explain a bit more: this summer my husband was laid off from his auto-industry job when I was in the process of switching jobs. We then had to make the difficult (to us) decision of whether I should 1) accept my newly-offered teaching job (I had already resigned from my previous job), which would require a long-term commitment to living in our area, which would probably mean that my husband wouldn’t be able to find a job in his field (again, metro Detroit), or 2) decline my teaching job, which would leave both of us unemployed but would give us the ability to move to anywhere in the country immediately once my husband found a job. I’m sure that many people would’ve have chosen option 1 in a heartbeat, but we actually ended up choosing option 2. Why? First, we aren’t particularly tied to this region and had been discussing moving anyway. Secondly, we are newly-weds who didn’t want to wind up in a long distance relationship, even if only for part of a year. Third, we live frugal lives, and knew that we could rely on our substantial emergency funds that both of us had wisely & independently built up before getting married. Because of these factors, we decided on option #2 — leaving us both unemployed.
We made that decision several months ago, hoping that my husband would be able to find a job relatively quickly. But today, we’re both still unemployed…and we’re actually doing just fine (I feel thankful, but also strangely guilty, to say that!). We’ve found yet more ways to be frugal (only using/insuring one of our cars, meal planning & creating a grocery price book to follow grocery sales, and getting our “entertainment” completely free through bike rides & walks outside or from borrowing books & movies from our library, etc.). And we’ve started selling some of our old stuff on ebay or craislist to make some “extra” money in addition to my husband’s unemployment benefits. Due to all of these decisions, we’ve just barely dipped into our emergency funds — leaving plenty of money left in case we need it!
While I am proud that we had chosen to save for those emergency funds and live frugally, I still feel a pang of guilt that we’re doing fine. I mean, we’re both unemployed; shouldn’t we be poor? Basically, I feel guilty for actually being able to afford unemployment! And there are so many people struggling in the metro Detroit area that I do feel a pang of guilt for being so financially blessed in comparison. Our hearts reach out to those in desparate situations, who aren’t there by choice and who are struggling to cover their expenses and face constraints in their job searches. Many of these people are tied to mortgages or have kids to support; my husband and I do not have these responsibilities and are free to move wherever, whenever.
I think that this experience has made me appreciate so much more the advice that J.D. and others emphasize: build up a substantial emergency fund. In our case, it is allowing us the freedom to actually make choices in such a distressing economy. We will have to face the consequences of our risky decision, but we both have high levels of education and are confident that a good opportunity will come our way sooner or later. Thankfully my husband is seeing an increase in job interviews and we’re hopeful that something will come through soon. In the meantime we’re surveying the job markets, applying to positions, enjoying life as newly-weds, counting our blessings, and trying to not feel too guilty about our “fortunate” situation.
Thanks, J.D., for another intriguing post!!
Oh my…so many directions to go in this area. I’m constantly afflicted by money/affluence-related guilt. For example:
1. Achieving a high-paying, low-stress, flexible (work-from-home) job without working all that hard. The work would be considered challenging to many but it comes easily to me which I think makes me feel even more guilty. My friends went to the same university, are just as smart as me and struggle quite a bit more. Where’s the fairness in that?
2. Having my dad pass away suddenly while in my mid-20s and inheriting a fairly significant sum of money. If you want to talk about wealth guilt, wait until you inherit some money…particularly at a rather young age where you really feel the difference. The constant knowledge that things you’re buying (a house) or amazing trips you’re taking (6 months in South America) are only possible because someone you loved died is very, very guilt provoking.
3. Or, on the above-mentioned South America trip, you are constantly bombarded with poverty, hardship, trial and tribulations…yet on the other hand you are overjoyed at how cheap travel is in Latin America. Walking outside of a nice restaurant in Peru where a 3 course, wine-included meal set you back an appallingly low US$15 and seeing a woman standing on a corner selling candy with a baby strapped to her back who probably hasn’t earned 15 US dollars all day long. Guilt, guilt and more guilt.
So what to do about it? I don’t know…I try to be generous with my time and my money but, like JD, I sometimes struggle with where to put the money so that it matters. I’ve come to the conclusion over time that I feel far more useful when I can see the fruits of my generosity so have spent much time volunteering with underprivileged kids. I have a few charities that I donate to but find that writing a check just doesn’t have the same feel as actually doing something. I don’t know…it’s a struggle. “Guilty” always seems like the wrong word to me anyway…doesn’t the feeling of guilt imply commitment of some sort of wrong, offense or crime? Certainly we are not that group but it’s very clearly a shared sensation.
What a great topic JD. I look forward to everyone’s responses.
When I bought my Acura (with cash) a few years back I’m not sure if I felt guilt or felt I was being extravagant. I’m thinking it may be the latter since I knew I could make do with a Honda or Toyota, but I had to have a little extra luxury. Now when I shop for cars (I’m still driving my Acura) I know I have the cash for a Mercedes or BMW, but I can’t bring myself to get it – mainly because I see it as overkill when I know an Acura would do just fine – LOL! I’m by no means wealthy, but I’m doing well. I just find it is easier not to talk about money with others unless I’m sure they are in a similar position to me. I need to make sure I’m the same person I was before I had extra money. If other people perceive me as different and I know I am not I’ll know it is their problem and not mine.
I know the kind of guilt you are feeling J.D. I woke up to my crap financial habits when I was 27 and have spent the last 10 years paying off more than $52,000 debt ($10,000 credit cards, $21,000 student loans, and $31,000 in cars and a fertility loan from my dad!). Now I am debt free except for my house, and I look around at my friends and see that I have become the most well-off among us, a situation that didn’t seem possible 10 years ago.
I spent some months contemplating how I could share my good fortune with my friends and family (and still maintain my financial goals). Ultimately I have ended up sending some spending money every month to my grandmother who lives in an assisted living home and set up a 529 education savings plan for the new daughter of a friend of mine who is not currently able to save for her child’s education. I’m trying to put my money where my values are – my friends are not my pets to be taken care of, but a well educated population is a gift that everyone benefits from.
I can’t relate at all, but I loved this post. I’m still working my way out of debt, but hopefully I’ll be prepared for what will come when I finally get to the wealth building stage. It’s amazing how many challenges money introduces into our lives- both positive and negative.
I applaud you J.D. for mentioning an idea that many dismiss immediately. That idea is hard work alone will NOT automatically grant you success. You admit that there are others who work just as hard as you do, and yet, you’re the one who caught the break.
I grew up watching my parents slave away in the kitchen restaurant to provide the opportunities I have received in life. Without their sacrifices, I could have never made it to where I am today. I graduated from college, got an engineering job, and now work half as hard, and make twice as much as my parents’ salaries combined.
I am blessed with a “gift” to learn and master new material quickly. I had a friend in college with a learning disability who literally studied for 2 weeks for each test. I would help him study and he would always ask high-level questions, the type the professor normally thinks of for exams. Most of the time, I was able to answer it, and if not, I was close. Even the professor was amazed at the level of mastery I had of the material at times. Now, was if fair that I scored one of the top grades and he struggled, for little to no studying after going through the material with him?
The world is full of inequality. Those who have experienced the bottom can fully appreciate the accumulation of wealth after pulling themselves out of debt. However, this goes for everyone, if you forget to appreciate what you have, that there are those who are less fortunate than you, then you put yourself in a position to lose what you do have.
Great post. Having counseled thousands,the guilt is common. I am not sure why, when we have done all we can do, that we sometimes feel as if it is not enough.
I do think however, this is guilt best kept to yourself. Not showing excitement,and appreciation for the new purchases will definitely be felt by your spouse and hurt feelings and resentment may soon follow.
Keeping a diary and recording the things you do to help others can make those things seem more real. We all try to “help others” but recording how will confirm it.
Very interesting post, JD. I am struggling with some of the same feelings, also, having recently landed a job with a very good income for the first time in my life, while a dear friend of mine has been unemployed for a year. Wish I had something insightful to say, other than that I appreciate all the previous posters’ comments.
One reply I would like to offer, to [email protected]: I was a recipent of need-based aid in college. My mom was a single parent, having been abandoned by my dad when I was an infant–definitely not a choice she had wanted or foreseen. Neither was the series of illnesses that destroyed her life the decade she was in her 30’s, while I was in junior high and high school. If my family had had to pay for college out of pocket I would not have gone, period. Thanks to the generosity of many, including the federal government (Pell grants) and private donors to my university, I got a great undergraduate education and went on to a PhD in the natural sciences.
Then again, maybe this does circle back to the idea of fairness that many respondants have invoked, or a related notion, luck. Some people may qualify for need-based aid because, as you say, they made worse choices. Or some may because despite their good choices, shit happened. Remember, too, that education is about helping *kids* succeed–and kids in general are not/should not be held responsible for their parents’ shortcomings.
This is not a very discussed topic – my whole blog (MoneyChangesTHings) started off as a meditation on just this question – what is money for? but I found very few people with money who were open to discussing it; it is said that people are more comfortable discussing their sex life than their checkbooks. There are several books on the challenges of inherited wealth, but you’re talking about simply having a modest surplus, not vast wealth. Where does the guilt come from? To some extent, it is related to acknowledging how incredibly lucky and fortunate we are – born in a country with education, sanitation, sufficient food, infrastructure for electricity/fuel/ etc. two billion people on Planet Earth do not share these privileges. As you point out, they work hard, but so much less productively.
Once you have enough to accumulate a surplus, you can – of course – keep escalating your life style, but there’s evidence that this does not make you any happier, as your friend with the fancy car observes. In his case, it seems to have actually had the reverse effect. So you need to set guidelines for yourself – what is that surplus for? SOme people just keep on investing it, thinking that the point is to generate an even larger surplus, for the proverbial rainy day, and to leave to heirs, or just to have a balance sheet they can admire. I have challenged myself to donate 10% of annual income to charities- some gifts are significant, some are small – but all help others in some way. I also invest 1-2% of my assets in ways that directly improve our world. My favorite is http://www.microplace.org where you get a direct return (2-6%) for investing in microfinance! Now that’s a win-win. I would devote a larger per cent of my assets this way (community investing, for example) if my husband weren’t 10 times more conservative than I am! One thing that I am learning more about – how much farther finances go in alleviating poverty in the third world than in the US. It’s nice to send a kid’s friend to soccer camp – but for the same amount of subsidy, you could feed and educate an orphan in the third world for a whole year and think of the impact on that kid’s whole life!
This is not a very discussed topic – my whole blog (MoneyChangesTHings) started off as a meditation on just this question – what is money for? Once you have enough to accumulate a surplus, you can – of course – keep escalating your life style, but there’s evidence that this does not make you any happier, as your friend with the fancy car observes. In his case, it seems to have actually had the reverse effect. So you need to set guidelines for yourself – what is that surplus for. SOme people just keep on investing it, thinking that the point is to generate an even larger surplus, for the proverbial rainy day, and to leave to heirs, or just to have a balance sheet they can admire. I have challenged myself to donate 10% of annual income to charities- some gifts are significant, some are small – but all help others in some way. I also invest 1-2% of my assets in ways that directly improve our world. My favorite is http://www.microplace.org where you get a direct return (2-6%) for investing in microfinance! Now that’s a win-win. I would devote a larger per cent of my assets this way (community investing, for example) if my husband weren’t 10 times more conservative than I am!
Hey Angie (#21),
I was just talking about scholarships- not financial aid. I definitely think financial aid should be need-based, because of all the reasons you mention. Scholarships are different- those were historically given out for specific achievements, but I feel like they have moved away from merit based and toward need based.
Also, in the case that parents pay for college, parents who have saved are actually penalized for having saved. Of course, if the child is responsible for paying, that’s another story– but I think a lot of parents do pay, and I have literally heard people going out and buying new furniture or refrigerators before putting in their aid applications so it would look like they have less money.
Certainly, people are poor either because they had bad luck through absolutely no fault of their own, or made bad choices, or both. But I guess I feel like being rich is more likely to be the result of good choices- if only because if you come into a large sum of money through sheer good luck, and make bad choices, it will soon be gone.
I guess I can understand feeling guilty if you’re doing better than someone you care about, but I think tossing the word “wealth” around is a bit much. I consider people who make $100,000+ per year consistently, own their house outright, and can basically choose to work or not (or they have a profession like a doctor) to be wealthy. Not people who recently got out of debt and can afford to pay cash for some items.
I don’t know if part of the bad feeling “wealthy” people feel is because they’re also somehow afraid it could all be taken away… or if it’s mostly because they’re buying something they WANT while other people (some close to them) are struggling to survive.
I suppose it’s unavoidable to feel guilty sometimes, but I think that’s a bit silly. It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong, and managing money properly likely has benefits extending past yourself (like more donations to charity etc.). Use the guilt to prompt yourself into action – like donate more to charity, or give the gift of your time if you’re feeling bad. Even help out your poor brother by giving grocery store gift cards, donating your TIME, or doing things like cooking and/or treating dinners out once in a while.
Realistically, JD, you’re at the stage you would have been LONG ago if you had managed your money properly in your 20s and 30s. I think it’s great you have your money situation figured out, and I don’t think you should feel guilty about living not stupidly. That’s all it is. It’s not like you won millions of dollars and are feeling guilty for not giving your poor brother some of it. You earned the money you are making and I think you spend it quite wisely. Enjoy your new furniture for goodness sakes!
“Live simply, so others may simply live”, is a
platitude, I think. I am well off, and VERY
appreciative, but I don’t think I feel particularly
guilty. I DO often wonder WHY I’ve been so lucky…..
Btw, I like the saying “Reduce, reuse, recycle” a lot
better.
I can relate. When our 1993 Acura died last year, we were looking for a new car with manuel transmission on short notice. Almost ready to buy a VW Passat when we read that Consumer Reports had very negative reviews re: the electrical system.
A 2005 BMW was the same price, CR car of the year for x-many years. Mint condition. We bought the beemer.
And now, I often feel guily driving around my neighborhood. I feel like I have to retell the car-purchase decision to justify it.
I’m in a weird situation of having double-ended guilt. After seven years between jobs, I finally have a part-time low-income gig (it’s a start) that’s nowhere near my skill level. I have a Bachelor’s degree in a field that’s a tad dormant at present so jobs have been scarce. I’m blessed to have this job at all.
But because of the layoffs and other complex circumstances, I found myself broke and impoverished for the first time in my life.
Ironically, I also became the owner of three properties without the money to support them: one was my own home, and two were inherited. Thankfully, one has sold; the other will soon be on the market (I only need one, right?) I also inherited a cream-puff Buick luxury car with hardly any miles on it. Totally not my style, but… it’s newer and runs well, so who’s arguing?
But during my three-year period of being house-rich and cash-poor, I felt very strange claiming abject poverty while driving around town in a luxury car, living in a NICE neighborhood, and having all the appearances of being “OK” financially.
I felt guilty asking for assistance, because I had plenty of non-monetary stuff that “real” (perhaps “chronically” is a better word) poor people didn’t have–therefore I didn’t feel I really deserved public assistance, even for a short time (because, of course, my poverty was a temporary visit, not a permanent condition).
OTOH, I felt guilty for having stuff, because I hadn’t worked for it myself, therefore I hadn’t “earned” it. And with a college degree, I don’t feel like I “should” be applying for jobs that might be the only option for those without degrees. Then again, I have to eat, too, and food costs the same at the market whether you’re paying with cash, credit or stamps, right?
I’m not sure how I’m dealing with it, as I’m still working that out! But I’m finally on better ground financially, and I’m aiming to be earning on the same level as I look like I’m living.
Seriously, what is there to feel guilty about? You’ve done nothing wrong. Instead, you’ve learned from mistakes and done things right. I understand that you may “feel” guilty. But could it be that the guilt is really just a cover for something else?
I would think that when you start acquiring things that you used to see as symbols of overspending, some part of you still worries that you are living beyond your means. Intellectually, you know that you aren’t.
But when you’ve gone for many years without spending on frivolous items, I don’t know how you can change that attitude about it. After all, you wouldn’t be able to afford that Mini Cooper, if you hadn’t altered the way you view that kind of spending beforehand.
J.D.,
Unless we’re talking about international-level banking, I do not feel that wealth is a zero-sum game. In other words, your financial winning does not automatically mean that someone else like your little brother is doomed to financial losing. That opportunity is still there for him. Perhaps some of the guilt comes from a mistaken underlying view of wealth as zero sum, when on the scale of individual households, I don’t think it is. The suggestion to donate to microfinance charities is interesting because it allows you to use your wealth in a way that gives the opportunity to another household to achieve the same goal. Win-Win, not Win-Lose!
I mostly think that the taste of the freedom outweighs the guilt of being where you are.
I work for the collection department of the 2nd biggest credit card issuer in the world (To not say whom…) and what you preach is gold. Most clients that I’m talking to are not builders there are simply copying whatever what their parents did, without even creating their own opportunities or personalities. They hardly make any decision, they simply react, which is the difference between achievers and followers.
There is a song I like to hear out when I’m a bit down, I truly think the title speaks for itself ; “Life Is What You Make it” – by Talk Talk. It really applies to a lot of what happens to one’s life.
Your choices paved the way of where you currently are and your future decisions will continue to do the same, positive or negative. So if the person next to you decides to live the way he wants to live, despite your best advices, like John Lennon said, “Let it be”. They should act the same towards your life, but we all know that human beings aren’t made the that way.
If ever the consequences of your act attract some criticism or jealousy from peers and people around you, I always like to refer to Jesus or the Buddha, who even with the message of love that they had, had people wanting to end their lives. So focus on the love and be free!
(Sorry for my many mistakes, I’m a French Canadian)
I assuage the guilt by donating both time and money to various charities. I help build playgrounds, renovate low-income housing, organize toy drives, etc. Also, since I’m a big proponent of education and helping people help themselves, I do lectures at a local college on personal finance. And when individuals manage to wear me down, I’ll do one-on-one counseling…which can sometimes drive me batty because some people are only interested in get-rich-quick schemes.
My family is still dirt poor, and it’s a constant struggle to keep from trying to go out and “save” everyone.
I’m a teacher at a district that pays well. Most of my family still works for minimum wage, so comparatively I am considerably wealthy. I can afford vacations, a home, and a few other toys.
Personally, I think I feel a little better when I bring my family along for the ride on nicer experiences which they’d never be able to afford on their own. Obviously I can’t include all of them all the time, but I can alternate who gets to come along.
I also spend quite a bit of time and money on my favorite kind of charity which is dog rescue. There are obviously many wonderful causes out there, and we contribute small amounts of money to about 10 different charities, but my husband and I really focus on working with a specific dog rescue organization so we can see the direct impact that our money and time has on one life at a time.
My parents immigrated from Europe in 1953 with not too much more than some suit cases of clothes, as many immigrants did at that time. We lived in rural Southern Alberta on a small farm where we grew our own veggies and raised our own livestock. I remember spending summers shelling peas, shucking corn, canning, freezing, baking, etc, etc. We threw very little away and recycled all kinds of things. I don’t know specifics but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what my parents’ net worth is now and I’m seriously amazed. They saved and lived very simply all of their life so they could retire and take it easy.
But… habits, good or bad, are hard to break. My parents still live a very simple life. Even though they’ve amassed this huge next egg, they still don’t even spend the pensions they get each month. They are still saving, without even trying. My mom’s been wanting to spend money more freely but my dad doesn’t. After a lifetime of frugality, he has such a hard time loosening the purse strings. (This has caused more than a few arguments between them.) They are in their 80’s now and their health is good but they will never enjoy retirement as we hoped they would.
I guess my point is that we’re trying hard to form good financial habits and be frugal but you also have to learn to enjoy what you have before it’s too late. I’ll probably get a nice inheritance one day and I could certainly use it but I would much, much rather have seen my parents enjoy their retirement more than they have been. I’m finally figuring things out on my own and I’ve come to understand that it takes awareness and time to manage money wisely and struggling is part of the journey that I can’t skip.
But, I’m still going to enjoy a latte, once in a while. And when I have one, boy, does it ever taste good…
feelings of guilt are normal and they will always be there as long as there is a gap between the haves and have nots. and i think that there is nothing that anyone can do about it. if one gives to charities and to the less fortunate, then it means that you are a good steward with the resources that were given to you. the guilt of buying things that few people have and may never own is a feeling that i know all too well but i have learnt to live with it. i think that those seemingly uncomfortable feelings keep us grounded and are a measure of our humanity
Your blog, following it, was actually incredibly helpful to me in climbing out of debt. “I have no words but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks…”
On the other hand, I was recently fortunate enough to be able to offer a room to a friend of my daughter’s whose parents were unable to offer housing due to their own homelessness (I already house and board a college friend of mine who makes less than she spends on transport to and from her work as a server in a diner… thanks, Mr. Pink!) When filling out paperwork for my daughter’s friend to get into the local education system yesterday, I was required to divulge my total assets, and now my kid is furious with me because I am not buying a new winter wardrobe for her friend, citing my indicated preference to work until I drop in the traces and saying she would rather see people clothed adequtely than go to college and isn’t her college fund hers anyhow?
A talk is in order, I think.
I wanted to say I don’t make too much money in a year. When others commented here about their income being sizeable I’m assuming at least $50,000+ per person. Well I would venture to say I only make say $30,000 pretax.
I none the less feel more fortunate and as a result guilty for my position. I don’t carry any credit card debt. And don’t have student loans at the age of 26 I feel fortunate that I can put sizeable portions of what I do make into savings after rent. I get to live out on my own withot being lavish and at the same time feel financially stable.
To add to that fact I’m a hard worker and nothing was handed to me my family was not rich nor middle income for that matter. But lately I have begun to create a secondary source of income. Yes this means I work on average more than 60 hour weeks as a result and have been able to increase my income possibly by 50% but even though this extra income did not come for free and I work extra hard for it I feel guilty that others don’t have an option to create extra income.
Take for example today I was able to bring my girlfriend shopping because she earned it. I saw an older lady at a clothing store mopping the floor. Yes I know it’s better that she even has a job during these rough times yet I can’t help to feel a little guilt she works so hard herself and yet may earn less than I do.
Also I feel bad when I walked by a few stores in the mall and they appear extra empty. And while I do know the poor reversal of the economy led to less shopping it will also adversely affect these people. I know that my ability to save is keeping money out of these store owners pocket and it must be causing them extra stress too at the end of the month if they don’t make lease and rent bills. I wish I could buy from them sometimes but it would drive me away from my saving habits further yet I feel guilty. I guess this is a personal confession and I am glad I had this medium to express it because other than my girlfriend I don’t feel that my other friends see or relate to my viewpoint.
Hi J.D.,
I don’t doubt you feel some guilt about the status of others, but as previous commentators have said you probably feel some uncertainty, too.
I wonder if the uncertainty isn’t so much that it could all be taken away from you, but about who you are now you have this money?
More than most, you have identified your personal life with your financial well-being. You have contributed an outstanding blog to the field of personal finance, based on your journey out of debt and into financial security.
In recent posts you have been making the transition to living with wealth. That’s logical and sensible I think — better than going back down the hill to debt again! ;)
But it’s also natural that this transition will make you nervous.
Your blog will surely amplify what are natural feelings anyway.
What will your readers think of this future you? Few, after all, will have come so far while you’ve been posting. Would you tell the truth about bigger, more luxurious purchases in the transparent way you blogged about paring down your cocoa consumption? How much of your new stability is based around the identity of you as J.D. the debt-beating blogger, due to GRS’s success?
I don’t have answers to these questions, and I hope they don’t come across as too pop-psychological.
In short: I think this would be a normal transition for anyone, but you’re going to have to live your transition out in public, which will bring extra pressures.
The history of GRS strongly suggests you’re up to them!
Good luck.
This post reminds me of a discussion I once had with my best friend over the difference between jealousy and envy. Jealous people see someone in a nice car and think, “Man, I wish I could afford one of those. Maybe one day!”
People green with envy look at the same person and think, “If I can’t afford that car, he shouldn’t get to enjoy it either!” In other words, they don’t admire your success and want to work for it themselves. Rather, they assume you built your wealth on someone else’s back and are flaunting it by driving that nice car.
It’s this envy that is perpetuated by the media, thanks in part to the many corporate scandals recently, that is fueling the guilt amongst those who are successful. What’s lost is that many of the world’s wealthiest people are also the greatest givers.
Buying yourself something is perfectly fine as long as you see it as a treat for all your hard work. When you identify yourself and your ego is attached to the new object (ex:car) that usually spells trouble. A car is just metal on rubber. In the long run it will not make you a better or happier person.
I´ve read this blog for a long time and i love this blog! you write in a way that really helps me. For instance, a co-worker told me to never buy a cup of coffee, because it´s so expensive, but instead she puts her money on thing I never would. “Do what works for you” :)
I live in Europe, and because of that some of your posts are not applicable here. I will soon take debt, because I want to have surgery done that improves my life very much. No one pays for that surgery, but I think it´s so important that it´s worth borrowing money for. I have some savings, but not enough. I want to have that surgery done as fast as possible, that is why I don´t want to wait until I have saved enough money. I am ready to wait and save in advance for everything else, but not this. I will leave a small emergency fund and use all of my other savings for the operation. In addition, I still need to borrow about 3000 euros. what do you think about this, from a financial perspective?
Like Sherry (#13), I think you no way should feel guilty for what you’ve achieved by hard work and planning.
In fact, I’d argue that this type “false guilt” is at the root of many problems in our society.
So many people these days have no idea of the principle of cause and effect. They think that affluence falls out of the sky and lands randomly on this or that person–they don’t connect the reward to anything they personally do. While it is true that some people work hard and end up poor, it is just not true 99% of the time.
So by all means volunteer, donate, and give back. But please, reject that guilt! You have nothing to feel guilty for.
I don’t feel guilty about spending money on my own favorite indulgences–such as buying “better” seats to a concert when I already have good ones in hand–if my finances allow me to then be able to turn around and do something wonderful like hand my “good” seats to a random mom & kid who’d only been able to get seats at the very back of the theater. I end up enjoying the experience twice as much bc I have the joy of seeing someone else made happy as well as the pleasure of the concert itself.
This is what I enjoy most about having money–being able to do nice things for the people and organizations that I care most about, or being able to randomly surprise someone with kindness. When I’ve been on a budget, my scale has been limited to picking up the occasional tab or making a small yearly donation to the humane society. But as I get better at saving, and have a better handle on my “luxury” spending, I find that I have more opportunities to share my good fortune with others. If I do treat myself to something non-essential, such as a larger tv or a new car, I don’t feel guilty about enjoying it, b/c I know that I do a lot to help other people out.
I can totally relate to your post, since I’ve been expert at feeling guilty almost all my life.
Here’s how I’ve conquered my guilt:
1. Ask yourself: if your guilt had an purpose, what would it be?
I’ve learned that we think what we think and feel what we feel because one part of us believes that it is good for us to think/feel that way — that it saves us from something bad or gives us something good.
I used to feel guilty because it made me feel like a better person.
(Just like I used to constantly worry about everything because I believed it would save me from making mistakes.)
2. Ask yourself: if I weren’t feeling guilty, what kind of person would I be?
By feeling guilty I tell myself that I’m not an insensitive and selfish person. Which is of course ridiculous — especially when you’ve done something RIGHT.
Just the fact that you don’t want to live the same kind of miserable life people around you live (because you’ve already experienced it and didn’t like it), doesn’t make you insensitive, greedy, arrogant, selfish or anything bad. It makes you smart — and human.
If you look at the babies, you’ll notice that all they want is to feel good — they’ll cry until they get what they want (food, sleep, cleaned up). And isn’t that what we all want? Wouldn’t it be really stupid to want to feel bad for your whole life? I personally believe it would.
3. Stop saying that you’re lucky or fortunate — no, you’re not.
You didn’t win in a lottery or inherited tons of money. You re-evaluated your life, worked hard on yourself, changed habits and made better choices. You followed your heart and seized the opportunities that were given to you. You made it all happen, not luck.
If you look at REALLY closely to the lives of those “less-fortunate” around you and really evaluate their choices and actions, you’ll notice that they’re not less fortunate than you are. They just weren’t willing to make as good choices as you did.
They might have been offered even better opportunities than you were, yet they never took them. They didn’t take responsibility for their own actions but blamed everything else, including bad luck, for getting the life they created with their poor choices.
Yes, one can always argue that they might have had bad upbringing or were born with a smaller IQ etc. that made it harder for them to see what they’re doing wrong and do something about their lives — BUT you can always find examples of people who had it even worse and still were able to make the best of their talents and resources and are now living a happy and fulfilling life.
And even if it really wasn’t someone’s fault that they’re doing worse than you’re, it’s not your fault either!!!
You can feel guilty even after the cows come home, but it doesn’t make their lives any better — it doesn’t even make them feel better or like you more. Nor does feeling guilty make your life any better — only makes you enjoy it less.
4. Understand that by enjoying the fruits of your labor, you’re actually helping other people.
By being proud of your accomplishments and really enjoying the life you’re now living, thanks to your smart choices, you inspire others to change their lives and get what you’ve got.
Instead of feeling bad about doing what’s right and apologizing that you got what everyone wants, be willing to help others to get where you’re at. Which is exactly what you’re doing with this blog!
So keep up the good work and please motivate and inspire us all even more by showing us how much you enjoy your new life and all the resources that you’ve earned all by yourself!
Thank you so much for all the tips and inspiration you’ve given us so far!
Thank you commenters. I wanted to make my own comment about “guilt”, but I got so much from your comments, I’d like to write about that.
All of these commenters that have acquired wealth, or some wealth, have done it by their own hard work.
And the desire to give back seems to be what we’re really all about. We now have security, wealth, comfort, how can we now help others. I don’t think we feel guilty because we have this wealth, it’s that we yearn for others to have a better life.
It really is a matter of perspective. My son is in prison. I was surprised to hear him say that each day he gets on his hands and knees and scrubs his cell. (Because of so much disease.) I told him, even in his dire circumstances, to find ways to be thankful everyday.
It seems that it’s all about gratitude.
Interesting topic, JD. DH and I have been in phase 3 for a while. I have some guilt for being well-off while others aren’t. Different reasons, though, I think:
— I feel guilty when I had advantages others didn’t — I won the birth lottery in most ways that counted. Most causes I support are about disadvantaged people in less-secure parts of the world, and for improving educational opportunities for children.
— I feel lucky when we are equally smart and worked equally hard (or they were smarter and worked harder), and things worked out better for me for reasons no one could reasonably foresee. (20 years in software development, and haven’t been laid off yet.)
— I feel admiration when the others have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, had vision, and worked harder than I could imagine making it to a level of security and comfort. (Two of my SILs from the Philippines.)
— I DON’T feel guilty for anyone who started where I started, didn’t work very hard, didn’t step out of their own comfort zone, and rewarded themselves every stop of the way. Nope. (Thinking about various family members at this point.)
One more thought — because I have no way of knowing where most people came from or how they got to where they are now, I allow myself the twinge of envy looking at someone’s cool toys, and a nudge of gratitude/guilt hearing about a foreclosure or catastrophic illness or job loss. Then, I either try to do something constructive or let it go.
Oh and three resources that relate to these questions:
Dan Gilbert’s talks on happiness at TED:
– http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_gilbert.html
Brian Tracy, Luck factor -audio program
– http://www.nightingale.com/prod_detail~product~Luck_Factor.aspx
Paul McKenna, I can make you rich -book
– http://www.amazon.com/Can-Make-You-Rich-Book/dp/0593055373 (US)
– http://www.amazon.co.uk/Can-Make-You-Rich-Book/dp/0593055373 (UK)
—
And I forgot to mention that yes, I understand that if someone is born in the worst ghetto of L.A. or at a refugee camp in Africa, they probably won’t achieve the same amount of money as easily as someone who was born in a dirt-rich western family, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t feel wealthy and happy, if they had the right outlook on life and used their resources better.
I’ve met a happier kid in the worst ghetto of Rio de Janeiro than in a rich family here in wealthy Scandinavia, because he enjoyed what he got and didn’t feel bad for what he didn’t have.
Hey JD,
You can feel less guilty about what you have if you appreciate it and don’t take it for granted.
You don’t see yourself as better because you have bigger stuff. You embrace what you have, and are happy to use it, but you appreciate it. You really appreciate it; not just saying you’re not taking it for granted aloud or to others, but feeling it deep inside. You don’t get used to having it, and continue to work at it to make it better. The same can go for great relationships when you see others around you with unfulfilling ones.
I’m sure it takes longer for some to feel less guilty than others, but that appreciative mindset can help to speed up the process.
It was great to read your personal experience with the guilt of wealth, thanks for sharing,
Oleg
I’ve not read through all of the comments because I wanted to express my own thoughts.
I feel guilt when I’ve done something wrong.
I feel badly when someone else points out that I should be doing something I don’t want to.
I feel uneasy and badly when presented with someone else’s jealousy over my perceived wealth.
I grew up in a family with money. My father’s parents were quite wealthy – enough so that when grandpa died he donated $50 million to the hospital he worked at so they could open a teaching wing. My mother’s side was middle-class and wanted for very little.
I was taught to not bring attention to myself, to not explain why our family lived as we did. Instead, I was to be generous with the extra dollar I had in my pocket, I was to share the extra I had in my coffers. The extra being that which is left over after taking care of my needs.
Today, as a grown woman, I have very little financially. My husband of 19 years has learned to ‘not spend’ but not to save – so that is up to me. He comes from hard working farm life and is still uncomfortable around money – not as much anymore, but it is still there. So I don’t tell him how much is in savings, just that there is enough to get us throught the next month – that is all he is comfortable having on hand.
I started my own business last year. Had saved the cash for 1 year of business expenses, 1 year of housing expenses should husband not be able to work for some reason.
I shake my head at those who wish I were poor and had come from poor circumstances. I don’t wear the hairshirt well – it itches too much.
Once our needs are met, we give generously to those who are in need. We don’t tell others where or to whom we give. I walk away from people who believe they’re entitled to my money and to someone else’s money.
I’ve been called selfish, unconcerned, lacking compassion, and other not so nice things – because I didn’t give my money to the areas those people believed I should.
Then, once some people realized where we gave our money, time and efforts to, they turn right around and talk nice about us.
Money is a tool for living. It is one of many tools in the toolbox that comes in handy in a variety of ways. I’ve lived on both sides – wealthy and one time we were homeless. I prefer wealthy and that is what I’m working toward. I like it when there is plenty of food, water, clothing, transportation. I put money in the same toolbox – I like it when there is plenty of money.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. This very topic. Why?
Let me explain. I just took a vacation to Crete. I earned the money teaching English. I looked for the best deal and had saved enough for my two daughters and myself. I went with a lady from our church who has no family and needed someone to travel with since her health doesn’t allow her to travel by herself. I live in Poland so it’s not like it’s as far as from the states and I could do the whole thing (flight, hotel, food) for approx. $600 each. I had saved the money diligently for over a year, often teaching in inconvenient times and ugly weather when I’d rather be at home.
Yesterday I went to see a lady who has 3 children, a husband who is sick and apparently in a lot of pain and recently lost his job. They have a nice flat screened tv, but it’s not all paid for, I found out. Her husband lost his job recently and they are in danger of losing their housing to a worse situation (they are in public housing, but can be moved to worse public housing that doesn’t have running water even though they personally installed the running water and bathroom in this place years ago with their own money). I found out on the 16th they will have some visitors who may come and take their tv in order to pay the unpaid balance of their rent (about as much as one of cost to go to Crete)–about $600.
As I left their house, I felt a bit guilty. Why? I fight it. I fight in my mind…I could pay this lady’s unpaid balance. should I? We don’t even own a flat screen tv. If she had not purchased the flat screened tv, she’d have that money (theoretically, though probably not really) to pay the rent they owe.
I just don’t know what the right thing is. I do feel “lucky” in the sense that I was born an American with English as my native language. I can get paid almost $15-20/hour just for conversing in English so people can practice with a native speaker.
The other question is…what will this help help? If I pay the balance this time, will it just be a matter of 3 months til the next crisis? What is to be done as a more permanent solution? Can the husband, who has developed a severe physical problem, get put on some sort of disability that might help? The wife just had a baby 2 weeks ago and can’t work right now.
I’ve often wished I could help people by providing work. That is what they really need. JOBS so they can pay their own pay. Unfortunately here in Poland jobs for the unskilled seem in short supply.
My particular slant on this “problem” is that I feel a pressing responsiblity to do more than I am already doing for the usual charities with material and immaterial things I do on a monthly basis. In my daily work (which I love)I sometimes can really help somebody but I frequently get the feeling that with the money I acquired I can do so much more. Changing jobs or volunteer work,as I have in the past,isn’t the answer as it frequently can end up as a dishartening frustration. Naive.., moi ?
@ Karen (comment #9) — Consider yourself lucky that your parents made good choices that enabled you to go to college without need-based scholarships.
I used to teach high school so I’ve seen the circumstances some students have to deal with — parents’ job loss, divorce, death of one or both parents, abuse, critical illness, natural disaster, etc. No amount of money is worth what these kids go through, and many of them would be trapped without a way to build a better life for themselves.
I felt guilty all throughout my undergrad because my family could afford to send me to school, but I lived very frugally compared to my friends who had lots of student loan money. Looking back, I think my guilt helped me form better financial habits :)
Guilt and sympathy seem to have changed around for you. You can certainly feel sympathy (or empathy whatever your preference) for your brother but you shouldn’t feel guilty. You worked hard and made tough decisions to get where you are. Yes there are gifts that everyone receives but for the most part we make our own luck. If you still feel guilty maybe you can help out with a charity or help your brother with some personal finance stuff. Either way, remember that he probably didn’t feel guilty buying his regular coffee or whatever choices that led to his finances being less secure then yours. (There are exceptions, if it’s a medical thing that’s different but it doesn’t sound like it).
We have an opposite problem in my extended family. My parents inherited and then built up wealth. My brothers jumped on the family business -which went belly up after my dad left it.Dad has since passed away. My mother feels guilty and gives all kinds of things (season passes, private school tuition, cars, house motgages, vacations) to the boys since she WANTS them to continue to live wealthy. When they make money(sales commission), they immediately spend it on toys- begging for more from mom when they are out.
Anyway- just another side of guilt. What will your children expect from you? Even your very Adult children?
A tough – but real- issue.
Thanks, JD, and all for this discussion! I was thinking recently about sending in an email question to JD on this very topic! I’m doing pretty well for myself now – I’d say I’m between stage 2 and 3 – have a mortgage and a student loan at really low rate, but otherwise debt free and between retirement, savings and charities, I put/give away about 30-35% of my income. I recently decided to go on an actual vacation – first time non-family related since 1996, but I really struggled with spending the money. I’ve lived so frugally for so long that I was having a hard time justifying the expense for myself as well as thinking about the economy and others not doing as well. But, I finally realized that there has to be a balance. I have worked hard over the last few years to get out of cc debt, save enough money for a condo (not easy in our extremely high priced area), pay off my car 16 mos early, and put away for retirement and an EF and other savings, including a vacation and isn’t it part of what I’ve been saving for?? What all this hard work has been about?? So, I took a deep breath, spent the money and had a wonderful time.
I’ll continue to help as many people as possible improve their financial situation. Maybe if I can help others achieve wealth, I won’t feel guilty about my own.
Absolutely. I am not one of these people who see guilt as an entirely negative emotion. Guilt can be a negative emotion. It can also lead one to spiritual growth.
You have worked hard to achieve what you have achieved, J.D. You have also been lucky. Both things are so. So you should be enjoying the fruits of your labor without experiencing feelings of guilt. But to do that, you need to give back. You need to help others too. That needs to be part of the mix.
I don’t view the guilt feelings as a sign that you have not already found the right mix. I view them as a sign that you have not thought things through to the extent necessary to be sure yourself that you have found the right mix. Just keeping thinking it through, not going into denial over the feelings of guilt and not allowing them to be the only thing you pay attention to either. You will eventually come to know what is the right balance.
Rob
Guilt is revealing. Either your values are screwed or you aren’t following through with your beliefs. Do you believe it’s wrong to have more than someone else? Then give all of your money away until you have barely enough to survive.
Guild is unnecessary, and just reveals a contradiction in your beliefs.
I feel no guilt at my own success, though I make 6-figures in college. The notion that I should feel BAD for doing GOOD is absurd and inherently twisted. It’s that mentality that screws up our ability to spread wealth around the world… success should be embraced in all forms — that starts with accepting the morality of your own success.
Hope you figure this out.
I can totally relate to this. My extended family is a mix of the ridiculously wealthy and the dirt poor. Some of it is through choice, some of it isn’t. I’m middle class right now, but when my SO graduates pharmacy school, I will be living quite well. Supposedly.
I feel fortunate, though, that I am able to do things like take one of my cousins for the best meal she’s ever had in her life, or I can give my sister $1000 without it really costing me anything.
Just a quick note to thank everyone who has participated in this discussion, both here and via e-mail. (This article spurred a much higher volume of e-mail comments than normal.) It’s clear that many of us experience conflicting emotions about financial success. It’s not as clear-cut as Shaun (#57) believes — at least not for me at age 40. The world is not some idealized Ayn Randian universe. Hard work isn’t always rewarded.
Anyhow, Kris and I talked about this thread last night, and we agreed that our favorite comment is from Sherry (#13), who makes the following analogy: It’s like feeling guilty because you got an A on a test after a lot of study but your friend who didn’t study only got a C.
I think Kris and I could relate to this because we were both good students, and we have plenty of experience getting As when those around us were getting Cs. But as another commenter noted, sometimes those with learning disabilities can study just as hard and not earn the same grades.
I don’t know. This is an interesting topic, and I’ve been very pleased with this discussion. I was almost afraid to post about it, but I’m glad I did. It helped remind me that GRS commenters are the best on the internet…
“He worries that his kids will grow up to take for granted those things he views as blessings.” My fiancee and I struggle with this the most. His parents struggled to make ends meet when he was younger but through hard work, perseverance, and good fortune have become quite wealthy. He is old enough to remember his family struggling and so appreciates the position we have gained for ourselves (We both have college degrees and the potential for great jobs with time, we have saved enough money to pay for our wedding and to get us through if one of us loses our job) But his younger brother only remembers being wealthy and so takes material possessions for granted and thinks nothing of spending money he did not earn for himself. We do not want our future children to take wealth for granted and struggle with how to raise them to be appreciative.
I can kinda relate, but my situation is a bit more odd… People always perceive my husband and I to be better off than we are, even though we aren’t doing bad at all. (We aren’t horrible, but we aren’t very well off yet. We get by comfortably.)
I don’t want to just give money to charities, though. I want to *do* something for those I feel strongly about. I’d rather volunteer my time than volunteer my wealth, I feel that I can make more of an impact by doing that. Sadly, I just don’t have the time right now with work & school. We still take dog bones to the shelter every year for Christmas, though, and this year I’m thinking about attending the huge gala at the zoo for New Year’s. (It’s rather expensive, but a big deal.)
This month already I’ve splurged quite a bit. One of my favorite purchases was a new winter coat, a very nice coat that wasn’t cheap but wasn’t super expensive either. ($149) It’s kind of odd being treated differently just for wearing a nicer coat, but in the few times I’ve worn it already it seems to be that way. I saved up for it and bought it knowing I’ll have plenty of good years with it, so it’s a nice piece… Just makes me feel weird for both having something so nice and for spending the money on it. Or maybe it was because I got the coat, a new bag and a new dress all in the same week…
And I can really relate to your neighbor and his bigger boat — since our hobby and primary passion is our cars, it’s what we spend our money on. So people seem to think we have a lot more than we do just because they see our ONE area of splurge… It’s really awkward.
Okay, and I can’t resist this:
“When I bought my Acura (with cash) a few years back I’m not sure if I felt guilt or felt I was being extravagant. I’m thinking it may be the latter since I knew I could make do with a Honda or Toyota, but I had to have a little extra luxury.”
Comment #16 — You DID buy a Honda………..
JD–
Thanks for this blog post. I know I have posted this before, but I am working through a federal service program called AmeriCorps*VISTA this year. That stands for Volunteer In Service to America–and my pay reflects my title. If I were to average out an hourly wage based on my monthly living allowance, I’m making below $5.00/hour. My fiance and I share a household, and he is working his way through nursing school with a full-time job that pays under $8.00/hour. We qualify for and receive food stamps, and even with this extra help we struggle with money, always worrying about the littlest expenses.
According to the federal government, we live in poverty. But I work with people in poverty everyday who are far worse off than we are. Unlike many of my clients, we have zero credit car debt. And while we were in college getting an education, we started saving for an emergency fund (and a wedding). I am proud to say no matter what is going on in our lives, we have added a sizeable portion of our (albeit limited) income to those accounts every month. Our hope is that we won’t live in poverty forever and we recognize the only way to move into the middle class is to save.
That being said, I struggle everyday with feelings of guilt for not wanting to live like this forever, for wanting more financial security. Because I work with the poorest people in my portion of the state, I feel like I am abandoning them to save our money and move into the middle class.
So I know firsthand that it’s a difficult place to be in, but I have learned a few things about this feeling. I think you’re exactly right–you should not feel as guilty if you know that you are doing something to share the privileges you have with others and lift them up with you. If we were doing everything to help ourselves and nothing to help our neighbors, then that guilt would certainly be more applicable. But by continuing to give to other people–through time, money, advice in this blog, etc.–that guilt should fade over time as you know you have made a difference in the lives of others less fortunate.
I’m not even ahead of the game yet (debt shrinking/savings growing), but working hard to get there.
And, I sometimes feel guilty.
So many of my friends have such poor financial literacy skills. If I even mention that I paid off a credit card or reached a savings goal, they act like I’m old money wealthy and ready to buy a few mansions. They feel as if these simple goals are completely beyond their reach. I think they so in the grips of consumerism and the debt cycle that they don’t know how to get out of it.
Comment #40 — “A car is just metal on rubber. In the long run it will not make you a better or happier person.”
I insanely disagree. My cars are my life… I’m definitely better because of them and much, much happier because they’re in my life. I also have many awesome friends because of them, and someday hope to make money doing something car-related.
Just had to add that in; I’m sick of people acting like having a nice car makes you a horrible, awful, shallow person.
Yet another wonderful, thought-provoking article JD.
Personally,
I believe you worked hard for your position; you learned to sacrifice and cut back and forego many luxuries and pleasures that others did not in order to earn what you have amassed.
I believe strongly in charity and being humble, but I also believe in enjoying what you have earned. After reading many of your trials and tribulations in life, I feel you are at a point where not only should you enjoy the fruits of your labour, but you are now in the fortunate position to be able to give back to those causes that you are most passionate about.
You’re right — there is not clear-cut answer to this dilemma, however; I believe that feeling fortunate for everything you have and giving to others is a sure way to alleviate the way you feel.
@Foxie || CarsxGirl :
As condescending as it sounds, it’s easy to feel the way you do when you’re 21. Then you grow up. I did it — I poured time and money into a Mustang and the community that came with it. Ultimately what did it get me? Nothing. Sure, I had fun with it for a while. I had friends in Mustang clubs and track days and car shows to go to. And to be sure, owning a nice car doesn’t make you a bad or shallow person. But still, like comment #40 says, you’ll probably look back in a couple years and think “It was just a car”.
To put it in perspective, imagine some a decade younger than you. Maybe a 12-year-old girl who got her first cell phone for her birthday. How excited she is about that little device. How she wanted it in pink. How she was accepted into the cool kids group at school because she got whatever phone’s currently the stylish one. She outfitted it it with all the cool accessories, and showed them off to her new friends, who said “wow, that’s awesome I wish I could afford a turbo kit (or cell phone case or whatever)!”. Imagine her saying “My phone is my life… I’m definitely better because of it and much, much happier because it’s in my life.”
And you’d look at her and think “in a few years you wont even remember that phone, but you’re a kid, so I understand your excitement.” Everyone ten years older can do the same to you and your cars.
I had sort of the inverse problem, J.D. Until recently, my salary was (much) higher than my close friends’, but they were (much) better with their money, so I always *felt* the poorest. This made me feel guilty, especially when they would front the cash for me to participate in group activities. So here I am, trying to absolve my guilt by getting rich (slowly).
PS – I’ve been reading your blog since the panic and just want to thank you for everything. I was already determined to solve the problem before I found GRS, but you’ve been instrumental in helping me change my mindset and pin down effective strategies for managing my finances. As of early August, I have a positive net worth for the first time since I was 18, and I should have my credit cards and most of my student loans paid off by the time I turn 30. I did my own 401(k) asset allocation and I opened a Roth IRA that I plan to fully fund each year. I couldn’t have done it without you!
There are some really great comments on this particular GRS post. I think Charles (#7) said it best. I would like to add, however, that a great amount of guilt felt by those who have money to burn has to do with the plundering of the Earth’s limited resources. There is no doubt that the human impacts on climate change, and environmental degradation in general, caused by excessive consumption is truly manifesting itself in consumer consciousness. If you feel guilty about buying unnecessary material items, you should. It means that you care about the health of life on Earth and preserving precious resources for future generations. If you don’t feel guilty, you need a lesson in morality.
I forgot to mention earlier; regarding Terry’s comment (#40) and Foxie’s follow-up (#64), please consider reading Tim Kasser’s brilliant scientifically-supported book, The High Price of Materialism. The bottom line, materialism is toxic to your well-being.
First off, I love this topic. I talk about it whenever the opportunity arises because so many people are so torn on how wealth could and should be distributed in society. I am among them! Even so, in the dozen years since college graduation and especially over the past few years as my husband and I have watched our net worth grow into a shockingly substantial number I have developed some thoughts serve as my guideposts. Perhaps they will provide direction for you and others as well, J.D.
I should start off by saying that we don’t have the guilt that you write of, but instead we feel a strong sense of responsibility. We are thrifty by nature, took advantage of great educations (full scholarship for one and part for the other), work hard, blah, blah, blah and all the “right” things to get us into this situation in the first place. So we could certainly argue that we have every right to enjoy, horde, and even flaunt what we have. That, however, is not in keeping with who we are.
Like many people, we don’t want our children to grow up knowing how rich we are. I think most of us would agree that breeding a sense of entitlement into children (or adults!) has very negative outcomes both for the individuals and for greater society. We choose not to live in the very high end neighborhoods we could afford, and from the outside our lives look very much like those of our neighbors. So in that sense, our kids could just blend in. But at the same time, we want to teach our children that we are incredibly well off, and that a lot of that came to us through opportunities that we were equipped to accept. Although many of us middle and upper class folks point to various program guidelines and say, “See, everyone has the same opportunity we did to be successful,” the more that you actually interact with the destitute and working poor, the more you realize that they are not remotely equipped to take advantage of so many of those opportunities.
I believe that financial education is one of the keys to unlocking those doors. I financially support programs that work to make this a reality for everyone, not just people who had fathers who taught them the ins and outs at home like mine. Another way that I support these efforts is by volunteering my time as an IRS-certified volunteer tax preparer through the VITA program. I am not an accountant, and you don’t need to be. http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=119845,00.html This has opened my eyes about the disparity in access to opportunity in my own community in ways that reading statistics and writing checks never did. I have also been shocked out of my complacency by other experiences. My husband once was distributing food among weekly rate hotels in town. His team stopped at a horribly run down motel at the edge of our neighborhood. Our neighborhood mailing list includes a good bit of wishing that it would just fall down as well as several other businesses that border the neighborhood. One of the people he brought food to told him that being able to live in that falling down motel for a while now had been the best thing to happen to her in 10 years. Talk about a change in our perspective… Another time, my two-year old and I waited at a bus stop with a newly released felon who had spent all day being turned down for jobs. I knew about agencies in town who offer lots of services to help, but his parole officer hadn’t told him about them. He asked good questions that revolved around access – like whether they were on a bus route. (I didn’t know.) While we waited, he flagged down a garbage truck as it passed and asked the driver if he knew how he could get a job driving garbage trucks – he had heard that the city waste service was willing to hire felons. Are we falling short as a society if we don’t make sure he even knows how to step onto the first rung of rejoining society? If we instead leave him alone to be tempted by the easier path of committing another crime to be “taken care of” again? These aren’t easy questions, and I wrestle with them regularly.
My message to you is that guilt is not productive. Leave it behind. Decide what kind of life you want to live and what kind of person you want to be. Then make sure your money follows your mouth, whichever way that may be. If particular purchases make you feel guilty, it’s probably not something about that purchase specifically that is bothering you but rather a more general uncertainly about whether your wallet is following your values. You mentioned surprise that charitable giving doesn’t take care of the guilt. That doesn’t surprise me one bit. We have been giving substantial sums to charity ever since graduating from college, even before our debt was paid off. But the kind of engagement I described above over a period of several years has really changed how we view and relate to our money. I like FrugalBachelor’s terming of this as a fourth stage of personal finance. When it comes to charitable giving, many people say that you should give until it hurts, but I think that totally misses the mark. When it comes to charity, you should give until it feels good. In other words, once you’ve got your giving directions and amounts aligned with your values and goals, you’ll know you’ve hit the mark. It is never a completely done deal, and you’ll still wrestle with exactly what to do each year. But it sure feels good to watch your money dance to a tune of your making.
JD thanks for opening this important a sensitive can of worms.
Let me preface my comments by sharing two facts that influence everything I write. First, I am a Christian. Second, I live in the third world country of Papua New Guinea.
I have a lady in my house at this very moment who gets paid about $1 per hour. That is 3x the local minimum wage. The pay is outrageously low, but she must be paid in line with her peers because of issues of jealousy.
This lady works hard, has excellent work ethic, and has an amazing personality. Yet, she cannot feed her family three meals a day.
Her story is the story of millions.
I believe spending guilt is an innate awareness that something simply is amiss in this world. As a Christian I believe that awareness is a God infused trait.
We can do several things with guilt:
1) We can bask in it and become so overwhelmed with guilt that we can no longer function with our wealth.
2) We can tame it by giving a little something here and there to charity.
3) We can exploit it – as is often done by many charities
4) We can leverage it by using it as a motivation to make a difference.
5) We can ignore it to a point that be become calloused.
If guilt were completely irradiated we would lose our sense of responsibility to our fellow man. Thus, guilt is not a sickness to be eradicated, but an awareness to be acted upon.
Very interesting, JD, and a great discussion thread going on now. I often feel the same way around our main group of friends, all of which have a couple of kids and where the wife only works part-time, if at all, and who therefore have much less disposable income than my husband and I do (although we are expecting our first child next year).
But what I feel is not guilt, and I wonder if yours really is as well. Rather, I feel *embarrassed*. Embarrassed that we can buy a new house, that we went out to this or that restaurant, whatever. I don’t feel guilty because I’ve not done anything wrong, they’re just on a different path to us. They made choices and while they sometimes make comments about us having it easy that we can do this or that, they are happy with their choice, as we are with ours. But I am conscious that I don’t want to look like I’m bragging to them, so I downplay our news. Because it’s embarrassing.
We have other sets of friends who are childless, and who all work, often in much more lucrative fields than us. I don’t feel embarrassed talking about these things with them at all, in fact most of them are doing better than we are. It’s a relief to spend time with them sometimes.
It’s terrible that we should have to feel guilty after all our hard work!
I don’t think you should feel guilty–you should feel proud. Not everyone has gotten to where you have. I am on my way to your realm–I am already proud of the progress I’ve made, and will never feel guilty
JD,
My boyfriend highly recommended me to your website and I’m really enjoying your posts. Being new to the blogging world, I’ve never posted a comment to a website before, but is very compelled to do so tonight. After reading your post on the Guilt of Wealth, I am reminded of what my boyfriend had said to me on several occassions — you cannot wish more for someone than he wishes for himself (or something like that :).
Your ability to splurge on big purchases from time to time is a result of your hard work. As you said, you used to be a big consumer and spent more than you had, and you had to deal with the horrible reality of debt, but eventually you made a conscious decision to change your bad habits, learn to nurture a healthier relationship with money, and exercised discipline to the point where you can buy things with actual money saved up and not relying on credit cards!
People who are currently struggling with debt has the same option as you did to educate themselves on better spending and saving habits and to engage in a disciplined plan to financial freedom. But they will do it when they’re ready. You cannot wish more for them than they do for themselves…nor feel guilty that you reached financial stability before they do. As someone who has “made it”, the best you can do for someone who hasn’t isn’t giving them money but to show them the way, which is exactly what you’re doing with your wonderful blog! As an old proverb says, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach him to fish and he will eat forever”.
As someone who isn’t in debt, but isn’t financially where she wants to be nor have figured out what should her career path be, please don’t feel guilty that you can buy new fancy furniture and that I can’t. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to buy a toy fancier than yours ;-)
Best,
Eva
Another great post JD and so many good comments here. I am well off, debt free, and have a very significant savings. The only guilt I ever feel is when I hold back from my children. I’d like to give them everything they desire but I know that by teaching them how to earn and save for it themselves they will be far better off. At ages 26, 24 and 22 now I can see the fruit of this harder path as they each make their own way in such a positive, debt free fashion.
However, I have experienced some very interesting challenges that are similar to the guilt you mention. I don’t consider myself “religious” but I do consider myself a spiritual person. As I’ve saved more and more money I’ve become very intrigued by the verse in Matt 19:24 that says, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
That to me speaks very heavily about the responsibility of having money. What you do with your wealth is very important. I have come to realize that a conscientious person that cares about others and the challenges around the world will wrestle with how wealth is supposed to be used. I have come to believe that the guilt you mention may really be more of a sense of deep responsibility that most of us inherently feel to our fellow man. How do we best use that wealth to better others? Having money adds a “weight” about my shoulders that I never anticipated having. For those of us with a conscience having money carries an important responsibility.
I have also found that when trying to explain this to others who don’t have such wealth they will often look at me like I have two heads! I may be a little strange looking but a two headed dude I’m not!!
So what do I do about it? Two things, first, I have continued frugal living, treating myself occasionally but not flaunting it. Second, long ago I found the only way to relieve that weight is to aggressively pursue responsible giving. Responsible giving to me means that it is NOT a handout but results in a situation where someone “learns to fish” instead of just being given a fish. I also carefully examine each organization to make sure that their overhead is VERY low. That’s why I love organizations like http://www.kiva.org. Giving to me is not only money but time!
I also discovered that for my personality I had to do it as anonymously as possible. If I was recognized for my giving I only felt worse. By giving and helping anonymously that weight has become a blessing.
Good luck in your journey JD and thanks for sharing. You’ll figure this out too!
As long as we’re being honest. I don’t really have any guilt that I have more cash than most of my friends. I don’t try to flaunt it around but I do tell them the truth. I was able to save up because my parents were very generous in paying off my tuition bills and don’t charge me for room and board. I’ve worked a bunch of part time jobs, never spend much and made some wise investments. I pretty much act the way around them now as I did when I didn’t have a cent on me.
Regarding assuaging guilt with donations: I need to remind people yet again that many, many charitable organizations need your TIME and your STRONG BACK just as much or more than your DOLLAR.
This is a fascinating conversation and I’m glad you opened the door to it. So many of our feelings about money are related to shoulds and cultural expectations. I think it is so complicated. For me, I have experienced that guilt you talk about, but realized within the past few years that much of it is my reaction to what is being projected onto me from others in my life. I’ve been quite frugal and gotten to a place where there are a few things that I want to spend money on that are particularly meaningful to me. As a result, I’ve gotten this reaction from some friends – “Gee that must cost a lot.” And then I’d notice some guilt creeping in. But my aha moment came when it dawned on me that they spend money on things that are meaningful to them, too, but they’re different things. Operating at some deep level we’re not even aware of, we humans can be threatened when people value things differently than we do or make choices that are different. So I think a lot of the guilt you talk about is a reflection of this.
I think it’s just a variation on survivor’s guilt, not something you should actually feel guilty about.
I mean, if you’re in a car accident and other people die while you live, you’re going to feel that same kind of guilt. It’s not because you did something wrong, because you didn’t deserve to survive, or because your survival somehow cost the others their lives. It’s irrational.
guilt? really? I don’t buy the argument that you feel guilty because of your wealth. I’m sure the less fortunate love it when someone wealthier than them feels sorry for them and guilty over their wealth. seems to me, one, it is a bit condescending to those less fortunate, and two, it makes it about you. really, what do you have to be guilty about? i find it ironic that folks who want to be frugal and not keep up with the joneses continue to assess themselves in relation to others, how others think, etc. I don’t get the difference, because you are trying to convey something that is simply not true or you are pretending to be something you are not. i think it is far from guilt. get over yourselves and move on.
Funny I always find myself in this same situation. Like it’s your fault you can afford things and others can’t.
I guess it’s human nature to sympathize with others.
There are even times we do not want to tell our relatives where we are . My wife and I would normally plan trips without announcing it to others. We are sometimes guilt stricken to afford some not too lavish vacation.
It’s crazy. Sometimes we do not give straight answers when asked if we own this business they saw. Specially if we have a hint that the question is more of just to satisfy their curiosity, we would just give a polite smile.
I think this guilt feeling is because we have been there and we know how it feels to be in their situation and so it makes us a bit careful to offend others with our display of wealth.
Even in giving to charities, we prefer to be anonymous donors than have our names posted all over the place or announced.
It is good to have brought this up. I now feel we are normal people. I’ve developed this notion that we are just being paranoid about financial stuff.
If you feel GUILT for your VIRTUES then you need to seriously and honestly question your moral system (Christianity? or perhaps simply the underlying moral system of Christianity that has percolated even to athiests and others in the West?)
I used to feel guilty about my wealth but not any more. I have come to terms with it and I accept it. Just the same way I accept having green eyes or being born with brown hair….it is what it is. My wealth isn’t happenchance. It didn’t come my way by accident. It was worked for. It was worked for by me and my predecessors.
But I also know that just as easy as money can come your way, it is even easier to lose it. I have come to realize that money and wealth is a gift from God. As long as I am grateful for my wealth, vow to help others less fortunate than myself and never ever do harm with my money, I have learned that wealth is something not to be ashamed of or feel guilty about.
JD, I know you posted that this is not a perfect Randian universe, and that hard work often goes unpaid. And that is completely true. But, that is no reason for you to feel guilty for getting paid for your hard work. The only time you should ever feel guilty about wealth in this way, is if you know you gained your wealth and did not work for it. You cannot fix the injustices of the universe, and it is not your fault that they exist. (Unless you yourself are not paying fairly for hard work!) And giving away your money will not solve this, because then that turns you into a true giver of guilt, by delivering unearned money. Even giving to charity; I would still submit that the majority of charity is to give someone something they didn’t earn.
Guilt tricks like this are a subtle but effective attack vector for those who want to gain your earned wealth without earning it. You really should read Atlas Shrugged if you’re having feelings like this. It will open your eyes to the outcome of actions like this, admittedly reducto ad absurdum.
This all reminds me of a day a couple months ago. I was standing outside a restaurant waiting for someone, when this teenager walks up to me. I was sure he was going to ask for money, and he did. But he asked for it by asking me to buy a CD he made of him rapping. He also explained that his sister was in jail and he was trying to make bail for her, and I’m still not sure whether that was true or just a gag to try to sell the CDs. But I at least admired him for trying to earn the money, when others might have just tried to beg.
If you inherited the wealth I could see where you may feel guilty from time to time because you did not really earn the money. However if you did all the hard work and studying and sacraficed you should never feel guilty EVER.
I have been in situation since I am the guy with the money that I am the one pressured. People assume since you have it you should just give it to them! Usually these are the people that buy all the frivilous items you would never dream of buying and usually they have a story. I need it for taxes then they go and buy a drum set. When they get it home their wife puts a hammer through each drum since he did not spend the money on her. (TRUE STORY) Since I don’t waste my own money it is hard for me to give it to someone else to waste it. I prepare for a rainy day and others ask me to hand them the umbrella. I would never let a love one starve or get evicted but short of that I have learned to say no more easily every year and for the last 10 I have said No almost exclusively without any guilt. Reason….it is always the same people that come back for money. Tell them no and they figure out a way to survive.
Count me in as one of the people who says you have NO reason to feel guilty. You’re reaping the rewards of the many decisions you made to improve your financial situation. I’m someone who also often falls prey to that guilty feeling, and I need to take my own advice. The ones who try to make you feel guilty are usually people who want you to give them something for nothing. I often get angry when people call me “privileged,” then when I tell them about the sacrifices I’ve made to make the money I do (like getting an engineering degree and several advanced degrees, then working my tail off, not blowing money on stupid stuff, buying a smaller home, driving an older car, eating in, etc.), they go, “Oh, but that’s so haaaaard! That’s too much work!” Whatever. Hey, getting my degrees was excruciatingly difficult for me because I chose a practical, difficult field that would make me money instead of something “fun.” I gave them the roadmap to my own success. It’s up to them whether they want to put in the effort to follow it.
@Big Al[86]:
One of the most true sayings I know: “Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. Or at least until all the fish run out from overfishing.”
OK, So I added that last part :)
Wow….so many great comments.
As someone who came from a ‘disadvantaged’ background, I still don’t see the sense in disliking someone because of their wealth. You’ve spent years sacrificing & working hard–living like no one else yesterday so that, you can live like no one else today(thank you Dave Ramsey)earning an honest living…You only have one life, so ENJOY IT!!!
Now what I don’t understand is this “hypothetical” situation: you have an expensive car, put $10K rims on it, a loud a** speaker system, $100+ sneakers, $500+ outfits (almost EVERY day), a mouth full of gold teeth and then pull up and park at your home in the LOW INCOME HOUSING PROJECTS!!! (yeah, I said it) :-( :-( :-( ….and then have the nerve to say that your poor and that you can’t get ahead, because of “somebody else”…oh, I’m sorry, was I ranting???
Anyhow, I think Sherry made a GREAT POINT :-) with the following comment:
Unless you amassed your wealth by stealing it from others, I do not understand why anyone would feel guilty. Don’t accept guilt you don’t earn. If you value something (like a charity) then give to support it. I am not wealthy (yet), but am certainly doing better than some of my siblings. However, I don’t feel guilty because of that. Why would I? It’s like feeling guilty that you an A on a test because you studied, but your best friend only got a C.
I also whole-heartily agree with tosajen’s comment :-) :
— I DON’T feel guilty for anyone who started where I started, didn’t work very hard, didn’t step out of their own comfort zone, and rewarded themselves every stop of the way. Nope. (Thinking about various family members at this point.)
WORD TO THE WISE (including those who feel guilty from coming from “advantaged” backgrounds):
The greatest gift you can give those of us who come from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds is your knowledge, not your money. yep, I said that too :-)
That’s my two cents (or maybe three or four :-) )
The best way to prevent the guilt is to purchase the item as a gift for someone you love. My husband would have a hard time going out and buying a PS3 for himself, however if I’m the one who wants to get it for him as a birthday gift there is no guilt. So JD, learn to think of the furniture as a gift to your wife because not only has she earned but it also serves as a reminder of how much you love her. Furniture> roses
You also do not talk about your finances or brag about the stuff that you do have. Think modesty.
People will not see a purchase as being wasteful if they know that it is something that you love, have done your whole life, and have made sacrifices for. A large fishing boat for a man in his 50s who has gone fishing several times a year since he is a little boy is not outrageous.
It would be a tragedy to let yourself feel guilty for a feeling that someone else may or may not be having. If someone cares about you then the only feelings they will have are good ones when they see how much you enjoy your purchase. No one else matters since they don’t care about you anyways.
The way I look at it is that the guilt of the wealthy comes from the exact same place as the envy of less fortunate. It’s like the equal and opposite force to the “Keeping up with the Joneses” paradigm. We’ve created a world where the less fortunate want to keep up with the Joneses while the more fortunate don’t want to get too far ahead of the Joneses. It’s just a reciprocal human emotion that evolves from our social interactions.
One of the identifying traits of human beings is perspective, i.e. the ability to view a single situation from both yours and other people’s perspectives instead of just your own. That innately human ability leads us to internally combine all of these perspectives into our “world view”. So, we get this weird mash-up of feelings where we get pride from driving an expensive car (our own perspective) and also guilt (the mirror to another less fortunate person’s perspective of envy).
This is my personal view, and it leads me to not worry about those feelings (and I do have both of those feelings very often), but instead to worry about the bigger picture. It doesn’t matter what car you drive, but where you’re going. It doesn’t matter how big your house is, but what you do (and who you have) in it. Having money isn’t good, bad or indifferent, it’s what you do with it that makes it so.
I’d say if your guilt is just a mirror of someone else’s envy, let it roll off your back, but if it is something deeper (maybe you gained success by taking advantage of people, or doing questionably ethical things) then use that guilt as a way to better yourself and those around you.
Ask yourself these questions:
Did I work hard? Did I get where I am without cheating someone else? Did I live by my values?
If you can answer yes to all three, you have nothing to feel guilty about.
Does your brother really want (or need) more material possessions? Perhaps the best thing you could do for him is just “be there” and support him. I noticed you didn’t mention feeling guilty about your Mini, but you did about the furniture – perhaps your old furniture was just fine and you didn’t really need the new stuff?
I think the very fear of that guilt may have kept me from “waking up” until very recently.
People who live fear-based lives have a scarcity mindset (“Everybody is trying to take what belongs to ME!”), but it creeps into the rest of our lives, too: “My having this means somebody else cannot,” which is essentially false, and will cause you to handicap yourself.
There is enough money to go around. You have what you have because of your decisions and actions, and the same is true of most people (heiresses and refugees excepted, I suppose).
More to the point: you denying yourself does not help them.
You’re doing good work here, and you should enjoy the abundance you reap from it without guilt. Guilt will only hold you back from achieving the next levels of success.
If I sound like I’ve been reading an awful lot of StevePavlina.com articles, there’s a reason for that.
@April, #90 – You’d think that people wouldn’t judge someone who loves fishing who buys a fishing boat in their 50’s – at last! But people do.
My husband and I have worked hard, saved a lot, bought a house and a business. Some of this has been done on our own, and some of it with assistance from family. However, my in-laws are children of the depression, so to *them*, anything that isn’t housing and basic food & clothing = frivolous.
Whereas DH and I work hard on the concept of balance, since we see them in their 70’s, unable to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. So we DO travel. We DO have nice cars. We DO save 15%+ for retirement. We DO give to friends in need.
Yet, to my in-laws, the idea that I might buy a new car is HORRIFYING. The idea that we bought jet skis (with CASH) and have used them from May-November every year for 5 years (after renting for 10 years) is HORRIFYING. They just cannot reconcile the idea that buying something simply for FUN or because you WANT to is OK. They equate spending with a moral failure.
And recently, my husband’s brother and his wife split up. As a result, my brother-in-law is going through some financial hardships, since he needs to pay the mortgage on his own, and he needs to buy out his soon-to-be-ex from the family business. When we sent him email about planning for a holiday weekend NEXT JULY, he replied snottily, and said that he guessed he no longer ran in our “financial circle.” So yes, not only do we feel guilty, but our relatives seem to LIKE making us feel guilty.
As I told my husband several years ago – “If we’re the flighty ones in the family, your family really needs to expand their horizons.” :^)
So yes, we struggle. Sometimes a lot. Our answer has been – we’re not hurting anyone. We work hard, and we’re not achieving success by exploiting others. We save. We give. We help. We’re thoughtful when we do spend. We pay cash. So it’s NOT a moral failure to enjoy some of that result. We may not be able to work or travel forever, so we need to be OK with the idea that others might judge us, and do what’s important to us. In the end, personal finance really is personal.
I definitely relate to this post to some degree. I make close to 60k and my boyfriend isn’t even making half that right now (mostly because he has 2 years of his degree left and so can only work part time at a job that pays $14/hr). I feel guilty buying things around him… not only because I know he can’t afford to do the same through very little fault of his own, but also because I feel like my very habits encourage him to spend more than he ordinarily would if we were not dating. This is something I struggle with regularly, but the relationship itself is more than reward enough for that struggle, especially since I don’t see it being a permanent struggle (once he graduates, anyway).
On the other hand, simply buying things is not something we should feel guilty about as a society. We are conditioned to think of the economy as a zero sum game… if I have more of something, that means you have less of that something. That’s not actually the way it works. When you buy furniture, the store that sells the furniture makes money and can employ more people at better rates… and the company that manufactures the furniture makes money and can employ more people at better rates… and the lumber company… and the people who make the coffee every day for the lumber workers… and the country who sells the coffee… and so on and so on. Free exchange is a win-win… you want the furniture more than you want the money, and they want the money more than the furniture. We as a society should embrace that instead of insisting on scrutinizing the intentions and moral character of anyone who buys things for themselves. Society as a whole doesn’t suffer because you chose to buy furniture. That doesn’t resolve feelings of guilt about friends or family, but we shouldn’t feel the need to compensate for buying things by reflexively giving to charity. There are plenty of good reasons to give to charity but guilt isn’t one of them.
>>to the person who made this comment:
>>Anyway- just another side of guilt. What will your >>children expect from you? Even your very Adult >>children?
>>A tough – but real- issue.
I can tell you how to avoid some of the the problems of parental wealth versus adult children’s expectations (based on what my family has done):
#1 – be clear from an early age that your children should not expect an inheritance. Both of my parents (divorced) have made repeated statements about not expecting anything to be left over from their lives beyond some cherished mementos. If I get a dime from either estate I will be surprised and grateful.
#2 – be generous with LOANs but charge your adult (18+) children interest. My dad has done this for both my brother and I and it has worked out well. We both have borrowed some significant sums ($2,000-8,000) at different times in our lives and we have both paid our parent back in a reasonable and timely fashion.
#3 – the best advice I got from Suzie Ormon was the idea that you pay people back before corporations, darn your credit score if need be. Teach your children to understand the value of preserving personal relationships, and they will be able to borrow money even if a bank won’t lend to them.
In my opinion, feeling guilty is the wrong way to go about things…read this story –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm
If this boy felt guilty about being able to go to school and hid the information – it would be such a waste. instead he went out there and helps those who are yearning to learn.
In the same way, if you have wealth – make that something you can share – not necessarily material – simply sharing your story of what you’ve achieved might help someone!
Feel Grateful, not Guilty!
I think this post really hit a nerve. So many people have responded but I might as well put in my 2 cents. Living a frugal lifestyle had always been a difficult goal for my husband and I to reach. We lived in an area where living frugally is like trying to lose weight being surrounded by an all you can eat buffet. We found ourselves constantly hungry for more “stuff” and novel experiences.
Fortunately, we hadn’t managed to have kids yet. I knew for me having kids would be where the rubber would hit the road financially. Because my dad passed away when I was a kid, my mom had to go to work instead of staying home with my brother and I. I knew no matter what, I was going to find a way to stay home. So here I am 7 years into the parenting odyssey and making good on that commitment has changed my life.
If I could name the one thing that has changed for me it is learning a deep sense of gratitude. Living on just my husband’s income proved to be quite challenging and without prayer and an abiding trust in God’s care for us, I would have given up. For quite a while I complained to God about how hard this life we had chosen had turned out to be. However over time, my thinking started to change. I began to see managing our household and its finances as a game to see how far I could stretch a buck. This is where gratitude became so instrumental: I started to look at everything we had as gift from God and I learned to really enjoy it. Gradually, it became easier and easier to say to no spending money because I looked at what we had and I knew it served our needs just fine. I found I was becoming emotionally attached to the worn items we already had because they were a gift from my Creator and like a gift from a really good friend, I treasured it because of the relationship it represented. I started considering myself VERY well taken care of because that was precisely the case.
Seemingly without even knowing it, we gravitated from barely making ends meet to having extra money to save every month. To say the least, I am overjoyed at this development. The clincher is I knew it wasn’t me that did it. It was the work that God did in my heart and I am delighted by His kindness. Loving the treasured less, I am much happier now than I have ever been.
Are you wondering what guilt has to do with this post? Here’s the thing: Because we finally have money to get a few nice things, I find I don’t really want them. I can’t think of a good reason to get a fancy new _____ because the one we already have works fine and I like it. I find I am constantly talking myself out of spending money. Finding the reason to purchase something is now proving to be the challenge. At present I am working on how to spend money with integrity of purpose. I want to know that every dollar I spend supports the principles I know to be of highest value in my life. When I do that, I am satisfied and so is my guilt.
I’m by no means wealthy, but I struggle with being fairly well-off in comparison to my immediate community. I work for a non-profit that employs about a thousand people. Most of us aren’t paid a lot (usually 1k/month or less); part of the reason the non-profit can stay afloat is that we are willing to receive a lower income and effectively donate some of our time. I, however, get paid a little more than most.
I know intellectually I “deserve” to get paid more–I have a four-year degree in an uncommon field; few people at the non-profit could do what I do; I work hard; etc. And If I worked at a for-profit in my field, I would make twice what I make now. But I sometimes feel guilty/cheap when I’m with work friends.
Most of these friends are getting by on a lot less than I am, but they’re the ones who want to go out to eat or go see a movie several times a week, and I’m the one making excuses or suggesting a cheaper form of entertainment. I’m not saying they’re living beyond their means; they’ll want to eat at the cheap Chinese place or see a $5 movie. I struggle sometimes with feeling hypocritcal, because I can afford these things, but I’m aware that they add up, even for me. And I’d rather save money toward larger expenditures (like contacts or car repairs) than spend too much on entertainment.
Or, if I have to make a big purchase, I’ll feel like I have to make excuses for why I could afford it. I recently bought a new-ish car and paid cash, and am inclined to tell people that my parents helped me out. I mean, they did a little, but that was because they wanted to bless me; I could’ve afforded it myself.
My friends would probably be the first ones to tell me not to feel guilty; they’ve complimented me a few times on how good I am with money. (And I do pretty well, thanks to my parents giving me a good financial education.) Obviously this is something psychological that I have to deal with. I’m glad I’m NOT actually wealthy; my issues would be more severe. Guess this is something I can work through right now in anticipation of the day I do start making more money.
I think guilt can be healthy because that is what makes you step forward and do good for others. But I also think that many people do things simply to assuage guilt that may actually hurt others in the long run. It was pointed out early in this list of posts that when we give people things (food, clothing, whatever) we can stunt their drive to do for themselves and we can undercut people who provide those things as their own livelihood. Or we mean to give aid to starving people in Africa and the warlords take it an enrich themselves that makes the conflict last that much longer.
But I think that often people who feel guilty are people who are otherwise optimists. It isn’t so much that you ARE fortunate as you FEEL fortunate. For example I am often waiting for the other shoe to drop in my life because I feel so blessed: I’m due some misery. But when I say that out loud my friends look at me like I’m crazy and they ask about the tenant that cheated me or the unexpected need to remodel my house (huge leak due to problems a previous remodel just painted over). But I take those things in stride. It’s part of life.
I remember being in the fourth grade and feeling really guilty because I was by far the highest performer in the class. It wasn’t fair that I was smarter, it was a twist of fate. And a couple minutes later I was thinking how unfair it was that my family was poor and my classmates had gotten so many more cool toys for Xmas. Then it hit me: LIFE ISN’T FAIR. We play the hand we’re dealt. Money isn’t the only thing that isn’t even. I know wealthy people and high earners who are lonely, bitter, have cancer, are crippled, or any number of problems money can’t insulate you from. And I know poor people who sing like the residents of Whoville on Christmas morning. Life is what you make of it, money is just one part.
I am still working my way out of debt, so I have not yet reached the place of “guilt” over things I have or can afford. I have found, however, that as I save for an item instead of buying it on impulse, that when I finally get the item, and pay cash, I don’t have that same happiness over it. I think delaying that “instant gratification” is very helpful in learning to handle finances properly. I guess with the impulse purchase there’s a rush or a high that one gets. Take away the “addiction” to the feeling and you get a clearer perspective of what you need and what you don’t need to purchase.
All good advice. But, you might add to the list “get a job with a public employer that provides one of the most generous pension benefits in the country.”
I’m guessing that your millionaire neighbor was a public school teacher in Oregon. Public employee’s in Oregon of your neighbor’s vintage were blessed with guaranteed (!) 8% returns on their retirement accounts-regardless of the performance of the market. So, your neighbor has a guaranteed pension for the rest of his life based on a retirement account that grew at no less than 8% per year-regardless of the performance of his other investments. I applaud him for his thrift, his attitudes, and the way he has constructed his life, but he is working from a foundation that most of us will never ever have-the promise of a monthly pension check from a source that will not be depleted.
@JM[102]:
Never depleted? Just like California’s funds, right? And what’s the point of bringing down the neighbor? He still worked for what he has now. If he got a great deal like that, then that was shrewd on his part to take the opportunity.
So can we avoid guilt in this world? We can feel guilty if we are careful and live below our means and purchase things with cash. OR we can feel guilty everytime we use a credit card while getting ourselves deeper into debt.
I know which “guilt” I would prefer to have
I definitely don’t have any guilt whatsoever about any affluence we may have obtained, as it was through hard work. My family is pretty achievement oriented and the gifts I got were expectations, rather than hand outs. This doesn’t mean that guilt doesn’t enter into the situation. In this case, its some of my in-laws that are firmly convinced that we have no problems and all the money in the world, and they aren’t afraid to remind us of that. Through inaction and less lucrative choices (ie. not taking free college opportunities, etc), they haven’t attained a standard of living that matches ours.
The root cause of their envy is the belief that we attained our affluence through some sort of luck, which totally dismisses all the smart moves and hard work that we put into it. We are not lucky, we are fortunate. Now we just roll our eyes when their envy rears its ugly head.
I always seem to come to comment way too late — over 100 comments in front of me, and unfortunately I don’t have time to read them all.
But fear not, JD, you are not alone. We’ve had the same feelings — and we’re just getting started on our life journey!
We aren’t “rich” by any means — we don’t have a million dollar portfolio, we don’t own a mansion… but we have a bunch of cash saved up for various goals (“new” car, emergency fund, etc.). Sometimes I sit and stare at our Excel spreadsheet and I am just baffled that we’ve been able to sock so much cash away (plus our Roth IRAs) when I know many of the people we know haven’t done the same.
At the end of the day it is 100% the choices everyone makes. Sometimes I feel guilt, sometimes I feel regret that we aren’t out there living financially irresponsible lives. (And how crazy does that sound!) One of my fears is that we live this incredibly responsible life and then I die before we get to really enjoy it. (The “live like no one else so you can live like no one else” part of the deal.)
Great post.
There are a lot of emotions that go into feeling guilt over success. I think any/all of the following could lead someone to feel guilty about their wealth:
* You feel sympathy for others who are less fortunate.
* You react to envy from people who are jealous.
* You have modesty about your success.
* You might feel your success is undeserved because you don’t realize how hard you really work or how talented you really are.
* You feel a need or obligation to help others more than you do.
But nobody should feel guilty about their own success through their skills and work.
I do think that financial success is a mandate for philanthropy. I think the arguments against charity by some comments here are really just rationalization for peoples self interests.
@Justin [103]
Not trying to bring the guy down-I’m fine with him having a pension. I wish more people had them.
My point is that this guy operates from a position that fewer and fewer of us will ever be in, which is to have worked under retired with a defined benefit retirement plan (and a damn generous one in his case). A person whose primary retirement income will be derived from a 401(k) doesn’t have nearly the same amount of security.
I don’t feel guilty for being better off than some other people I know. I feel thankful.
Maybe it’s because I still have to work for a living and therefore I don’t feel rich.
More likely it’s because of my parents. They raised me with many of the good lessons on this blog, thus I haven’t had to worry too much about money. I visit here for motivation, not instruction.
Or maybe it’s because I view money as rather transitory. It’s just a tool of convenience that only appears valuable because others will accept it for real things. With the way our national debt is going, we could wake up one day like Zimbabwe with worthless currency. In the end, how you live your life among others is far more important and worthwhile than a number in the bank’s ledgers.
Hello JD!
I’m Tiago and I’m writing from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
I totally understand what you mean because I face a similar situation in my life.
Going straight to the point, here are my thoughts: sometimes helping others to get wealth won’t make you satisfied, won’t make you happy. That’s because you know deep down that some people just didn’t had any chance to do so. They were born poor and had bad education (from family and/or school) and therefore they can’t have what you’ve got. My suggestion is go to a homeless shelter and help them out in some way. Offer your other qualities as human being, not only your knowledge on this matter. I’m sure you will feel a lot better and you will give them something they need, and I’m not talking about money or wealth.
I guess for me it’s easier to see that since I live in a poor country and the social differences here are big and everywhere.
That’s it.
Great blog, by the way!
Cheers.
Various commenters have offered things you can do to resolve the “feelings” you have. My suggestion is a meditational/philosophical one. It comes in several questions:
What is guilt? [There may be several definitions, and choosing the correct one, may help. I suspect it is not remorse, or pity, or regret,… that way you are sure what you are feeling is guilt. Sorry, I don’t mean to be patronizing.]
Who should feel guilt? [Are there conditions that objectively necessitate feelings of guilt? Does you condition qualify? Is it objective or subjective?]
Where does guilt come from? [Does it come from God? Does it come from one’s upbringing or life experiences? Is it good for you?]
If you didn’t feel guilty? Would you still help people out? [I am of the view that helping out because one is feeling guilty is not “pure” or “effective”.]
Are there certain things that enhance feelings of guilty than others? For example, would you be guilty of happiness? Should you feel guilty that you are laughing while other people are crying? How about being born in America and not …? How about being born white? If not, why is that different? [May be because one has control over some things and not others?
I think that once you get to the source of the guilt, you can deal with it more effectively. If your guilt is because you have more, I am not sure you can cure it by offering service. At the end of the day, the question to be answered is “Why am I feeling guilty?”
I cannot claim to have answers to all those questions. It is just a starting point of some spiritual evolution, I think.
Good luck!
What a great post, I really enjoyed it! My husband and I are in our late 30s/early 40s and because of our modest lifestyle, aggressive savings strategy and reasonably healthy incomes, we are consumer debt free and own our house without a mortgage. Not that I would ever trade this situation for something less secure, but I do find that it’s harder (i.e. I feel guilty, as described in your post!) to say “We don’t want to spend money on that” than it is to say “We can’t afford that.” I think that once you’re financially secure, your values become more public, if that makes sense. Other people can see what you do and don’t spend money on when your spending is up to you, and that’s not always an easy thing.
Thanks for the fantastic blog, I really enjoy reading GRS and have learned so much from you and your guest bloggers!
My husband and I have worked diligently all our lives. At 11 he had started with a paper route, at 11 I worked at my family’s tiny motel for a $1 a room. Now at 52, we’ve “arrived” by most American standards. We done it carefully, purposely paying off bills one by one, never indulging in what we could not afford. Now we anonymously pay for students Christian schooling, college educations, and support numerous groups. At this point, I must admit, with all due respect, I take serious offense at “Charles (7.)” comments above. Sir, you berate people who have EARNED what they have. No where on these sites do we see or learn from TRUST-FUND BABIES! For those rich folks, look to the cretins in your own government. Your comment “This is just another reason to restructure the economy to redistribute the wealth more equitably,” shows only contempt and envy that nets you nothing. If you can’t make your own way, then you want to steal from me what I have earned through sweat, blood and tears! So come take it from me yourself – don’t hire government thugs and immoral laws to do what you are too cowardly to do. SHAME on you. You have the same opportunities I do and anyone else does. Do you pay a price? Hec yeah! Is it worth it? Almost always! Did I deprive YOU by earning MY way? NOT POSSIBLE.
So, do I have guilt for working myself to death? No. Do I have resentment to folks like Charles who don’t go out and earn their OWN, but want to take mine? YES.
If you don’t like or take advantage of the awesome equal opportunities we have here, LEAVE. Don’t expect everyone else to pay your way. We have our own families, friends, and relatives we take care of. Why must I take care of yours, too? Wake Up!
How funny but true. We work so hard for many years to get what we want and then when we get it we feel bad about it. I think we get this feeling due to years of accepting we cannot have it, or we have accepted we are from a social level that having a BMW is not normal. Then when we get it – it is a shock to the system and we feel that we don’t deserve it due to the strong hardwired feelings and thoughts we have carried for many years.
All of you who amassed savings on this thread should really feel no guilt. You were working for this money and if you worked for a for-profit business then most likely you were generating value for your company and deserve the money you made.
I’m the CEO of a small company, about $40 million per year in revenue. When I took over last year the company was losing $300K per month, after a ton of work now the company is making $700K per month on the same level of revenue. Unfortunately I have no long term incentive in the company and the private banker owners keep all the profit. However they pay me $250k a year for running the business. I employ 550 people and am responsible to some extent, for their well being in so much as keeping the company making good decisions and not failing.
It takes significant effort to manage the company day by day to maintain results. So I feel no guilt about the money I earn. I follow my heart and give to people who may need it when the feeling is right, but the amounts are usually quite nominal.
My wife & I live quite frugally so we basically save the majority of our after tax salary. I do get frustrated in having to pay a significant amount of taxes especially when I see the gov’t going into more debt and bailing out their political cronies. Having never received a bailout and only turned around a bad situation with sweat and hard work, I don’t subscribe to the bailout culture.
I’ve stopped feeling guilty about money a long time ago, once I actually earned the money I make.
Now I don’t look down at anybody and believe that everybody has their crosses to bear and need to face challenges in their life. This is true in my life and appears to be true in every person I’ve observed. Having money doesn’t make you any better than anybody else and there is absolutely no need to feel guilty about this.
If you follow your heart and do your best you simply can’t go wrong.
-Mike H.
“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.” – Ayn Rand
This is the first time you’ve written a post that has annoyed me :-) I am a middle class urban frugal mom who thinks of money similarly to you. But I think this guilt thing reeks of confused socio-political morality. Modern liberalism teaches us that money is an evil tool of the conservatives so even when we work hard, live in moderation, behave frugally and responsibly, and even give away money to charitable causes, we STILL feel guilty because we associate money itself with something filthy. This is obviously absurd unless you’re living some grotesque bling-bling Dynasty ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ kind of life.
I say dump the guilt. It is a hugely inefficient use of time. If you can help others than great, but you can’t do *everything* for them – they have to meet you halfway or it won’t work.
@Jim[107]:
You are right that my stance on charity is based on self-interest. But it is not a rationalization of my self-interest, but rather a rational deduction, based upon my value of self-interest. I look out for my own interest and those who I care for, and I expect no one else to do so. That is how I live, and I refuse to be guilt-tripped into believing that that is wrong.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-interest.html
@Tiago Garcia[110]:
There’s plenty of anecdotes about people with bad starts doing extremely well and people with good starts doing extremely badly. It truly is much more a matter of effort and willingness to learn an applicable skill. Do you really need a college degree to become a successful carpenter or plumber (who actually make quite a lot)? NO! You just need a good eye, a good pair of hands, and some basic math and reasoning skills.
Blacks and Hispanics start out roughly at the same level below Whites on test scores. By the end of high school, Hispanics have caught up, while Blacks have not, despite other factors being accounted for.
Roland G. Fryer, Jr. has been expanding on this story ever since he himself started with an abusive, rapist father and his mother left. He was tenured in Harvard at age 30, and his primary focus of work is the economics of early inequalities in education. I would suggest you read some of his work; very enlightening.
@JoB[113]:
Preach on! I like what I’m hearing :)
@Pistolette[115]:
This! Way to hit it right on the head again. I find Ayn Rand’s philosophies becoming more evident every day, on both sides of the fence. I see more and more people falling into the traps of the “liberal” thinking you defined above, due to the polarization of the issues based on the current domestic political landscape and actions. And I am realizing that there are more people than I expected that are ready to reject such thinking, and move on to a personal value-set closer to rational self-interest.
Here’s the one question I always like to throw out to people, because one of two things will happen: They will either answer quickly and honestly, or you can practically see their twisted rationalities implode on themselves.
The scenario: Your significant other is sick, but luckily there is a cure! But you can barely afford it, and will likely be in debt for the rest of your natural lives. There are also 5 other people in the hospital, and you have been talking to their families while in the waiting room. You find out that all of them have the same sickness, and the total cost of their cures is the same as that for your wife/husband. Would you honestly let your wife/husband die, in order to save these other five strangers?
I don’t think I’ve met anyone who could honestly answer that they would save the five strangers. But that is exactly what their philosophies of self-sacrifice and the “greater good” call for! This is the key to exposing their true motive: They never want to sacrifice themselves for others, but rather, want others to sacrifice themselves for them. Once you see through this, your guilt and pity for them suddenly melts away.
JoB @113 – Rock on Sister!! You said it so well while so many are trying to take it away. If anyone shows up at your door let us know, we’ll join you in the fight to protect what is rightly yours! In the meantime, let’s take our country back and vote these redistributing morons out of office!!
J.D. – Have you considered how starting a business could provide jobs for the less priveleged? Although I don’t know the specifics, Dave Ramsey counsels people how to get out of debt. Could you start a “Get Rich Slowly” phone-counseling business? Perhaps pulling counselors from your huge and intelligent commentor pool?
Avoiding guilt is why I am thankful to have the Church teach me about charity. Since I incorporated charitable giving (money and time) into every step of my financial growth, I know that I was able to help people all along the way. And since my charitable giving is a percentage of my income, growing my income also helps others.
JD – Money didn’t buy you happiness when you were in debt; what makes you think money will buy you happiness now?
The way I see it, you now have more resources (money, time) at your disposal than ever before. Throwing them at “acquiring stuff” still won’t fill the gaps. So figure out what’s meaningful to you (Crush It?) and use those resources to make the world a better place in a way that makes you happy, too. If the new furniture isn’t doing it, do something else. What about micro-loans to help other people bootstrap themselves out of poverty?
It sounds like you are on track to be living the exact same way you were before with the one difference of not being in debt. It is still the same lifestyle, and the same assumptions: that purchases lead to happiness.
What you have at your disposal are time and money. Perhaps it would be worth considering skyrocketing your spiritual development rather than merely skyrocketing your savings. Meditate daily. Donate (time and money) to charity. Offer free personal finance consulting to people who struggle. Open a non-profit aimed at aiding those in debt to overcome the hurdles needed to make that transformation in their life.
Looking for happiness in the material world is fleeting. You can have anything you want materially. That is easy. Happiness is not material.
Excellent post. This is something my household struggles with regularly.
My husband and I have different philosophies on giving. What ultimately works for us is to each have a budget…I donate mine to several wonderful charities. He puts his in a savings account so he can help out his family when they need it. (I am fortunate that my siblings are on sound financial footing.)
I am currently struggling with guilt over spending. I can afford to *not* be frugal all the time. I’m currently attempting to balance the time/money equation by doing things like going out to eat 2-3x a week (usually once to a nicer restaurant, and the other times to someplace cheap), but it is hard to let the frugal habits die! I console myself by remembering that I have this time with my kids only once so I’d better enjoy it.
I don’t think having a goal and a plan for your future, financial or no, should make you feel guilty. You mention “getting breaks”, but I think opportunity will knock at many doors, and the person has to have the willpower to open those doors.
Sure, if you robbed someone to get your money you should feel guilty. Getting rewarded for hard work should not make you feel guilty!
@ 118
“I don’t think I’ve met anyone who could honestly answer that they would save the five strangers.”
And yet it has happened. At great personal risk to themselves people conducted the underground railroad, hid Jews from the Nazis, etc. Throughout history there have been individuals willing to risk everything for people they didn’t know.
So go ahead and ridicule the “greater good.”
But here’s the way scenario I’d like to see your scenario play out. Not all of us can be millionaires, but all of us together can work together to take care of those who need help so that no one individual has to “end up in debt for the rest [their] natural lives.”
In my option, everyone in the community helps a little and ALL six of the people in the scenario receive the care they need without you or anyone else going into crushing debt. Your wife and the five others all return to productive lives. You are relieved for your wife and the loved ones of the other five are all relieved as well.
It hurts to see others suffering. We all have different ways of coping with our own psychological pain produced by the empathy we feel. Sometimes if we blame the one who suffers (they’re lazy, it was their choice) then we feel our own consciences are relieved. Or we can just say, like the five, they’re someone else’s problem. If they don’t have someone willing to sacrifice everything for them like you would for your wife then maybe that’s their fault too. Maybe they were pricks no one loved so they deserved to die?
I can’t give JD any advice on how to deal with his guilt. I appreciate what I have and feel gratitude for those who helped me along the way. I have compassion for those who started out with less opportunity in life than me, will help out in my own private finances, and will support government programs (unemployment, medicaid, Pell Grants, health care reform, etc) that do the same for the same reasoning as under-lined in my scenario response: through economies of scale and risk spreading we can accomplish more working together.
I’ve read some of Ayn Rand’s work and I know its not for me. Not in its entirety. Its simplifies too much. I feel Nathaniel Branden improved some things with his superior understanding of human psychology. But even then it still doesn’t fully capture the richness of human interactions. The world is pretty complex and its unlikely any human will ever completely understand things, but I think I’ll get close by through constant searching and re-evaluation.
I was a huge Ayn Rand fan when I was younger. Fifteen years ago, I thought she was brilliant. I’m older now, and I’ve seen more of the world. I realize things aren’t as simple as she would have us believe. I also think she does a poor job handling grey areas. Things are not as black and white as in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. Yes, there are absolutes, but not as many as she thinks there are.
Plus, I’ve never been satisfied with what I call the “Eddie Willers problem”. Willers is Dagny Taggart’s loyal assistant and long-time best friend. He’s not a genius, though, and he’s not an industrialist. He’s merely a hard-working guy who wants to lead a happy, moral life. And when the Great Men stop the world, they screw him over — and the people like him.
Also, I find it hilariously ironic that Rand’s ideology has been co-opted by the neo-cons. For decades, she was shunned by liberal and conservative alike. But while the liberals dismissed her as a minor annoyance, the conservatives were especially vitriolic toward her and her ideas. Now they think she’s keen? Boggles my mind. And since so much of the conservative movement in the United States is based on a fundamentalist Christian mindset, how do they reconcile their love of the ultra-atheist Rand?
Anyhow, I still like many of Rand’s ideas, and on a personal level, I subscribe to her philosophy. I just don’t think it’s appropriate for national policy making. It’s too black-and-white and ignores the very real concept of social capital (in a Randian universe, there is no social capital).
When I reach this point, as I’m sure I will, I am hoping that a simple review of my online blog will remind me of just how painful my struggle has been. And then maybe I won’t feel so guilty.
JD – I think you nailed the Ayn Rand discussion perfectly. Your wisdom about how the world works contributes to your blog’s success.
I too was an Ayn Rand fan in my earlier years. I considered myself a “social Darwinist”. But, as you point out, Rand misses the key element of civil society – the glue that holds it together – social capital. Humans are wired to maximize social capital. Societies lacking in it fail. Unfortunately, we are on that course. Read Putnam’s Bowling Alone, and it will scare the heck out of you.
Anyway, I think the guilt you describe is fully related to social capital. If your efforts in life are not dedicated to developing and maintaining social capital, then your actions are inconsistent with the basic function of the human being. A society that emphasizes and supports selfishness is destined to fall apart. Listen to your guilt – it is telling you something. Use it as a guide to do the right thing. You usually do.
@Barnetto[125]:
That would be my qualification that I have never met one. Do I doubt they exist? No. Do I doubt that they are much fewer and far between than those who create such forms of guilt would have you believe? Yes.
There have been great efforts of people working to help others. The scenarios you present are different from mine, in that they are of people fighting against the removal of the right of free life, via slavery and/or extermination. My scenario has no such entanglement. It is a pure and direct placement of you in control of two disjoint sets of life, with the ability to help a single one. There are only two answers, one which is selfish and one which is selfless.
I agree that in a real community, everyone would likely help out a little. I don’t agree that one should help out by just giving away money and time willy-nilly to assuage some misplaces sense of guilt for having worked to earn the money in the first place. I also don’t agree that people should be forcibly separated from their earned money or time, for what has been deemed the “greater good”, because that is in the simplest terms denying their right of free life. Which is what the very people in your presented scenarios were fighting against.
Do I feel empathy when I see someone else suffering? Yes, of course; I’m not sociopathic. The difference is, do I feel that I am somehow personally responsible for helping them, simply because they are suffering? No, I do not.
Let me ask you this: What is the difference between enslaving a group of peoples, and charging them 90% tax on their earnings? I believe the difference is 10%. What do you believe the difference is?
@JD[126] and DC[128]:
I agree with both of you that a purely Randian universe disavows social capital, in the sense of expecting someone to do something for you for no other reason than your previous interactions with them. While social capital can be used for good purposes, it can also be used for bad ones. Specifically, nepotism and cronyism are both negative uses of social capital. A company leveraging its contributions to political office holders to deny things to competitors. A dictator ousting a representative government, by mobilizing to the largest social groups under their cause. The extermination of a group of people, because they have been broken and stigmatized from the rest of society (lack of enough social capital to sway the opinions of groups that they should not be exterminated).
Basically, it is far from the cure-all that you two seem to ascribe it to be, and may in fact have been leveraged in many of the largest negative events in human history. In other words, it is like any other form of capital, and having it only increases your ability to act in whatever way your value set prescribes.
@Justin (#129)
????
Social capital is not a “cure-all”. It is, however, a very real component of society, and one that Rand ignores. She is so anti-altruism that she disregards the possibility of doing something good now for my neighbor (or for my community) with no immediate perceived benefit. From my experience, giving without the expectation of return often produces unexpected and unintended benefits, both for myself and for others. Rand isn’t fond of “giving” if there’s no immediate benefit to the self.
My point is that social capital is largely ignored — not just by Rand, but by most economists — and that’s too bad. It’s a very real and very important thing.
J.D. – Here is an excellent analysis of both the upsides and the downsides of Ayn Rand’s philosophies by Nathaniel Branden: http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/articles_essays/benefits_and_hazards.html
If you haven’t yet read it, definitely do. It should be required reading for anyone who currently likes or has previously liked and rejected her philosophy.
Thank you, Amy. I’ve been looking for something like that for years. I actually have Branden’s The Art of Living Consciously here on my desktop (I used it as reference for the first two chapters of my book). I’m familiar with the broad outlines of his story, but I’ve never read anything like this from him.
I particularly like the bit where he talks about the difference between sacrifice and benevolence. I think this gets to the heart of one of the problems of Rand’s philosophy:
Great stuff. Thank you.
Ha, I had pasted and copied the exact passage you quoted above :)
INTERESTING this post arrived today, simultaneously with my weekly Philosopher’s Notes – on who else – but Ayn Rand – and this week’s booknotes – drumrollllll – THE FOUNTAINHEAD! Check it out here – free clip to listen to and summary if you are NOT familiar with Rand.
http://philosophersnotes.com/titles/the-fountainhead
@ Justin
Those real-life events I presented, the underground railroad and people who helped the Jews during WWII, align perfectly with the stated aim of the contrived scenario you presented. People had options, “one which is selfish and one which is selfless”, and they chose the selfless one. If they don’t help others then they can go on building their own prosperity and caring for their own families. If they do help others then their own freedom and lives are risked.
I grant that most people tend not to risk such sacrifice. But when they do I think they are to be lauded rather than derided. Saving your wife is merely the default, common position. Saving no one is somewhat shocking. Saving all inspires a feeling of great respect in me even if I’m not sure that I’d be willing to go into a debt that would take me 6 lifetimes to pay off. Although given both sets of debt are equally impossible to pay off, logically one might as well go all in and save all six people. Its not like they can continue collecting on that debt after you’re dead.
Now, given that I (and others) have mentioned that Rand oversimplifies things, it seems almost comical that you’ve turned around and asked this question:
“What is the difference between enslaving a group of peoples, and charging them 90% tax on their earnings? I believe the difference is 10%. What do you believe the difference is?”
I could make a list. But you seem to only think there is one (important) difference: 10%. I think you’re not being entirely serious. Ending slavery in the US was just, but if anyone asked me to fight in a civil war against a 35% *marginal* tax rate I’d find them ridiculous.
Rand was a kook and idiot. Perhaps she was a compelling kook, but one shouldn’t take her writing seriously. It’s ridiculous psuedo-capitalist mumbo-jumbo.
Anyone who quotes her is a fool.
There’s a reason she’s not studied in important political science or philosphy programs. (Or at least not any ones I’ve ever seen.) I never encountered her once on a reading list and neither has anyone I’ve ever met.
Maybe she’s not read because so many teachers are anti-capitalist. I made it through school without reading any Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, or Jane Austin. I don’t know anyone of my generation who has read them (not that I’ve taken a poll nor do I want to). But would you describe any of them as ‘a kook and an idiot’? I think Ayn Rand is a useful person to read not because I subscribe to her philosophy 100% but because I think the extreme nature of her philosophy is thought provoking.
What I find curious is there is ‘should’ and ‘will’. I think most of us agree that we ‘should’ give something back to our communities, but there is a very thick line in the sand between that and being compelled to via an increasing tax rate. There are many things I think ‘should’ be, but I shudder to think at them being compelled by order of law.
There is also the argument of unintended consequences. When gov’t seeks to be benevolent with our money it’s amazing how many fewer dollars are created to be taxed. I read a story today about a woman who is looking for a $60k/year job instead of replacing the $120k/yr job she lost because that additional $60k is taxed at an effective rate of 79% because of her higher marginal rate and earning her way out of tax rebates and other benefits that drop off (i.e. need based scholarships/grants, etc). Why would she work that much harder to take home 21c on the dollar? I also find it interesting that in societies with increasing tax rates charitable giving decreases.
Please understand that there is only one point I’m attempting to get across here. And that is that no one is owed any part of your personal success, beyond fair payment for goods and services rendered to you. Whether it be through guilt-induced charity (subtle) or taxation for welfare programs (openly coercive). While I accept the Randian principle of rational self-interest, I accept that not everyone derives value from the same things, and that different values will produce different results. I believe this is what Nathaniel Branden calls “Confusing reason with ‘the reasonable'”. I simply call it, “there is no accounting for taste”. Hopefully that clarifies my position, and I really do believe we are basically all in agreement.
@JD[132]:
I see no disagreement here. They seem to be advocating the same thing: That if you personally find value in charity, then there is no reason why you should not partake. But the idea of it being a moral duty, a moral lien against your successes because others aren’t as successful, I reject. And that kind of lien is exactly what you described in your post JD.
@barnetto[135]:
Their actions could also be seen as selfish, in that they are working to prevent destruction something they value, which is the basic human right of free life. The progression of the Holocaust is a good example as to why this is important for everyone. It started with just the Jews; it later generalized to everyone who is not an able-bodied Aryan. That is why this is an entangling factor, and why it is removed in my scenario.
The loss of free life does mean so much more than that extra 10% of your earnings. I agree completely with you, and I was mistaken in what I said before. The basic point I was badly trying to present is that I see little difference in these two options:
* Forcibly submitting the results of my work to a government, in order for it to “justly” redistribute it, presumably giving me some share of it back to me so that I may obtain the necessities of life.
* Involuntary servitude, where I am forced to work for someone else’s profit, and that person provides the basic necessities of life to me.
The difference between 35% taxation and 100% taxation is just a number in a formula. But the difference to those who must endure it… It is so much more than that. That is what I meant by the difference being 10%.
Aha! Got it, Justin. Thanks.
@137
Would you mind posting a link to the story you mentioned? I don’t take her for the norm and I’d like to see more specifics on her circumstances.
As far as the charities go, you’re not comparing apples to apples. The difference between us and other countries is probably due to culture and/or the fact that there is no need for many charities when government programs fill their role.
@barnetto[140]:
Exactly. I think it’s a version of Diffusion of Responsibility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
The book “Limbo” helped me shed some light on some of these ideas; I recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-Dreams/dp/0471714399
Oftentimes people who have not earned success find it difficult to understand the mixed emotions felt by the newly (1st generation) successful. In this case, I mean both the poor and those for whom success was heavily subsidized by family. I have yet to meet anyone who truly pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps who did not have these feelings.
Intellectually, I’m quite proud of my modest achievements, but it feels wrong for my life to be so easy when it is so hard for so many.
Oh, and on the topic of Rand, the key take-away I like to remind people of, is this:
Above all else, Rand admires competence and creation. Many latch on to the concept of looters while not holding themselves up to the measuring sticks of competence and creation. Both have to be understood to have a more cohesive view of her books.
In this context, it is legitimate to criticize those who would take my property and give it to someone else. Alternatively, it is mine to do with as I please; if some portion of that includes giving, it would be inappropriate for others to prohibit me from doing so.
@JD: My point in bringing up Rand is that her philosophies regarding GUILT, the topic of this post, are very appropriate. I agree with you that she tends to oversimplify, but it doesn’t mean all her ideas are invalid. As an independent thinker I do not disregard wise words simply because my political opponents use them to their advantage. If the neo-cons want to contort Rand for their own benefit they are free to do so. I’m secure enough in my ideas that I don’t feel I have to say the political opposite for fear I may be associated with the wrong party. Btw, I love this blog (esp your garden stuff because I do urban gardening. Keep up the good work!).
Thanks for clarifying, Pistolette. I agree: It’s a valuable skill to be able to take what you want from an author and leave the rest behind.
Extreme thoughts are only worth reading if they are combined with rigor and skill. Nietzsche is a good example of an extreme, but rigorous thinker. Rand may have a compelling style, but she’s neither rigorous nor skilled as a philosopher. Anyone with a charming prose style can sway their reader with bold statements and unsubstantiated claims. She just doesn’t hold up when you really think about what she says.
Many philosophers have charming styles, but they are read because they also have the rigor.
And I didn’t mean my peers directly. As far as I know Twain, Dickens and Austen have not been dropped from reputable English Lit department syllabi. And as far as I know, Rand has not been adopted by reputable philosophy or political science departments.
It’s possible that Rand’s fiction is worth reading. However, the philosophy that underpins it is nuts.
Gee @146: Plato’s philosophic works had many flaws, but we still study them and him to this day in philosophy. Whether or not we study a school of philosophy in a class has nothing to do with its flaws or lack thereof. In fact, if we based our study in philosophy on perfection alone, we would have very little material to study. We should discuss philosophies in terms of their strengths AND their flaws. It’s more likely that the adaptation of new material in a philosophy class is a very slow process, particularly when that brand spankin’ new philosophy (at least in terms of the whole of human history) is very controversial.
Rand was, in fact, very rigorous. Human, yes, very much flawed, yes, but certainly rigorous. And as mentioned above, just because you can point out certain flaws in her philosophy does not necessitate the need to throw the entire thing out and call it ‘nuts’. From Branden’s article, Objectivism states: “That reality is what it is, that things are what they are, independent of anyone’s beliefs, feelings, judgments or opinions–that existence exists, that A is A… That a human being is an end in him- or herself, that each one of us has the right to exist for our own sake, neither sacrificing others to self nor self to others… That no individual–and no group–has the moral right to initiate the use of force against others… That force is permissible only in retaliation and only against those who have initiated its use”. These are all very useful principles, and not nuts at all.
Finally, I’d like to mention that Rand absolutely was discussed (albeit briefly) in one of my philosophy classes when I was in school.
A number of commenters have danced around it, but this guilt that one may feel about one’s material wealth is why many people do change their social circles when their financial circumstances change.
While we are prepared to have varying circumstances, we often dislike being far from the median, and we often dislike having our acquaintances being an outlier as well. Social pressure acts on us regarding finances, political views, clothing, and a whole host of points.
If you have grown up in a circle where substantial debt is common, it feels odd to have no debt and odder still to maintain the no debt. If you grew up in a circle that did not feel advanced education was worthwhile, it feels odd to be studying hard.
It’s not to say it is destiny, but social/family pressure is very, very succesful unless we are aware of the pressure others place on us and the pressure we place on others (It’s a two-way street for sure). Social pressure is almost always disguised, and often has a beneficial effect, so it can’t be discarded wholesale.
When I visit some of my family, I’m the not quite poor relation, and in others I’m the successful one, so I fancy that I can adapt to changes in circumstances quite well, but perhaps I’m just the median.
JD,
Not to be an armchair shrink, but are you sure that you’re separating the feeling of ‘money isn’t buying happiness’ from the feeling of ‘guilt’? I mean… you made the point that the furniture isn’t making you happy. Nice things don’t (and won’t) make you happy. Financial security… now that can make one happy, or at least not stressed and depressed. You’re a lucky man to be able to run a blog, have a good income, work from home, and not have to report to ‘the man’ anymore. Those things are priceless. The ‘stuff’, not so much – that will only bring disappointment if you continue to view it as something that should be making you happier (instead you feel guilt).
Isn’t is more a matter of:
– years of keeping up with the Jones’s and going into debt
– years of avoiding keeping up with the Jones’s and paying off your debt
– suddenly finding that your last name now is ‘Jones’ and getting used to the new role?
I earn six figures and often feel similar guilt-related feelings. Here are the 2 best fixes I’ve found:
1) Give away a lot of money. JD, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good. Don’t keep waiting to be a philanthropist. And don’t be a baby philanthropist by giving away piddly amounts of $50 or $100 checks when random friends as you to sponsor them or when you go to some charitable event. Give until you actually feel it in your checkbook and your heart. It’s an amazing feeling. Start cutting $1000 checks. Or more! You can give nationally, or you can start making an immediate difference in your own area. I know you love cats. Drive to a nearby animal shelter, ask what they need, and give cash or go buy it (food, medicine, crates, publicity for adoption events, a new kennel, etc). You could save dozens of pets today. Just do it and your giving muscle will grow. You’ll get a high from giving away more than you ever thought you would or could.
2) I let myself feel guilt and I sit with the feeling because I think I SHOULD have some guilt. I don’t believe that any of us “deserve” to have more than our basic needs met. I know that my lifestyle is not sustainable on a global level — the world would explode if every person on it had an American lifestyle. I know that I take more than my fair share from the environment. Even “poor” Americans have countless more luxuries and things that go beyond their true needs than people around the globe. Millions (or billions?) of people still live on less than a dollar a day, die because they don’t have clean water, and lack access to basic healthcare. I earn a lot and live a yuppie lifestyle, but I don’t work harder than a lot of people in other professions that our society has decided should receive a lower wage. So, I feel guilty. And I think I should. It’s not helpful if I let that guilt get debilitating. But, it’s helpful because it reminds me not to take things for granted, that I don’t “deserve” my current lifestyle, and that I need to be giving back all the time. If I ever have children, it will also help me raise them in a way that they don’t end up being over-entitled losers.
@KF[151]:
I can’t really address much of what you’ve said, because I don’t really agree with most of it. But here are a few points:
“Society” does not determine the wages of a profession. Simple supply and demand do. Anyone with an able body can be a janitor. High supply, low wages. Only highly trained people can be doctors. Low supply, high wages. Obviously, as said before, there are aberrations to this.
The best way to keep kids from being “over-entitled losers” is to instill in them work ethic, not charity. What happens if your children end up un(der)educated and poor? Will they not expect charity then, because that is exactly what they were brought up with? Charity conditions expecting something for nothing; work ethic conditions getting nothing without earning it.
There is one “charity” that I support when I can: Habitat for Humanity. Why? Well, first I go and work, and I learn home construction and maintenance skills which can be applied to my own benefit. Second, they actually require their beneficiaries to earn their home; they do not simply give them away for free. They must help in the construction or rehabilitation of the home, and they must still pay for a mortgage, though it is a small non-profit loan covering H4H’s outlay of funds into the house. By doing this, they instill pride and ownership of the home into their beneficiaries. It is truly THEIR home that they earned, not one that was simply given to them.
KF (#151)
Thank you for your valuable comments. I think you are correct in accepting a certain amount of guilt concerning your over-sized environmental footprint. It is mostly due to resource limitations that so many around the world needlessly suffer.
I recommend that you seriously consider assuaging your guilt a little by simplifying your lifestyle. As I am sure you know, the material surroundings inherent to the “yuppy” lifestyle will not positively impact your well-being, and the well-being of those you care about. Further, if you do have kids some day (and I hope that you do), teaching them about living simply can be the best lesson you can give them, particularly by example. Not only does excessive material consumption lead to environmental problems, it leads to devastating mental conditions, such as materialism. Regardless of how much you inspire people to give back, the hypocracy of living large will undermine you and yours.
Actually, it is not due to resource limitations that so many around the world suffer. If that were the case, Hong Kong would not be the economic powerhouse it is today. What leads to extreme poverty is a) lack of firmly substantiated property rights (or lack political stability to enforce them), and b) lack of free trade (i.e. having overly strong economic controls, regulations, and barriers in place which prevents small businesses from developing and flourishing). Simply making a transfer of resources from one place to another won’t fix that problem. In fact, in some ways, it makes the problem worse by making those countries reliant on the handouts we give them.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to try to help… on the contrary. But instead of focusing too much on the symptoms, we need to keep our eyes on the underlying problem.
Hi DC Portlander @ 153: I totally agree with you. I guess that’s another useful aspect of guilt and a way the emotion serves us. It helps me keep my lifestyle in check, which keeps my priorities in line, which in turn means that I live well below my means, have financial peace, and have plenty of money to give to meaningful causes. I live in a small 1-bedroom apartment when I could afford more, I do not have a car and only use public transportation even though I could technically afford a car, I am still frugal in my daily purchasing choices even though my income has increased over the years, I am environmentally conscious with most of my purchases, etc. Living a simple life, regardless of income, is quite powerful. And feeling a little bit of guilt over how much I am blessed to have is a good reminder to keep this up.
Justin @152: Society does in fact often determine wages. I am a lawyer in the private sector. I earn much more than friends who are federal prosecutors, state prosecutors, public defenders, federal judges, state judges, nonprofit attorneys and even elected Senators and Congress people who have law degrees. Most of those people work just as hard as I do, they have similar educational backgrounds, and they help society. This is true in many fiends. I am fine being paid more than a janitor, and I agree that my skill set, education and talent should be rewarded to a certain degree. But, I assure you that there isn’t always a rational process regarding how much people are paid.
I also assure you that there are many good charities in addition to Habitat for Humanity. Hundreds of organizations help people help themselves. There is an entire microcredit movement based on this. Other nonprofits don’t really involve “charity” to people — environmental organizations, animal shelters, political campaigns, etc.
I think that the guilt you feel is a beautiful thing. Some of that guilt (I speculate) may come from the fact that you are teaching people about how to be frugal on this site… while at the same time splurging a little bit more. You will eventually get used to being able to afford some of the “finer” things. But you can use that to keep you from going overboard and not getting a swollen head!
Money is a hammer. That is, a tool. Use it well whether you have a little or a lot. As I see it, that means *work* and *build*. The one time in my life that we had money, we re-invested in our home-based business and helped the folks working for us to set up and build their own small business. Even though illness took us down, some of those other small businesses survive to this day.
Do not feel guilty about the tools you have. Instead, use them to build…to the best of your ability.
Before I decided to post I read every single comment, to see if anyone’s made this point and to get a sense of the community on the subject of guilt. There will be readers who disagree with my examples and I’m very interested to hear reasons and other examples. There will probably be readers who disagree with the entire concept, in which case I hope to read why.
I think one source of wealth is worthy of feeling guilty about, another is not.
The first is privilege. Privilege here is defined as something that benefits you, that you don’t have as a result of your own efforts. Morrison #84’s example of brown hair is one case. If brown hair is a tremendous benefit in getting wealth, then it’s a privilege and not an earned item. Examples of wealth-inducing privilege in US society include well-educated parents, being white, growing up in a house full of books, being offered test prep classes, not having to work during the school year. I think this is what tosajen #46 means when ze talks about winning the birth lottery. Since we didn’t do anything to earn these benefits, they’re worth feeling guilty over.
Things that benefit you that come from your work, are earned and not something to be guilty over. Some examples include learning from the good role models around you, making good financial decisions, working hard at what you do no matter what level you start at. If having brown hair were an advantage I guess dying your hair would count as well.
People’s condition is a mix of privilege and work. People without privilege can work hard and do well, people with privilege can waste it entirely. But it’s easier to do well if you have a better starting position.
In my perfect world we’d all have the same starting position; our finishing position would depend on what we do after that.
WilliamB,
If we are to determine what one ought to feel guilty about, we should determine the root and the ultimate purpose of the emotion. From my perspective, the purpose of guilt is to motivate a person to try to change behavior in the future.
So if a person is successful because of privilege, what useful purpose does guilt have? You don’t want to encourage yourself NOT to read, or not to give your own children opportunities that other children don’t have (like, for example, the opportunity of having good parents!). And truthfully, defining what “privilege” really means, and how much that “privilege” has lead to success rather than hard work or luck is very tough.
It’s good to recognize and try to correct for inequities, especially when they exist because of some kind of privilege rather than hard work, but guilt is the wrong emotion. Most people who get where they’re going with a combination of many factors, and telling those people that they should feel guilty about what privilege may have contributed to their success is putting blame in the wrong place. Instead we should all focus on making society better so that more and more people have access to privileges that help people become more productive (like books and college), and so that things that do not directly contribute to productiveness are no longer treated as privilege (like the color of one’s skin).
This year, I paid off my house and started saving properly. I’m 31 so consider myself very well off… and yes, with that comes guilt.
My brother has made so many poor financial decisions. So out of guilt, I loaned him $65K AND let his entire family move in with me, rent-free. He subsequently quit his job and is doing nothing.
Now I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of, and it was my guilt that put me in this position!
My mother is a hard working class woman, my father is a lot wealthier. I was raised by my mother, in a modest home that wasn’t extravagant, although comfortable. I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock, ended up focusing my education on the labor movement and labor industry. I hadn’t thought of myself as impoverished or rich, simply fortunate and comfortable. After I graduated from college my father recruited me to help him manage his business and property. I had never imagined I’d really inherit all of what he built and actually have to be a business person. I have buried a seed with in me to be more inclined to despise business and money transactions. Recently, we’ve spoken of what I will be responsible for… I have always felt uncomfortable by my fathers wealth and have hidden it from friends. I have heard things like “well I didn’t have daddy to help me,” and “some of our parents still have to work.” I don’t feel I have a right to defend the working class or participate in casual conversations about the cost of living, although I have not inherited the wealth yet. I have always had friends with financial problems and it was always very real for them and so I always did what I could to help. I give, I do not loan. I work and study and try to help the ones I love as much as I can. Sometimes I even feel like this was given to me just so that I could eventually give them the life they deserve and the luxury of new cars, A+ health care and unlimited air conditioning during the summer.
JD, although I did not work for my money, there were many things you said that I immediately related to. Thank you for sharing that with me. I have been guilt ridden all my life and it tears me to pieces.
Wow! I just linked back to this post and the comments are wonderful to read. The post is good, but what makes this blogging thing so fantastic is the shared experiences. That alone is an embarrassment of riches. I wish my mom and sister would get on the internet, but they refuse, to their own detriment.
As far as feeling guilty. Mea culpa. I’m not rich money wise, but I know I’m rich, if that makes sense. Certainly I have money, but my richness is derived from gratitude. Gratitude for the sun, the air we breathe, my family, and especially the commenters on this board:-) I wonder if I were to become poor (materially) would I not be happy?
I have a few rich relatives. I guess there is some envy there, but I’m surprised at how unhappy one of them is. So the rich I don’t feel a lack, but with the poor, I wish I could give them all a million dollars. (Though I don’t have that:-)
@Jennifer[161]:
So you feel guilty, because your father put in the breaking work of creating a business that has made him wealthy? And by breaking, I mean many things. For every successful business, there are a magnitude more that fail. It is a financially risky proposition, as well as a personally psychological and sometimes physical challenge. But people take the risk and stress anyway, because they might end up like your father, and be able to bear the rewards. That business was not magically created, and the money it brings in was not stolen. It was given, by the willful exchange of people for whatever goods or services your father’s business offers. For that, there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
Also, your comments make it sound like you and your father need to have some pow-wow time about the future of the company, and your place (or lack thereof) in it.
@Michael Crosby[162]:
And giving all the poor a million dollars would do nothing other than cause inflation to the point where being a millionaire is considered poor.
I was raised by very frugal parents on a farm. I entered the workforce at 20 (1980)and now 32 years later, I feel like I’ve worked hard, but know that I mis-managed my money at times. I furthered my education, switched careers when economiuc conditions demanded it, paid for a house and generally got along, but I also spent money foolishly on useless things. When my father died I received some money that paid off the remainder of my mortgage. I felt guilty, but overtime I also committed to cleaning up my financial act and have adopted a much more frugal lifestyle where I am very conscious about what I spend and on what. Recently, my immediate family sold the family farm and we each received a substantial sum money and now I am confused by the amount of guilt I feel about being financially secure. I am relieved and extremely grateful, but I am also feeling awkward as if all the work I did in the past is now undermined by receiving money. I am also somewhat depressed and anxious. I have enjoyed reading these posts and have got some good ideas about values – I have always thought about setting up a scholarship fund and I am thinking about how to achieve better balance in my life and giving back to the community, something I never really did in the past except through financial contributions when I could afford it. I feel somewhat off kilter about the future and will now be more aware about self-destructive behaviors that could manifest.
I am lucky enough to have been raised by parents who instilled a strong work ethic in their children. I worked 70+ hours a week all through my 20’s while my friends were throwing their money away at the bar or leasing fancy SUV’s. My wife also works full-time and we have been fortunate enough to land careers that place us comfortably in the middle to upper middle class. We do not feel guilty at all because we know nothing was handed to us. To be honest, once we started a family, I now only work an average of 50 hours a week and feel guilty that I am not working as hard as I used to. I know that no matter how much wealth we accumulate, we will never be the types with fancy cars or country club memberships. We are thrifty and do not have all the latest gadgets and toys. We live in an affluent part of the country and are surrounded by millionaires flaunting their wealth. I guess my lack of guilt is because I know that if I am ever fortunate enough to amass enough disposable wealth to buy a mercedes benz or exotic vacation home, I never would. I’d rather give my money away or start a business that provides others with a job and am working to be able to do that someday.
My parents (both with high education) from some accident lived in a poor area in the poorest 9-floor house of the street. Due to the architecture (the house had a space for a cosy yard) people from the house gathered in the yard, both kids and adults. I lived there until 14, then we moved.
I remember people there, some adults, some kids I was playing with. They were same people as others, I loved some of them, but… may I use the world ‘stupid’? They just did all the stupid things people can do. Have fun instead of studying, be cinical about life, sacrifice yourself for a family, laugh on other people, rely on your family instead of becoming financially sustainable – all kind of things which leads to the small profit in short term and big losses in long term. Even if they had a chance to get out of poverty, they wouldn’t use it. If to talk using only logic (without any compassion) they deserved their poverty in a sense their actions led to poverty.
But you know what? They are people, same as us. It is possible to understand only when you are friends with them. And – together with that – they just never had a chance to learn about long term things. No one teached them. No one cared about them in childhood. They tried to live the best way they could in that environment, and because environment was poor and uneducated, they became the same. My family was different because my parents had university degree. My mother pressed me hard to study at school because it was the only way for me to make my way in life. Their mothers didn’t. They just didn’t know that’s its important. And that’s the most scaring thing to understand.
Now I am in a very good position. I will not become extra rich, but I have stable position in middle class, even maybe for upper middle for my kids. I am young, have good health, some good contacts, good education. I am ok. But sometimes I recall the mother of one of my friends of that time – overweight, with low income, family of four in a studio flat. They did their best to get out of poverty, but…. I cannot do anything with that.
And yea, I really can do nothing. When I was younger, I was very active in social initiatives. But the main problem is their mindset or equally education. If you give them money, they will stay poor. They need to change habits, to start thinking about future, etc – that’s key thing. It’s about learning. But everyone who was teaching, coaching or dealing with poor people (I did all) knows how difficult it is to teach. Especially for adults, almost impossible, unless they decided to change their life. Only kids and young people, 30 is somewhere the upper limit. How to help poor adults – I don’t know. Maybe only supporting therapy or smth like that.
I wrote quite a lot but this is what touches me. I hope I will be able to contribute later, with more experience and resources. I was volunteering young, but it was not very effective.
And last. I read only this blogpost, but I like the name of the blog. If you are lucky, if you are moving towards being rich, try to involve your (!!!!close) friends and relatives. Try to make them work hard too. Try to make them learn about life too. It will slow down the progress, but you will get rich with a bigger crowd and (one more important benefit) you will have with whom to socialize. I once heard lecture of one very rich man, he told ‘don’t trust anyone’ – he don’t have friends. That’s very sad old years.
And please, don’t feel guilty :) Be proud that you created wealth. Please :)
With love,
Anna
The only two things that come to mind is that perhaps you can look more fully into any lingering – toxic shame – you may have. Where it came from, and what it really means. The second thing that I think may be helpful is to perhaps look into Energy Medicine (if you haven’t already), and watch the movie The Secret ~ which talks of the Law of Attraction, which is related to our energy, mind, and beliefs, etc. … The more you understand the way the universe works, and the more you know yourself, the less shame or guilt you will harbor. In order to better understand yourself and heal from shame I would suggest looking into the Michael Teachings (soul age, karma, etc.), and also the Enneagram for self awareness. … I am writing this quickly, so I apologize if it comes across as blunt or know-it-all-ish. I don’t feel I know it all, so forgive me if it is over-zealous. Those sources have helped me in healing and being more balanced. Best to you
Here is my simple take… My identity isn’t defined by my bank account. I believed that when I made 40k, and I believe it when I made 100k. I actually have a great salary, have what I consider a reasonable home and while still have some student loans, they are very low interest and I’m plugging away at them. My identity is based on the fact that 1) I’ve been happily married for 15 years and 2) have two great kids who I believe I’m raising right. 3) I’m also a person of great faith so I’m active in my church and in giving back to my community. For me, my income should be a resource to help me be the best that I can in those 3 areas. If things have been crazy at work and maybe my time with my kids was sacrificed, then to me, that Disney Cruise isn’t a lavish, foolish waste… It’s a blessing that I am able to give my kids and family some awesome time together. If my church has a project they are working on to help others and I can drop $500 bucks on it… Awesome. I think for me, that phrase of great power comes great responsibility is golden. I would suggest if there is guilt in this situation, that individual might need to do some soul searching on who they are and how they are fueling what they believe in!