The Last Taboo: A Journey from Silence to Truth

“How often do you discuss money with your friends? Does it depend on the friend? Do you ever talk about saving and investing? Are certain subjects (such as salaries) taboo? And, most of all, do you find these conversations as rewarding as I do?”

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J.D., at Get Rich Slowly, raised these questions back in June, and I have been thinking about them since. When I was a kid, my parents never spoke outside the house about money. Not to friends, not to relatives (except for saying yes or no to loan requests), not to anyone. Salary discussions were taboo. Dad handed Mom house money each paycheck and that was it.

Looking back, I wish I could have discussed money with my mother. A child of the Depression, she would have had lots to tell me, I suspect. I know a little from my aunt – about moving one step ahead of the Landlord, about sitting through multiple movies for a dime, about Grandma managing somehow to keep them fed and housed even though Grandpa gambled; but that’s about the extent of anyone’s ever sharing about money in our family.

When I was a young adult, I learned that it was safer to discuss my sex life with friends than my money. It was the 70′s and the middle of the so-called “sexual revolution,” and the things my friends were willing to discuss were, often what we would now call TMI (“too much information” for those of you who have been living under a rock or in hiding for the last decade or so).

When I worked in the private sector (first in real estate, then in financial services), the taboo was even stronger. You never mentioned how much in debt you had gotten, or your salary. In fact, mentioning your salary could get you fired.

Then I got burned out and left the corporate sector. I started to look at the hole I had not only dug with both hands, but had willingly jumped into. I started changing my ways, but the extent of discussing money with anyone was explaining to my landlord that I got paid every other week. Since that meant that I would occasionally have to be late with my rent, I wanted to know if she would accept the rent in cash on those occasions (she had no problem with that).

Then the brown matter hit the rotating blades: My landlord sold the building and I was forced to move in with a friend. We made an arrangement re the rent, and that was that. Until the day her mother called me in hysterics because my roommate had bounced a check for over $1750 on her. First I got yelled at by her mother, then by her best friend. Something her friend said triggered the whole mess unraveling, and was a huge wake-up call for me to change my ways.

That was two years ago. Since then I have been changing my ways, and learning to break the taboo of talking about money. Mind, the most I will publicly say about my salary is that it is less than $20,000 per annum. However, I have started to talk with others, both in real life and in my The Dangling Conversation, about the changes I have made, am making, and will continue to make.

I defer to J.D. again:

“I learn just as much by talking about money with my friends as I do from reading personal finance books. Even when our topics are mundane, the context and the setting for these conversations somehow make the subject more real, more alive. Here are just a few examples:
• What our parents taught us about money
• What do you want to be when you grow up?
• Some thoughts on goals and adult education”

It has been an eye-opener. It has also been inspiring, and scary, and well worth the effort to break the taboo. I have found untold support, friendships based on trying to do better for ourselves, ways to save and to start putting myself first, ways to not fall apart when my roommate screws up again, and most of all that I am not alone in this fight.

So, let me restate J.D.’s excellent questions, with the hope that as you think about them, you will find some answers that galvanize you into action:

“How often do you discuss money with your friends? Does it depend on the friend? Do you ever talk about saving and investing? Are certain subjects (such as salaries) taboo? And, most of all, do you find these conversations as rewarding as I do?”

Otherdeb (Deb Wunder) is a 55-year-old writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to her writing (she is a published short story writer, and has a blog called The Dangling Conversation), she makes beaded jewelry and knits (and takes commissions for both), reads anything she can get her hands on, and gets paid to keep a high school cafeteria under control ten months a year. She is between half and three quarters of the way to becoming debt-free.

Photos by: hank

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