Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Money As A Means Of Social Connection

From barber shops to country clubs, money often grants us social connection within our community. This is why it is so difficult for people to give up their patterned ways of spending money. It is not that they lack self control or will power, but often times changing the pattern of spending means a loss of social connection. It may be happening at very intimate levels like your neighborhood where you are known on a first name basis, but it also happens in those more anonymous places like the movie theater.

For every level of income, there are expected levels of social engagement. When we lack the basic resources to be able to engage at our "appropriate" level, we feel a disconnection from our community. We may not be able to fully articulate what or why we are feeling disconnected,  but there is a deep awareness of not being able to participate in "standard" social commitments of our social class.

Social connection occurs at many levels and in many ways. This is why we must develop our critical awareness around the need for social connection and how having money helps to facilitate our connectivity to the community and culture that we live in.

When I have talked with people who were raised in a low socioeconomic position within their community, they often have a strong dislike and frustration, with those who possessed obvious signs of wealth. At the same time those that had sufficient resources at their finger tips often where not fully aware of their social privilege. Sure they may nod their hat to the wealth of experience and consumption they had relative to others, but they would have to look above their social class to feel the same feelings of inadequacy that those from a low socioeconomic position felt toward them.

Recently, I met with Sally whose husband had taken a significant pay cut with a new job. She was recounting how she previously could not understand how people could go into home foreclosure or not afford some of the basics of life. She had lived with privilege, (to no fault of her own) which prevented her from understanding scarcity and struggle. That was until her husband lost his ability to earn a large income. They too then faced and narrowly escaped foreclosure on their home. As she told me this story, you could see the realization in her face that she had misunderstood what it was like to live without money. She thought other people just had issues with poor money management; now she knew that other life circumstances may have affected their financial picture.

When financial planners, relatives, or friends tell you to stop spending so much money, what they are not taking into account is your underlying desire to maintain social connection. Sure, we can all exhibit a certain level of personal control over the way that we spend money. However, we must account for the change in personal and social connections that will happen if we stop spending our money in certain ways. There are deep sociological and psychological factors that are driving our desire to remain connected to our community. This is what makes it difficult to change our spending patterns.

I have heard of doctors, attorneys, and executives who are all seemingly unable to stop the spending, even when it is obvious that it is putting them close to financial ruin. Yet, it is at these very moments that the objective information no longer makes sense to these individuals. Rather, they are trying to deal with the emotional fall out of being disconnected from their community. In moments of desperation, they often fall into making more and more irrational decisions in attempts to overcome their anxiety of not having enough. These individuals will take larger business risk then what is otherwise prudent, or may start offering unnecessary procedures all in the hope of generating more money.

If you must curtail your spending for any number of reasons, recognize that this is a serious challenge and one that will have bumps in the road. It is not as simple as just telling yourself to stop spending. Having a plan will help, but having emotional and relational support will be even more important during this process of adjustment. The process of change usually occurs over months, if not years. Expecting the changes to happen in a day or week, will set you up for disappointment.