Making Friends with Your Finances
(Page 3 of 5)
July / August 2003
By Jon Spayde, Utne magazine
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And the American economic system is testing us at ever-higher and more artificial levels every day. In his book Financialization of Everyday Life (Temple University Press, 2002) social critic Randy Martin traces the transition in our culture from saving to investing as the chief means of building wealth. As Martin notes, this shift from socking away money in pensions or savings accounts to “managing a portfolio” has made it incumbent upon the average man or woman to become a successful market player—“to invest wisely, speculate sagely, and deploy resources strategically,” as he puts it. Once upon a time (before the 1980s) fiscally responsible citizens were expected to pay our bills on time and direct some discipline toward the household budget. Now, after 20 years of free-market “reforms,” we must possess the skills of an accountant, stockbroker, and CFO just to keep our heads above water. To help us with this impossible task, a plethora of books, Web sites, and TV and radio programs crackle with the Newspeak of investment culture: mid-caps, 12(b)1 fees, price-to-book ratios. Increasingly, in the culture’s eyes, to fail to become a player in this ultracomplex world is to fail as a functioning member of society, as a caring member of a family, as a serious, adult human being. That’s where my mind gives out altogether.
It’s no wonder that a powerfully emotional substance like money, organized (or disorganized) into the hyperreal whirl that is our economic system, creates casualties—not just the expanding ranks of the poor but also the walking wounded of the middle class, who both abuse money and are its victims. These include the chronic debtors, overspenders, people who simply toss all the window envelopes into a bag and hope that the whole sorry mess of economic obligation will just go away. Debtors Anonymous, a 12-step program that helps chronic debtors (and people with many other kinds of money distress too) publishes a list of “Signposts on the Road to Becoming a Compulsive Debtor” that reads like a symptomology of money malaise: “Unwarranted inhibition and embarrassment in what should be a normal discussion of money. Unusual difficulty in recalling and relating specific obligations to available funds. Unrealistic expectations that there will be funds available in the future to meet obligations incurred in the present. A feeling that someone will take care of you if necessary, so that you won’t really get into serious financial trouble.”
Debtors Anonymous’ solution, like that of all 12-step programs, is corrective action and the acceptance of personal responsibility, within a framework of spirituality, a nonreligious dependence upon a higher power. “Money is not the problem, only a symptom,” declares the DA literature, and that declaration is worth taking seriously.
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