making it
Ta Nehisi-Coates at The Atlantic has a couple of recent posts on football that led to surprisingly good conversations in the comments. (Surprisingly, because I'm not sure why I even clicked on the ones about this sport I don't follow at all.) In the follow-up to The Second Lives of Pro Football Players, he writes about how football players, like lottery winner, burn through huge-to-us amounts of money inordinately-to-us fast. Partly it's because of the trauma of the game, the live-fast-wear-out-young nature of that pro sport in particular, the ephemerality of fame and the short period of time in which you get those huge paychecks. Partly it's because of the lack of financial savvy that comes of making a rich person's salary in your 20s, before you've had time to figure out what one is supposed to do with money. And partly it's the responsibility of being the only person in a family who's "made it", and all the additional expenses that come with that. If you don't spend it "foolishly" on yourself, it's all going to go for other people, because you can't just sock it away into savings or investment when everyone you care about is in need. Or maybe you can, but that requires a coldness and calculation that takes time to develop, and economic advice you probably don't have access to.
I have never been a pro football player or won the lottery, or in fact, made much above the median income. And I'm presumably in a pretty stable line of work. But that last part, about what it feels like to be the only one, that resonated a lot with me. It's often something I have a lot of trouble explaining to everybody who feels securely in the middle class, this subtle difference in perspective. Because when you're short on money, everyone helps each other out. And why should that suddenly change when one person is not? But the unlevel playing field is hard to deal with, and even huge sums of money are eventually finite. And the obvious advice on what to do with money isn't obvious, and you always feel like you're making it up as you go along.
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I have never been a pro football player or won the lottery, or in fact, made much above the median income. And I'm presumably in a pretty stable line of work. But that last part, about what it feels like to be the only one, that resonated a lot with me. It's often something I have a lot of trouble explaining to everybody who feels securely in the middle class, this subtle difference in perspective. Because when you're short on money, everyone helps each other out. And why should that suddenly change when one person is not? But the unlevel playing field is hard to deal with, and even huge sums of money are eventually finite. And the obvious advice on what to do with money isn't obvious, and you always feel like you're making it up as you go along.
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comments. Leave a comment? (Click "Log in with OpenID?", top right corner.)