7 lies we (and 1 that women) tell ourselves about money
7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
I like the "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" blog, for several reasons:
- It defines "rich" as the balance between financial independence and lifestyle freedom that works for you
- It's competently and clearly written, and well-organized
- It focuses on non-sensationalist tips that really work, changing things you can actually control, making decisions that will improve your whole life (not just your pocketbook), and being conscious of your problems and "Knowing Thyself" as essential steps towards forging financial solutions.
And if you were only ever going to read one post on finance, or on that blog, I would probably recommend the "7 Lies We Tell Ourselves" one. Not only does it list seven fantastic "Know Thyself" jumping-off points, but by reading them in in this format, you should learn what it is that you need to focus on about finances, whether it's planning or investing or working on behavioral fixes. That method - to pin down what your individual weakness is, and address it realistically - is the fastest way *I* can think of to effect good change.
I have one complaint about the article, however: In Tip #1, they discuss negotiating for a salary.
Negotiating a salary is a good idea, and it's a good idea to learn how exactly to do it, because it can make you a lot of money without changing anything else about what you're doing, and how to do it is not really obvious to most people. So not only am I glad Ramit mentions it in this article; I think his including a video with detailed instructions for negotiating a salary is a great lagniappe.
However, as a former financial counselor and a frugal person, I've seen videos and other instructions of this type quite often, and this one makes one of the common mistakes that makes me go yyyrrrrrggggggghhhhAAAAAAAAAYOUIDIOTS! and foam rabidly all over my keyboard. (It's not pretty.)
The mistake?
The woman in the video (and it is almost always a woman who says this, even when the material isn't explicitly aimed at women) just has to point out that women make less money than men, and that women are not very good negotiators ("by nature" is assumed even if not said) and often aren't shown how to do it…so obviously, you know, that leads to the completely logical conclusion that if women were better negotiators, we wouldn't have such a problem with wage disparity.
::FACEPALM::
Of course, it's no accident that the woman in this video is younger than me, recently graduated from Stanford and got 60K/yr at her last, poorly-negotiated job. So if I, or someone else, were to say to her, "YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. LET'S TELL ALL THE WOMEN WHO WORK AT WAL-MART TO NEGOTIATE BETTER SALARIES, AND MAYBE WAL-MART WILL AGREE TO PAY THEM THE SAME AS MEN," I'm sure she would be genuinely shocked to ponder that, for the vast majority of women, being fresh out of Stanford and needing to pull better than 60K out of your next round of "recruiter" interviews is not, in fact, the main problem.
(Note: It may be that Ramit's audience for his blog is simply this group, of very-upper-middle-class rather-clueless young-ish people…but he doesn't explicitly narrow his advice to them, or say anything to that effect that I'm aware of. And for the most part, I think his advice is very good no matter where you are on the economic treadmill.)
I'm not saying that salary-negotiating advice would not be useful to lower-income women, not at all. But be serious - if most women in this country tried "negotiating" a salary at the kind of jobs they work (which are more often low-wage or crappy to begin with), they simply wouldn't get hired. It's actually been shown quite clearly that just demanding wage parity can get you fired.
Now, if MOST of the women in this country suddenly demanded parity, that would probably change something - I imagine we're too much of the workforce now, for society to tolerate a general strike. But we have families to feed, too; and one stereotype that is correct is that most women would rather suffer some indignity or lack than put their childrens' food supply in danger. So Wal-Mart can probably rest easy on that one.
The next woman in a hundred-dollar suit to tell me that "if we were better negotiators…" though, is getting foamed on. Ugh!
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.