For the past year or so, I’ve begun to notice some things that I don’t like popping up in the personal finance space. Snide comments about other people’s financial choices, judgement, and just an overall lack of empathy about other people’s financial struggles. As a person working through a long debt-repayment journey who has stopped and started more times than I can count-this really pisses me off. As personal finance bloggers we often times lay ourselves bare to the world to encourage, inspire, and educate through our stories. This community is made of people who have never been in debt, have inherited money, are still in debt, have grown their income, and those who haven’t. It’s a space made of human beings doing their best everyday.
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At the time of this show, the longest government shutdown in history has ended…temporarily. Each day on the news there were stories about families on the financial brink of disaster. Including stories of people who literally were on their last dollar. And, some of the comments about those stories-from people in the personal finance space enraged me. Who do you think you are?
You don’t know the whole story.
You’re just seeing a brief video on one of the worst days, during of the worst moments in this person’s life. You don’t know if they are helping other people financially (as the case with 50% of African-American women), if they made bad or good choices, if they are dealing with bad habits, have children, pets, or a gambling habit
Again, you don’t know.
You don’t know how they feel about themselves and the role of money in their life. I felt guilty for a long-time about earning more. Weird, but it has been a mindset issue that I’ve worked on for a significant amount of time.
My goal with Michelle is Money Hungry is to inspire, encourage, and support. Kicking people when they’re down is an ugly look and for those personal finance influencers who choose to continue to do that-you need to check your hearts. How is this helpful?
Listen to the Show
Show Notes
- I make some opening comments about what I’ve begun to notice in the personal finance space.
- Who are we to judge someone else’s money choices? We’re not paying their bills.
- How is your critique furthering the conversation or helping people better their lives?
- A call to action for people in the personal finance space.
- How can you empower people financially?
- What tools and resources can you share?
- Do you talk about earning more often enough? As Kara Perez from Bravely once told me “You can’t out frugal your expenses”
- How can you make people feel comfortable enough to share financial conversations with you?
- Question your motivations. Why are you feeling compelled to say the things that you’re saying (this is a good practice to focus on in general)
- Are you sucking the air out of the room or giving it oxygen?
- Do you think your comments can be perceived as condescending? And, if you think that, it’s probably because they are.
- What do you get from judging other people about what THEY do? Ultimately we all have to live with the consequences of our choices. Me paying off debt for 7 freaking years is an example of that. People are adults and we will either learn from our mistakes…or, we won’t.
- Ultimately, what I’m wishing for is more empathy! When did we become so cold to other people’s struggles? I’m unwilling to not speak up when I hear comments like these. No more! I do believe in karma.
- Why I created “Money on the Mountain”
Related Posts
- Thoughts on financial empowerment (podcast)
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I must have missed who was doing a lot of bashing or shaming of government workers. Good thing too because I would have been upset as well. I’ve always known elitism exists in the PF community, although like you said there are MANY wonderful people in the community that thankfully outweighs those that seem to like the sound of their own voice. I tend to just get as far away from those blogs as possible and never look back because I don’t need that in my life. lol!
A lot of us were like…”dude? Seriously?” but, I feel like even well meaning people begin to forget what it was like to change their financial lives as they make more money and move farther away from that time in their life. It’s a natural thing to have happen. We just have to remain mindful of how we’re communicating with people. You CAN tough love without being a dick.
PREACH. So many of the comments from the FIRE/PF community about the shutdown have been downright disappointing (and unfortunately also not so surprising at the same time).
I’m so over it. And I think that it’s important to speak up on the douche like behavior. If we don’t, then they have the idea that it’s ok.
SO many people within and outside of our community showed their ugly side during this shutdown. I’m so glad there were plenty of us to speak out against it as well but it was really disappointing to see the sneering and disdain. We should be better than this, we KNOW better than most how hard it is to break out of either the mindset or circumstances or both that would make missing two paychecks untenable.
I was unimpressed. I do think that there are still a larger percentage of great people in the space. But, I just had to say something. I’m so over people being dicks.