I want more money

An inconvenient truth for an anti-capitalist

When I started working in personal finance media — nearly 10 years ago, omg — I thought I’d hate writing about money. I’d spent five years as a struggling freelance writer trying to hold tight to my creative integrity, which, in my mid-20s, I defined as never asking for money and accepting literal poverty while I spent my days writing down my daydreams.

Even once I realized I loved writing about money, it wasn’t for the reasons I hear from a lot of other personal finance creators. Their story usually starts the same way — with real scarcity or at least financial disarray — and ends with them loving personal finance because it taught them how to control their spending and make more money (usually, through investing).

I didn’t ever become interested in turning my money into more money or reining in my spending. I came to love writing about money because I love learning how things work. With this caveat, I’ve been able to stay in the personal finance world and maintain the creative integrity of being a Person Who Doesn’t Care about Money.

Except. Of course I care about money.

I rarely choose the money-making path over the path that leads to fun, happiness, something interesting or an answer to my curiosity. I don’t greedily hoard savings or overcharge clients or avoid taxes. I don’t care about making the most money.

But, some more money would be nice.

That’s hard to admit for the person in me who’s still an artist, who’s working class, who’s a feminist, who’s a socialist, who believes in equity and compassion and knows I’m already consuming an unfair amount of the resources our world and society have to offer.

Name it

This morning I was schooled by an episode of Kendra Adachi’s The Lazy Genius Podcast about what to do when you’re bored with your life. I’m not exactly “bored” in this year of launching a book/electing a president/growing a new business… but I’m at the tail end of a dark winter malaise in a dreary, brown small town, so I was game for the exercise she walked us through.

The exercise starts with naming what you’re bored (or generally discontent) with — life, relationship, job, wardrobe, home, etc.

The next step is to check in on the context. What’s making you feel this way, and why now?

Then, Adachi asks, if you could snap your fingers and change something, what would you change?

This step caught me by surprise.

In response to my malaise, the snap-my-fingers solution that popped into my mind was “I’d have more money.”

This comes after a year of writing a book where I disavow greed. Of choosing a lower income so I could drop work that didn’t align with my values. Of draining my savings to pursue the next goal. Of divesting from the stock market to make a point about capitalism.

After all of this, my instinct is to… want more money?

Adachi, being the genius she is, recognizes this judgment is coming, and the next step in her exercise is to “soften” it — take the edge off of the snap-your-fingers solution to dig deeper into what you’re really wanting.

I certainly don’t live my life craving riches, so why do I feel like money is the answer to my discontent?

It could be that I need a break from the quietness and sameness of this small town more often, and money makes travel easier. It could be that I’m worn down by some of the compromises we make to keep the print shop running, and we could say no more often if we didn’t need the money. It could be that I miss taking full days to write, and having more money would give me space to do that again. It could be that I’m just off a week of PMS, which comes with depression that makes me feel more rudderless and helpless than I am. It could be that winters in Wisconsin are long, dark and isolating in a way that sneaks up on me every year.

What can money buy?

Me in NYC, 2018, with a full-time income on a spacious vacation

Through this exercise, I can see money isn’t the thing I crave. I crave choice, freedom, spaciousness.

As I’ve made choices that have shrank my income and other resources, I’ve also allowed my world to shrink, and that can make me feel suffocated and without agency. I know money can buy the space I’m craving (because I’ve had it before), so my simplest longing is to have more money.

I don’t have to be ashamed of this. It’s not greedy to want space for rest, creativity and connection. I don’t necessarily need money to make those things happen; now that I’ve named the need, I can figure out steps to make it happen without snapping my fingers and magically having more income.

But it’s also OK to recognize that money could make it happen. It’s OK to choose money sometimes in order to unlock choices that are in line with my values, goals and best interests. It’s OK to let money be something that’s important in my life; that doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

As much as I fight against budget culture, its either-or mindset still plagues me.¹ As I realize budget culture’s rules of restriction, shame and greed aren’t the right rules, I feel the tug to learn which alternative rules are the right ones. (I know that’s just more budget culture, but it’s hard to resist!)

Divesting from budget culture — and living in integrity with whatever values you hold — doesn’t have to mean divesting from money or society altogether. We can live within the reality of this world without accepting it as just the way things are. We can vote for change while coping with our present conditions.

We can — I hope — want a little more money without completely losing our integrity.

1. This is also especially acute for me because I’m autistic. I’m not diagnosed with OCD, but I resonate with this description of ethical OCD related to autistic special interests from

D.L. Mayfield

:

Obsessive Compulsive Heart

And there’s the high level of moral integrity that autistic people often adhere to, which is illustrated well in this

Autistic Culture

podcast episode about The Good Place:

Episode 58: The Good Place is Autistic