Doing This

From Buzzfeed (I know), here’s a story about a woman who paid off student debt by getting a higher-paying job. Buzzfeed focuses on the amount of debt and the video the woman made to celebrate paying it off, but her method of knowing what to ask for after she realized her current job underpaid her is genius:

I went to work the next day and decided to talk to one of my white male coworkers. I said, “Hey, so what are you making?” He, being a normal American person, was like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about money.” So I was like, “OK, I’m going to give you a number and I want you to tell me if you make over or under that number.” And I said a solid six figure number. And he said, “Under.” I went down by $10,000. He was like, “Over.” And that was all I needed. […] I blasted dozens — and I’m talking dozens — of people [on LinkedIn] with the same email, saying, “Hey, I’m looking to make a career jump into one of the big tech companies, and I just want to know what you’re making. Can you just tell me, are making over or under X?”

With that info, she was able to interview and negotiate into a new job that gave her a salary jump of 41%. As she puts it at the end of the interview:

There’s a burden that we carry by not sharing what we’re making with each other. It perpetuates this idea that it’s all up to you to figure out how much you should be making, when really you are working for a series of employers who have pay bands, or salary caps, or freelance amounts set by what people are willing to work for. All that the secrecy has done is put the burden — and the shame — on the individual. The only way to circumnavigate that fucking capitalist bullshit, which is built on secrecy, is by having these incredibly uncomfortable conversations.

This is what privilege is — to have a casual conversation with gatekeepers. I was always jealous of friends whose parents were able to set them up for a coffee, an email, or a phone conversation with these people, because it’s those things that give you not only a network, but a spectrum of what you’re worth. That is what I think so many people do not have access to, and that’s one of the reasons why I am vociferous about talking about this.

 

 

The Season Of Stuff

I’ve fallen into the the SALES! and DEALS! and “hey if you’re buying something for this person, add this thing for you and get FREE SHIPPING!” traps. (My inbox for all of December pretty much looks like this.)

This essay by Kimberly Harrington–“Nothing You Buy Will Change You“– could have been written by my better, funnier self. I, too, once did a shopping fast, and I have been trying (until this month when J. Crew started 60% off sale and Madewell had 30% off for Black Friday, ahem) to only buy ready-made clothes from responsible sources. Clearly I’ve fallen off the wagon, so maybe I need to use Kimberly’s trick:

When I’m considering buying something I ask myself, “What am I hoping for from this?” and 9 times out of 10 I leave empty handed. Most importantly, I no longer look to any of it and think, “how can you change me, thing? How can you make me better?”

Reading About Money

I still need to blog about how transformative Your Money Or Your Life has been; I’ve paid off credit cards and am about to start seriously saving for a chunk to invest per “The Book’s” instructions. So this longer piece on the “20 psychological biases of money” (I think found via Kottke? I’ve been clicking around a lot lately) fit right in with what I’ve been thinking about.  Some quotes:

There are over 2,000 books picking apart how Warren Buffett built his fortune. But none are called “This Guy Has Been Investing Consistently for Three-Quarters of a Century.” But we know that’s the key to the majority of his success; it’s just hard to wrap your head around that math because it’s not intuitive. There are books on economic cycles, trading strategies, and sector bets. But the most powerful and important book should be called “Shut Up And Wait.” It’s just one page with a long-term chart of economic growth.

and

Wealth, in fact, is what you don’t see. It’s the cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The renovations postponed, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. It’s assets in the bank that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

[…] When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they really mean is “I want to spend a million dollars,” which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire. This is especially true for young people.

A key use of wealth is using it to control your time and providing you with options. Financial assets on a balance sheet offer that. But they come at the direct expense of showing people how much wealth you have with material stuff.