Rachel’s Musings

I have a confession to make: I am tired of people telling me that I look so young. I know, I know, some people spend thousands of dollars to get face lifts to look younger. But every time someone says “oh, you look so much younger,” I crinch. People don’t believe me that I have a teenage son. People treat me like a 20-something. Oh, you say, you’d love to look this young! Believe me, please, there’s a dark side to that: if you look young, you’re treated as if you’re young. I often feel like people don’t take me serious. People at work seem to discount that I have 10 years of work experience because to them, I look like I’ve just finished college. It is very frustrating! I blamed myself for this for a long time. After all, I sometimes don’t act my age either because I refuse to take life too serious.

And then I read about studies that showed that “adults who have baby-faced features [...] tend to be seen as warm, kind, naive, weak, honest, and submissive” (Social Psychology, p. 97-8). I realized that there might be something going on here - maybe this wasn’t just my imagination. There might be some genetic programming going on. Or maybe, I just don’t act my age… Clearly, though, there is some stereotyping going on. Of course, most of the stereotyping goes the other way since our culture adores youth. Yet, when it comes to wisdom, age still counts for something. I don’t claim to be exceptionally wise but I do think I know a bit more about life than I did in my 20s.

That is the key of the Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) program devised by Joe Dominguez back in the 1960s “to extricate himself from the shackles of wage slavery” (xv). The longer version of this equation is: “Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for” (54). Dominguez argues that this reflects the essence of money, after dismissing the traditional definition of money as a means of exchange, which he argues is only valid “within the confines of cultural agreement” (51). A lot of time is spent in the accompanying steps to drive this point home. Money earned and spent is tracked down to the last penny and then converted to the life energy. Supposedly doing this helps reduce spending and ultimately reach financial independence. For me, it led me down the path to Ebenezer Scrooge. Because I didn’t like questioning every dime I spent, I took a more skeptical look at the program.

What is life energy? It is essentially time; the time we’re alive. So, money = time. We trade our time for money. That sounds to me like it’s a means of exchange: I give my employer time, she gives me money. Our cultural agreement is that we get money for the time we spend on the job. The underlying premise of the program seems to be that we’re wasting our time at work to buy stuff we don’t need. And as soon as people see that by tracking every penny, their spending drops magically so that they can get out of debt and retire early. If this doesn’t happen after you finished the program, you must’ve skipped a step. Magic only happens if you follow each and every step religiously.

The idea behind the program is a noble one. I think many of us do overspend and buy stuff that we don’t really need. And despite all of our spending, happiness remains elusive. There is a lot to be said for simplifying our lives and decreasing our footprint on this planet. The program ignores though something very fundamental: why people consume and overspend. It’s not because they haven’t realized that they’re wasting their time at jobs (which is in itself a rather arrogant assumption: some people like their jobs). It’s because we have needs and wants that are not being fulfilled by our modern society. We fill these gaping holes with stuff. Sure, maybe if we spent less time at our jobs, we have more time to built community and enjoy our lives. But why do I have to waste my precious time tracking every penny I spend? Why do I have to figure out exactly how much I have earned over my life, including allowances and money earned watching babies? I think by ignoring the underlying issue - the unmet needs - the program has turned into a rather mechanistic process, boiling everything down to charts that show our spending behavior.

To lead a more fulfilling life, you have to track every penny you spend. Well, no, not really. To lead a more fulfilling life, you need to figure out what adds to your life and what doesn’t. Money is a tool, a thing. It is not time. It is not life energy. Equations like that put way too much emphasis on it. Dominguez touches on fulfillment but he again ties it to money: fulfillment is reached if the amount of money you spent on something was worth it. He becomes money-obsessed, too. Charts and tables are not going to change our attitudes toward money. We can simply ask after a purchase “was this worth the money?” (Or even better ask that before a purchase!) We don’t have to go through the convoluted process of tying this to life energy, which does not even exist. More importantly are those questions that Dominguez only briefly touches on: What brings me most fulfillment? What is “enough” for me? Did how I spent my time or money add to my life? Money and time are two distinct things. Money is a means of exchange - whether you put the intermediary “life energy” in there or not. Time is something less tangible but it is certainly finite for each and every one of us. Instead of writing down how much you spend on that cup of coffee, smell the coffee, taste the coffee, and enjoy it. And if it didn’t taste good, buy something else the next time. Or maybe, just sit in the sun and enjoy the warmth. Our society is already too money-obsessed, we don’t have to turn that obsession on its head because it will remain an obsession. Money is not that important to spend our life energy on! Time is the real precious commodity.

Apparently, Internet tracking and cameras are not enough for employers to monitor their employees to make sure they don’t misbehave. Ron, from the Frame Problem, made me aware of Microsoft’s Orwellian Innovation: a “software program capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, competence and physical wellbeing.” While one of the commentators pointed out that this could be used to benefit employees, it likely will not. Businesses are just not set up to worry about the well being of employees. They are not measured on that. They are measured on financial performance. Although Gallup (and others) argues ad nauseum that happier employees are good for the bottom line, reality is that widget-making is just not fulfilling. Even if those widgets are now services, most employees are still just peons without much impact on the larger workings of the business. Lip service aside, we really do not know what is going on, where the business is heading, or even what the most important recent business decisions were. We have no input on decisions that directly impact us - from bonuses to lay-offs to number of hours worked. In such an environment, it is hard to imagine how more monitoring would help me be more engaged at work or would otherwise benefit me. That would only come from a restructuring of how businesses operate - a more democratic environment rather than the current autocratic structure. This leads me to the conclusion that this program can only be used to ensure that I do not do things that my employers deems unworthy, such as musing over why works sucks so much… And if I muse too long, or get too stressed out, I’ll be monitored out of my job.

Reflecting on the Q12 veneration in the company I work for, I realized that this is a perfect enticement to become married to one’s job. We’re not supposed to be just satisfied with our work. We’re supposed to be engaged! Satisfaction isn’t good enough. It has to be engagement - the first step toward marriage… But why should I be engaged if there is no prenuptial agreement? When I am employed at will and there’s no reciprocity in commitment? Yes, they are paying me for my services, so let me be satisfied with that. If you want me to give you my soul, ensure me that I will still have a job tomorrow and the day after. According to Ilene Philipson’s research, it is not even good for my mental health to be engaged or married to my job (in her book “Married to the job”). She also eloquently shows that the commitment is one-side: there is no job security. I can understand why an employer would want us to be engaged: more productivity with (likely) less pay. It’s a good thing for them. But I fail to see why it would be good for me.

Why do pedestrians not stop at red lights? What is so important in their lives that they can’t have a few seconds or a minute to stand and breathe? Is it really worth risking their life?

A red light can be an invitation to stop and breathe, something we do so seldom in our hurried lives nowadays. So, next time you’re hurrying along, tempted to cross the street because there are no cars, honor that light and stop. See what happens if you focus on your breathing and turn this “annoyance” into a mini meditation.

With the economy continuing to deteriorate, everybody in the financial services sector is worried. Rightfully so. At work, I have been assigned a multitude of projects to figure out why our losses are getting higher. Well, I would guess it’s because the economy is getting worse but who am I to think instead I work away at the projects looking for the needle in the haystack. I have this strange feeling that there is no needle, no smoking gun. As a banner in Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters said: It’s the economy, stupid. Our initial analyses even show this: there’s deterioration across the whole portfolio; strongly suggesting that things are rough for everybody. Yet, we continue our mad search for the needle… Maybe it’s so that we have the feeling that we are doing something; that we are in control, after all, even though we clearly aren’t.