Are you ~not interested~ in money?

brewster's millions made it seem like a drag. typical hollywood un-romanticization?

voted 'i don't care about social stats'

Paraphrasing Citizen Kane because I can't be arsed to google the correct quote:

"Yes, sir. This newspaper is losing two million dollars a year. At that rate I'll be flat broke... in 130 years!"

This was when Charles Foster Kane was still young, foolish and bubbling over with exuberance. Later, of course, he gets his comeuppance.

After reading a Lucy Mangan op-ed piece which had me gnashing my teeth with frustration at its heteronormativity and also its assumption that all adult women are in ~relationships~ (let alone relationships with men) I suddenly had to wonder if this question was gendered.

Because perhaps "I wouldn't want that much money" takes on a different meaning if uttered by a man or a woman, on account of how women and men are socialised to *think* about money.

And I have read depressing studies about how, when the same job is advertised at a pay grade of £25k it will get twice as many female applicants at one advertised at £50k - whether because women lack the confidence to apply for presumably more senior roles with more responsibility, or because we fear that well paid a role will consume more time that we have, or if it's because women are socialised not to think of ourselves as worth too much, and fear that we'll be slapped down as ~unmarriagable ballbusters~ if we earn more money than our male counterparts, etc. etc etc.

I suddenly realised that it was just weird that I asked this question, given my bents and my interests, and never wondered if there was a gendered aspect to it.

imo the whole thing becomes a lot more nuanced in ways that the question doesn't really address when you have a spouse and kids and can literally watch on a day to day basis how being someone who is ~not interested~ in money can be pretty shitty for the people that you love and that not caring about money is its own kind of selfishness

this was how i interpreted "caveats" and it is horribly otm

but hey, money is still shit to me

A poll of how much people earn relative to their partners might be interesting. Same as, less than, more than, partner doesn't work but I do, I don't work but partner does, etc. So many permutations to consider though -cohabiting, mortgages, etc etc.

prolly mostly less than as we are all wasting all our days on ilx rather than doing actual work.

yeah but i'm still getting paid tbf

until they sack my gedrunken ass

There you go again with the "assuming everyone has partners" thing when "living alone" is the fastest rising group in most Western countries. (read that in several new sources recently - that Erik K-something's research.)

Not that living alone is automatically indicative of being un-partnered, but it's becoming increasingly true that partnered is no longer the default state for western adults.

i'da said that i'm in an income bracket where more money/spending power *should* still be v important to me, but i just moved to a city where my real income will be probably stretched a lot more than was the case, so i guess i'm not as bad as i feared.

I thought the partners-earning-differential would be an easy-ish way to look at whether attitudes to money are gendered. I wasn't assuming they'd live together - hence the cohabiting permutation - and I only suggested partners because it gives a direct comparator (which would usually be) across genders.

People's partners are a self selected group, and therefore not likely to be random, or even indicative of any general pattern.

This is so often the problem with talking about gender, that people generalise from "my partner does X..." to "all women do X..." and it's a dangerous trap to fall into.

True, true, and ILX is a self-selecting group as well (arguably even more so).

I tend to specialise, in that "from "my partner does X..." as opposed to "most women do X..." "

Which is also wrong, but.

i hate money i want more of it so i can forget there is such a thing

― coal, Thursday, April 19, 2012 7:40 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ this

also you'd need two polls one for men and one for women if the question is about whether you are more/less interested than your partner in order to get info on whether it is gendered ?

I tend to think "not caring about money" is often the result of being raised comfortably unaware of money. I say this as someone who grew up kind of comfortably unaware of money -- not trust-fund rich or anything, but comfortable and with parents whose attitude was that everything was always fine. When I was in my early 20s and watched my parents start to have real financial problems as my dad lost his once super stable job, my attitude about money shifted pretty quickly.

I tend to think "not caring about money" is often the result of being raised comfortably unaware of money

Agreed.

hating money's death grip is not the same as lofty disdain tho

yes because one is caring and another is not caring

partly i hate its death grip on my dad's sense of the world i think, if ever anybody was an Oscar Wilde definition cynic then it's the guy who tried to fill me with his world-view

Like when it hit me that "Oh wait, you can't afford to fix the kitchen cabinets that are falling apart right now? Oh wait, you have to make choices between trips to visit us and trips to visit your mother?" etc. it finally hit me what money is really about. I mean I was living in run-down apartments and wearing thrift-store clothes and not doing anything extravagant, and in my mind that was "not caring about money." But I still had this vague sense of security, probably with an assumption that my parents could help me if I really needed something.

If you call your dad he can stop it all...

I see how those brought up in a financially comfortable environment could not care about money in many ways. But there also seems to be a subset of the lower middle class youth who are flippant about it. Maybe because there is the realization that they may never be in a position where they have a lot of money. Best to say that you don't care about it. Otherwise it could just be depressing.

"not being interested in" != "not caring"

There is some serious semantic wiggling going on in this thread to change the question being asked.

I care about having enough money to live, but I couldn't give a fuck about the stuff itself and how it moves around. As evidenced by the fact that I've been paying into a pension for nearly ten years but have no idea how it works, for example.

Because I tend to see "being interested in money" as v v much a "rich person thing." So how can that, and "not caring about money" (as a "rich person thing") be conceptually the same thing at all?

"Not interested" implies not caring to me, a kind of disinterest as opposed to merely being not avaricious or whatever.

A lot of poor people are pretty interested in money if you ask me.

there are different kinds of rich people?

I mean at some basic level the flow of money around the world affects everyone's lives unless you're living in a hut self-sufficiently on a mountain or something. Not being interested in it on that level is a bit like not being interested in the weather or the environment or something.

This is my perspective on money; it’s different to what it was at the beginning of the year.

Looking back it’s pretty clear that the main reason why I stuck with the job I had was because of what it paid. The job was killing me every which way – there’s no need to go into details here – and I was clearly driving towards a brick wall at 300 mph but would I pay any attention?

The stroke was a huge shock and a greater jolt; it’s the biggest kick up the backside I’ve ever had in my life (and believe me, I’ve had some kicks). Really, I’m lucky to be anywhere, let alone on ILx. It became clear that not only could I not go back to my old job – it transpired that I didn’t want to. So I took less pressurised/stressful work and now I work four days a week (I get Wednesdays off to go to the Anticoagulant Clinic and get a bit of rest). And yes, it represents a 20% loss in earnings but actually I have found that it doesn’t matter that much; we (as in my wife and I) have continued to live a good and plentiful life even with the reduced income. The money is less but the quality of life is immeasurably better.

Make no mistake, the stroke was the medical equivalent of a final written warning; change your ways, or that’s it. So I have, and I feel so much better for it; people I know keep coming up to me and remarking how much younger I look now! I guess, therefore, that the answer would be: I care for what money can get you, but interest in money in and of itself – I don’t really have any. I understand why some (richer) people would have interest in the currency, its moving and handling, but yes, as long as we have enough to pay for a roof over our heads and food on the table then that's fine by me. I don't know if that answers the conceptual dilemma but it's the best I can think of at the moment.

I read that Lucy Mangan piece as well and agree that it’s ridiculously over-generalised. Then again, remember she’s Boris Johnson’s sister-in-law!

I have been using caring and interested interchangeably. Can see how there could be a differentiation though.

"Caring" to me is a kind of "have to." "Interested in" to me is a kind of "want to." There's a definite difference in focus there.

Yeah it's more the negatives that feel interchangeable "I don't care" and "I'm not interested" mean more or less the same thing to me, although maybe "I don't care" is a bit harsher. It's all semantics, there are loads of interesting interpretations of the question.

Yes, I’d agree with that differential. “Have to” is still essential for me, but “want to” means something different to me than the craving for acquisition, for notches on one’s financial belt. It’s amazing in everyday life how often I come across “want to” types and it’s not confined to the rich. It’s this Medusa thing some people have; they idolise money, will do anything they have to, even at the risk of their own health, to get as much of it as possible.

"I don't care" and "I'm not interested" are distinctly NOT the same to me.

"I don't care" = "I don't have to" while "I'm not interested" = "I choose not to."

"I don't care about money" = that person is either super rich, or lives in a cabin with a goat.

"I'm not interested in money" = that person has made a choice not to make money the primary focus of their life.

Imagine a football match on TV.

Who do you want to win?

"I don't care" = "I am enjoying watching the match"

"I'm not interested" = "I am enjoying reading this book"

"I don't care about money" = that person is either super rich, or lives in a cabin with a goat.

"I'm not interested in money" = that person has made a choice not to make money the primary focus of their life.

Well I don't qualify on either count for the first one, so it has to be "I'm not interested" and that's how I've cast my vote.

It'd take a massive amount of money for having money in and of itself to be worth it, imo. Difference b/t 60k and 160k is what ... slightly nicer versions of the same stuff? and you'd probably have to work 60-80 hours a week for that privilege of slightly nicer. For money to be worth it it'd have to be enough to live like a debauched Roman emperor or effete world-traveling eccentric.

Imagine a football match on TV.

Who do you want to win?

"I don't care" = "I am enjoying watching the match"

"I'm not interested" = "I am enjoying reading this book"

This doesn't actually make sense but whatever. I suppose the point stands that people who are interpreting the question in different ways aren't interpreting it wrongly.

xp The difference between 60k and 160k would probably be retiring ten years earlier.

Probably. But you're just taking away the hours and years of your youth and tacking it onto the years when you're older, though wiser I suppose... if you're lucky to make it that far. This is assuming you have to spend most of your waking day working for that 6-figure salary. Retirement is the victory lap around your own death. Definitely looking forward to that.

Yeah you're losing out on youth but I dunno, being able to retire at 55 and not work while you're older and frailer has its appeals as well.

but what about

"I'm doing it because I care"

vs

"I'm doing it because I have to"

different things???

xp Retiring at 55 definitely sounds appealing, but what I worry with that is the longer in the future we plan, the more unexpected and unpredictable things are likely to happen. Plan at 25 ... plan depends on constants through 55. I had a friend who was on the retire-at-55 plan, then he suddenly met a girl, and a year later he's now a husband and a father.

"I'm doing it because I am interested" is altogether different

I think, even when semantics are disputed, one can still be interpreting the question wrongly.

Like, if the question were "Do you love money?" and people started debating "well, yeah, I like money, I like having it, it's useful, so yes I like money" it would be valid to say "the question was not whether you *like* money, but whether you *love* it."

Semantic differences in words can still be salient.

yeah, and then you can get to the territory of people collecting coins and notes.

<3 Aussie money, for example.