Why do we still have so much trouble talking about money?
I'm scarcely any better at being candid about cash than I was at 15
Yesterday I was listening back to an interview I recorded a couple of weeks ago with the writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Taffy, the phenomenally successful author of the bestselling book and smash hit Apple TV series starring Claire Danes, Fleishman is in Trouble, now has a new novel out, Long Island Compromise, which is very different and yet in many ways very much the same. It’s about ageing and (thwarted) expectations, it’s about generational trauma and, above all, it’s about wealth and the indelible impact having and not having it has on us.
Because we were speaking for the new season of The Shift podcast (coming 30 July) we inevitably talked about age – how overrated youth is, the lies people tell you about middle age, nose jobs (to have or not to have), and a bunch of other stuff – but also, crucially, money. Taffy has a vested interest in this, not just because she’s written about it extensively in both her books, but because she’s interested in the fundamental difference between people who come from it and people who don’t. (She’s the latter, in case you were wondering.) The way in which those who’ve never had to think about where the next month’s rent/food bill/gas bill etc is coming from and what will happen if it doesn’t, can never really understand what that might feel like and can’t imagine the anxiety that might accompany you everyday of your life, even if their own finances take a turn for the worse. Her theory is that you either live on the knife edge of having not enough cash, or you don’t, regardless of how much you actually have in the moment.
Willingness to talk about money and its impact is a rarity. I have interviewed women of all ages and backgrounds, but I can count on one hand the women who have willingly talked about it. There were two. Two! Out of 200.
This willingness to talk about money and its impact is a rarity. Within the parameters of The Shift, I have interviewed women of a wide variety of ages, backgrounds, races and sexualities but, other than Taffy, I can count on one hand those who have willingly talked about money and their relationship to it. In fact, I can name them: Lisa Taddeo and Sarah Pinborough. Both writers who wrote books that broke out and brought them commercial and financial success.
That’s two – two! – out of almost 200 episodes.