Wealth Wisdom System

Even if we aren’t any happier, you’d think that we’d at least have the traditional symbols of success: money in the bank. Not so. Our savings rate has actually gone down.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, the U.S. personal savings rate has hovered mostly between 0 and 1 percent over the past three years. By comparison, a quarter centrury earlier in 1981, Americans saved an average of 10.9 percent/

Not only are we saving less, but our level of debt has gone up — way up. By late 2007 consumer debt had topped $2.5 trillion, more than three times the total at the end of 1990. That’s more than $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Every eight seconds a baby is welcomed into our society with a big “Howdy, you owe us $8,000″ — and that figure doesn’t even count the newcomer’s share of the national debt. You’d cry too.

Debt is one of our main shackles. Our level of debt and our lack of savings make the nine-to-five routine seem mandatory. Between our mortgages, car financing, and credit card debts, we can’t afford to quit. More and more Americans are ending up living in their cars or on the streets. And we’re not just talking about poor people or the mentally ill. White-collar workers are the fastest growing category of the jobless. Layoffs are happening at an increasing rate in all sectors, from the automobile industry in Michigan to IT professionals in Silicon Valley.

– Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez

Psychotherapist Douglas LaBier documented this “social dis-ease” in his book Modern Madness. The steady stream of “successful” professionals who showed up in his office with exhausted bodies an empty souls alerted him to the mental and physical health hazards of our regard for materialism. LaBier found that focusing on money/position/success at the expense of personal fulfillment and meaning had led 60 percent of his sample of several hundred to suffer from depression, anxiety, and other job related disorders, including the ubiquitous “stress.”

Even though the official workweek has been pegged at 40 hours for nearly half a century, many professionals believe they must work overtime and weekends to keep up. A 2003 national survey from the Center for a New American Dream found that 3 in 5 Americans feel pressure to work too much. In addition, a 2005 Conference Board study revealed that Americans are growing increasingly unhappy with their jobs. A study found widespread declines across all income brackets. We are working more, but enjoying life less (and possibly enjoying less life as well). We have developed a national dis-ease based on how we earn money.

– Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez

Even if we were financially able to turn our backs on jobs that limit our joy and insult our values, we are all too often psychologically unable to free ourselves. We have come to take our identity and our self-worth from our jobs.

Our jobs have replaced family, neighborhood, civic affairs, church, and even mates as our primary allegiance, our primary source of love and site of self-expression. Reflect on that for yourself. Think about how you feel when you respond to that getting-to-know-you question, “What do you do?” with “I am a ________.” Do you feel pride? Do you feel shame? Do you want to say, “I’m only a ________,” if you aren’t meeting your own expectations for yourself? Do you feel superior? Inferior/ Defensive? Do you tell the truth? Do you give an exotic title to a mundane occupation to increase your status?

Have we come to measure our worth as human beings by the size of our paychecks? When swapping tales at high school reunions, how do we secretly assess the success of our peers? Do we ask whether our classmates are fulfilled, living true to their values, or do we ask them where they work, what their positions are, where they live, what they drive, and where they are sending their kids to college? These are the recognized symbols of success.

Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors’ bedside manner with the ill and dying?

– Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez