No Stupid Questions - 81. Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Money?

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

What’s the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy? Could the taboo against talking about your salary be fading? And why did Angie’s teenage daughter call Vanguard to learn about I.R.A.s?

Wait, is this a trick question? You're listening to No Stupid Questions, the podcast that explores the weird and occasionally wonderful ways in which humans behave. Here are your hosts, Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth. Okay, why don't we try something new? I'll start. Ready? Okay, go. Angela, read me a question right now. Stephen, here it is. Hi, Stephen and Angela. Why is money so hard to talk about?

Oh, this is not from you. This is a listener question. See how I intuited that? You're so clever. This is from Naomi. I'm recently working on a project about improving people's financial literacy. During the process, my teammates and I started talking about our financial journeys, and we realized we had so many similar financial questions or issues that we never talked to anyone about. And here's the question for us, Stephen. Why is it so hard to talk about your money problems or even if you're financially secure, so hard to share advice or talk about your finances with others? Your sincere and loyal listener, Naomi. It was called Money Makes Me Happy, parenthesis, Except When It Doesn't. And this book was inspired by behavioral economics, the early days. But also, I just observed that there are these big topics that everyone says you shouldn't talk about in polite company, right?

There's religion, there's politics, there's sex. But it struck me that money was another topic that we shied away from. So I spent a couple of years reporting on all these different sorts of money situations, inheritance and loss and secrecy. And I was working on the book and then I met Steve Levitt and then we wrote a Freakonomics book and then another and I put it in a drawer. But I think what attracted me to it is that we attach a lot of emotion to money and really don't dig down into what that emotion represents. And therefore, a lot of people mismanage money in a lot of different ways because it's too hard to talk about. But maybe for these other topics like politics, sex and religion, it's at least more obvious why they're emotional topics, why they could be sensitive topics. But like money, in some ways, money should be the least sensitive topic. It's just currency could be sensitive topics. But like money, in some ways,

money should be the least sensitive topic. It's just currency. That is true. But it's an amazing invention. We fail to appreciate, I think, what an amazing invention it really is. If you think about how many things you do in a given day that involve money in some way,

whether it's buying, selling, investing, paying taxes, giving charity, all these different activities. I mean, what is money? Money is a fungible resource. The invention of money has made it possible for people to actually trade things in ways that are much more efficient than bartering. I'll give you this bale of wool and you'll give me that bucket of salt.

Right. And so instead of that, it's like, let's just use this intermediary money and then everything can go through that. So this thing, which is in a way supposed to be this abstraction that allows us to trade things. What's so interesting is how much ego is bound up in it. I mean, these transactions are not just about dollars and cents. They really are about who you are, your identity and your status. There was a really nice piece about this topic in The Atlantic a couple years ago by Joe Pinsker. It's called Why Americans Don't Talk About Money.

And he interviewed a lot of people who think about this and made some really good points. So, for instance, a sociologist named Rachel Sherman argues that money taboos vary a lot based on class. People often feel bad

about how much money they have. So not talking about it makes that feeling of badness go away. That's at the upper end. Meanwhile, among middle class Americans, the piece says, the ban on talking about money is instead often brought on by financial precarity. Working class families tend to not have those hangups because the utility, money is the thing you need to make a certain amount of to do the

things you need to get done. And therefore, it doesn't have necessarily all these emotional connections. I wonder if it really is more taboo at the top of the socioeconomic ladder and less taboo towards the bottom. I don't know for a fact, but that argument rings fairly true to me. There is a line in the Talmud that is, the more flesh, the more worms. Hmm, that's vivid. More money, more problems is the modern version of that. So it's easy to say that, well, certain people have a hard time talking about how much they earn or how much they want to have or

how they compare to other people in their family or their social circles. But then in the same Atlantic article, this sociologist Rachel Sherman makes the point that there are all sorts of proxy conversations we have about money. Everyday conversation is filled with questions about what people buy, what they do for a living, where they went to school, where they send their kids to school and these other subjects. They want to know what social group you're in. Exactly. And by the way, we should talk about the psychology of taboo, right?

Because like that's really what this question is about. All right, let's back up and go there. You want to define it? So my good friend and my colleague at Wharton and at Penn is named Phil Tetlock. Phil got really interested in this feature of all societies where, depending on the society, different topics are considered profane. They're considered violations of sacred norms. And you could argue that talking about money is one of these taboos. And the reason why Phil got so interested in taboos is that it's not just that

it's a little bit bad to be talking about certain subjects or to voice certain opinions, but it really is like thinking the unthinkable. What would you say is a heightened example of a taboo that most people would think about when they hear the word? For example, thinking about like, what price would you pay if somebody wanted to buy your child? Okay, there you go. That inspires moral outrage. Let's remove it from the financial realm entirely. How about, you know, having sex with someone in your family? Yeah, exactly. But what's interesting about this word taboo and the things that we think of as taboo topics is that there is a connotation of disgust. is that there is a connotation of disgust.

You're leading us to Freud, it sounds like, because Freud was a believer that people had this kind of problem with money because it was connected to these emotions that were off limits, yes? Yeah, I am not a Freud expert, but I do know that Freud believed that money was something that would inspire disgust and shame. And so Freud would probably argue

that we repress our feelings and thoughts about money. You know, I did not grow up in a house that said, hey, never talk about money. I mean, my parents were pretty open about how much money was coming in, how much our house cost, how many years the mortgage would take to pay off. They were also pretty fast and loose

telling me how our aunts and uncles were doing and how much they thought their house costs. So you think there are cultural components to it? I mean, that would seem to be an obvious thing. It could be partly that famously Chinese culture is very direct. A lot of Chinese friends of mine, Chinese and Chinese-American friends, have a very similar attitude. And I've always thought that one reason is that Chinese, like my people, the Jews, were often migrants going to live in other places to do business because it was the thing that you were allowed to do in those other places. And business involves a lot of money talk. And if you can't be

frank about that, then you're not going to be successful. Right. If you're going to be like in the merchant class, maybe you have to talk about money. And to your earlier point, Stephen, maybe it's the high on the socioeconomic status ladder folks that have something to hide. Yeah. To be embarrassed about as immigrants, maybe you have less of that. I wonder about that, though. I think there's a way to lose no matter where you are on the ladder. If you're talking about money and you are lower in the ladder than someone else, you're poor. Your house is not as nice. You don't have the resources.

Well, that doesn't sound like a comparison that feels great. That's what psychologists call an upward social comparison. It's typically something that makes you feel bad. It's like, oh, you have lots of things I don't have. Okay, what about if you're at the top? Well, now you're in a conversation with somebody and you're the person that actually has more money than anybody else. You're also in a terrible position because everybody's envious of you. You know that other people are feeling slightly uncomfortable. So you're suggesting socialism plainly. We should

all throw all our money in the pot. Maybe conversational socialism. I do think it's a lose-lose game. Like who wins in a conversation on money? I guess my argument would be there is a big opportunity cost to not talking about money. Let's go back to what Naomi wrote. She said, I'm working on a project

about improving people's financial literacy. During the process, my teammates and I started talking about our financial journey. We realized we have so many similar financial questions or issues we never talk to anyone about. So those are two kind of separate problems.

And if we want to think about just the first, Naomi's working on improving people's financial literacy. You may think, well, how big a problem is that? The good news for Naomi is that she has nowhere to go but up because on average, people are really bad. Terrible. Here, I'll give you a little quiz. Okay. really bad. Terrible.

Here, I'll give you a little quiz. Okay. So this is a little quiz borrowed from a wonderful economist named Ana Maria Lussardi, who I believe is at Georgetown now, and she knows and cares more about financial literacy than anyone I've ever encountered. So she put together a quiz to measure baseline knowledge about financial literacy. So question number one, there's only three. Suppose, Angie, you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After five years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow? A, more than $102? B, exactly $102? C, less than $102? Or D, do not know? More, more than $102. There you, do not know? More, more than $102.

There you go. That's all you have to know. I was just like, wait, is this a trick question? No, you don't actually have to calculate and compound the interest. Holy schmoly. So you got that one right. Question number two, imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was 1% per year. So you just got rooked by the bad bank before you're getting 2%.

Interest rates are low, though. That's true. This is very realistic. And imagine that inflation was 2% a year. Okay. Interest rate, 1%. Inflation, 2%. After one year, would you be able to buy more than, exactly the same as, or less than today with the money in this account? Less. Very good. Number three, do you think that the following statement is true or false? Less. Very good. Number three, do you think that the following statement is true or false?

Buying a single company stock usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund. Mutual funds are better. Right. It's false. Okay. Those questions, I'm guessing to most people listening to this, but maybe not. We don't want to assume. We're pretty easy.

However, Ana Maria Lussardi, along with Olivia Mitchell of Penn, they did insert these survey questions into a variety of major U.S. surveys, and they found that among respondents 50 and older, only half of them got the first two answers right, and only one-third got all three answers right. Wow, that is pretty horrifying. It's pretty horrifying. Maybe they didn't pay attention, though. I have to say, in survey research, you also get a fair number of people who are like, what? You know, they just weren't reading the question carefully.

Let's pretend that half of the ones who got them wrong didn't pay attention and the other half were stoned out of their gourds. That's still really bad. And the reason it's bad is because money is kind of important. That's still really bad. And the reason it's bad is because money is kind of important. And as Naomi is writing, there's a need for her to help people get better at it. And she realized that she and her colleagues are having similar problems. So the question she's really asking, I think, is, is the taboo-ness of talking about money preventing more of us from being better at thinking about money and managing it well in our lives. So is the taboo contributing to financial illiteracy and then to financial insecurity? Yeah. And to be fair, there could be more than one correct answer. In other words, taboo could be contributing, but it could be that there are many other reasons why people are not financially literate. I think it's a reasonable guess that if we're not talking

about money at all, where are you supposed to learn this? I mean, people have argued this about sex education, too, right? If nobody's ever going to tell you anything, how is anybody going to learn? Good point. But did you have a sex ed class in school at some point? I did have a sex ed class. Did you have a financial literacy class? I knew you were going to ask that. And I'm guessing the answer is no. No, I did not. And smart people that I know have been beating this drum about introducing financial literacy classes just the way I was going to say just the way we teach home economics. But I don't think we do those things anymore. But nevertheless, it does seem to me like a very good idea. Or you could do them both at the same time. You could teach them to pay for sex

and to be paid for sex. That's exactly where I was going. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela get to the heart of why money feels so connected to ego and identity. The reason I'm driving this yacht past you is because I have a lot of money and I feel good about it. Yeah, my yacht's bigger than your yacht. Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about why it's so difficult

to talk about money, I'd like to share some of your thoughts on the topic. We asked listeners to let us know which taboo subjects they think society could benefit from having more conversations about. At George Ellis 88 writes, poop. Surely more open poo dialogue could help people identify and address issues like diet, exercise, digestive problems, or cancers. At Tizzy Beck says, menopause, and also giving birth. They write, I remember a class for soon-to-be parents where they explained how the baby came out and giving birth to the afterbirth.

One woman nearly fainted. She had never heard of the placenta being delivered. At Matt Maynard writes, nursing homes. We all get old and many need a care facility, but so many refuse to discuss, plan, or even think about it until the bitter end. Maynard writes, Nursing homes. We all get old and many need a care facility, but so many refuse to discuss, plan, or even think about it until the bitter end. That results in rushed decisions, underfunding of this institution, and heartache. We all will get old.

Let's solve this before we get there. And finally, AtMookie5 says they just avoid taboo subjects altogether. They write that at family gatherings, there's, quote, no politics, no religion, no money chat. We all still like each other. We will continue to get together. This has worked beautifully. If you'd like your thoughts to appear on an upcoming show, make sure to follow our Twitter account, at NSQ Show. Now, back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy. The other day, Jason was telling me about IRAs.

And even though I work on some of this stuff as a behavioral scientist, like I understand that this country has a very low savings rate. And I understand that we need to have a higher savings rate if we want people to be more financially secure, particularly in their later years. I understand that and I can work on the motivational dynamics, et cetera. But don't ask me questions about what IRAs are really. Hey, Angie, what are IRAs really? No idea. I think I have one. So let me make a counter argument to the pro-financial literacy argument.

This is an argument made by some people in the realm who I think want good things to happen. They say, listen, it's ridiculous that we should have to teach so much financial literacy. The reason we have to teach so much or theoretically should teach so much is because the financial services industry and firms and not just them, but credit card companies who charge 18% interest, which if you think about it for a second, really should be criminal because that's not good for anyone except the companies and their shareholders. Their argument is that rather than teaching people how to be a lot more savvy about money, you should force firms to be less exploitive. Change the structures, not the individual. Exactly. Make it harder for people to get in trouble by making bad decisions, by removing those most painful decisions from the choice set. Now, if we wanted to give a draconian example,

you would say no credit card should be allowed that has higher than, let's say, 5% interest, because especially as that compounds, that's still the opportunity to make billions and billions of dollars. The kind of people who are paying 18% interest on a credit card are getting hosed so badly, it's almost impossible really to ever catch up. I think it's not either or, right? Because even if you do regulate some of these things, it's like whack-a-mole, like, oh, now we need a regulation for this because there's this new instrument that people came up with to hoodwink the naive American public. I think some amount of financial literacy is like, why not? Because some high school teacher had them do this project in groups where they each got assigned some occupation. Like you are planning the retirement of a, you know, 42-year-old truck driver who lives here. And then they had to learn how to use these spreadsheets.

That's where you learned about IRAs. Well, didn't learn enough. I was like, I don't know. Why don't you look on the Vanguard website? I remember my older daughter, Amanda, like ended up calling Vanguard. Turns out there's lots of nice people who work at Vanguard. And if you call them and say, hi, I'm a high school student trying to learn about retirement savings, they'll actually talk to you. So why not have some amount of formal instruction to put everybody on some basic level of understanding and, you know, have some

regulation as appropriate. That sounds reasonable to me. So rather than try to turn you into a financial literacy expert. That would be not a good idea. Well, let's lean on you as a psychologist, because if we try to examine the core of this question from Naomi, again, it seems to be, is our inability to discuss certain things leading us to a sort of ignorance that's costly to us? So I have a survey here. I'm looking at some data. I have no idea how good this is. This is from something called the Capital Group. It's an investor survey series. And most surveys like this I'm skeptical of, but this is the best I could find. It was conducted by something called APCO Insight, a global opinion research firm.

This is from a couple of years ago. The overall sample is said to be representative of the U.S. demographics. There's a roughly equivalent grouping of millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers. Varying income levels. of millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers, varying income levels. So the question was asked, what do you consider too taboo for discussing with friends? And let me just read out to you some of the potential answers, okay? Racial harmony, sexual orientation, political views, religious beliefs, marital problems, size of your retirement savings, salary or household income, psychiatry or mental illness. Of those that I've read, what do you think would be considered

among these survey respondents the most taboo? Absolutely household income. You're right. Again, I'm taking this with a grain of salt because this is a survey conducted for some kind of investing group. So plainly, they have at least half a thumb on the scale and maybe as many thumbs as they have. But according to them, the top four categories of all taboo topics are about money, salary, retirement savings, debt, and inheritance. And then after that come marital problems, religious beliefs, and so on. What's also interesting is that there's a big gender split here. Women are much, much, much more uncomfortable than men in talking about these money topics. Oh, I was going to go the other way.

I was going to try to generalize to all women my own views. But that's very interesting. I mean, I'm guessing here completely. I'm guessing here completely, but maybe women, if they are more perceptive, period, about how the social dynamics are going, you know, how comfortable people are. And there is some evidence to suggest that women are more empathic, more sensitive to other people's emotions, more interested in other people's feelings. Maybe they just have longer antennae when it comes to taboo topics and things that we should avoid. But let's leave the gender question aside. You think about all those topics, like how do you think about racial harmony? What about marital problems, et cetera? Yeah, they're personal. They could be sensitive. But money

is a status concept where clearly we know that 100,000 is more than 50,000, and 50,000 is more than 25,000. It's a pretty clear ordinal ranking. So if you're having a conversation with four people, pretty immediately you know who's on top, who's two, who's three, who's in the bottom. It's a status hierarchy where your position is unequivocal. And I don't think that's great for bonding. I think there is a kind of lose-lose dynamic with this because the person who's number one, you know, two, three, and four

hate them. Number four feels terrible because they're on the bottom. Two and three have some version of both of those. So while money has such a clear ranking, it is very tied to your social status and there's a precision to it. So maybe those factors combined make it such that it's immediately uncomfortable, whereas other things, like my views on racial harmony, are not tied to my social status. Even things like education, it's like, is this school better than that school? Well, it's debatable. But nobody has to debate whether 100,000 is more than 50,000. I think that's the big issue. In a lot of society, money does practically equal status. And I would argue

that whether you're high, medium, or low income, probably nobody really likes to be identified by their financial standing. It doesn't feel complete, don't you think? And yet people want to have

these fancy handbags and these other outward status symbols that clearly are all about money. I mean, the reason why there are status symbols is because they're expensive. Well, I think we're talking status in a little bit different way. What I'm saying is that I don't think that high income people want to be thought about as successful or as good people because they have a lot of money. I think it's a dimension of it. We may or may not be right about that, honestly. Like, we hang out with nerds. So I don't know, maybe the vast majority of humanity would be

like, very happy. The reason I'm driving this yacht past you is because I have a lot of money and I feel good about it. Yeah, my yacht's bigger than your yacht. I do think, though, the taboo-ness there. I mean, did you watch Parasite? I did. This is the first movie we've both ever watched. I loved it. I found it incredibly uncomfortable. I mean, a lot of that was about money. And why do the people who have money get to live a life of dignity and enjoyment,

and the people who have less money live a life of total misery? Do you remember that scene where the aristocratic housewife is smelling the driver? And she's disgusted. And that is the real essence of the psychology of taboos. I do think that this discomfort we have is very emotional. I think when we feel looked down upon by somebody who has more money than we do, we do feel like there's something about us that's disgusting to them. So I think the good news for Naomi's question is that younger people are less hung up on money conversation than older people. There's emerging sets of data that shows that to be true. I can also tell you that in our little company, even in the Freakonomics Radio Network, I do know that many of the folks who work here, most of whom are certainly way younger than me, that they actually practice salary transparency. They share their information. So that suggests that things are changing.

I think also, though, as far as Naomi's concerned about trying to spread financial literacy, I think news is sort of good there, too, which is that it's getting easier to be financially literate using not just the standard tools of education, but technology and so on. That said, I think there still are a lot of forces conspiring against it because there are a lot of firms and shareholders who make a lot of money by people being financially illiterate. So hopefully, Naomi is giving people some good clues toward financial literacy. I think the best advice I've ever heard about and seen some evidence for its success is recording all your spending. And this one is much easier now with technology, especially since so much of our spending is digital. If you can see everything and

you look back at the end of the week or the month and say, why do I not have as much money as I think I should have? The answer will be very obvious. And then if you have a little bit of willpower, you can overcome that. And I think the best advice for Naomi and the people she's trying to help would be to make podcasts. Because this is where the big cheese is happening.

So much money. Well, don't tell anyone. They'll make them feel uncomfortable. No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Stephen gives Angela a financial literacy quiz created by economists Anna Maria Lussardi and Olivia Mitchell. Stephen says that Lussardi is currently a professor at Georgetown University, but the Italian-born economist actually works for George Washington University,

an understandable mistake as the schools are both prestigious institutions that begin with the same syllable and are less than a mile and a half apart. Later, Stephen says that while sex and money are both taboo subjects, there are sex education classes, but not financial literacy classes. I'm guessing that some listeners took issue with this comparison, as sex education in America is far from comprehensive, and some of the information offered is arguably more harmful than helpful. While 39 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education and or HIV education, only 19 states require inclusion of information about contraception, and 28 states require that abstinence be stressed. Also, Angela suggests that we teach financial literacy the way that home economics used to be taught. She doesn't think that home ec classes are offered anymore. In the 1990s, home economics was rebranded as family consumer science.

And according to the Association of Family Consumer Sciences, approximately 5 million secondary school students still participate in these classes, where they learn things like nutrition, responsible parenting, and, Stephen and Angela will be happy to hear, basic finance. Finally, Angela says that she does not know what an IRA is, even though she's pretty sure she has one. IRA is an initialism for individual retirement account or individual retirement arrangement.

A tax-advantaged investment account that helps you save for retirement. Through most IRAs, you can invest in different stocks, bonds, and other assets, which then allows your money to grow and compound. For more information about IRAs, feel free to call up Vanguard and tell them that you're a high school student working on a homework assignment, as this seems to be an effective way to garner basic financial information. That's it for the Fact Check. That's it for the Fact Check. Questions is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio and is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and Freakonomics MD. This show was mixed by Eleanor Osborne. Our staff also includes Allison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Morgan Levy, Zach Lipinski, Mary DeDuke, Ryan Kelly, Jasmine Klinger, Emma Terrell, Lierich Baudich, and Jacob Clemente.

Our theme song is And She Was by Talking Heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music. If you'd like to listen to the show ad-free, subscribe to Stitcher Premium. You can also follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show and on Facebook at NSQ show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com. To learn more, visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening. Can you swear to me that you've never looked up to see where somebody lived and to see how much their house cost? I cannot swear that to you.

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