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Last year, I bought a flat. Between mortgage applications and surveyors’ reports, doing the damn thing solo was a slog – one that occupied the vast majority of my headspace, not to mention my unsalaried hours.
Perhaps that’s why my news was invariably met with praise when it came up. But it was praise I couldn’t accept. ‘I mean, congratulations aren’t really warranted,’ I’d blurt out at the first hint of a suggestion that I’d achieved something. ‘I can only do it because my dad was able to help me out with a generous portion of the deposit.’
In the months that followed, I became incapable of communicating my Big Life News without hastily communicating the caveat. I told everyone – bosses past and present, new colleagues in meetings, friends of friends at the pub. And while the responses sat on a sliding scale from polite to bemused, they had one thing in common: a lingering, slightly awkward pause; the surprise that I’d broken the rule as tightly wound into the UK’s social contract as reverence for standing in an orderly line: we don’t talk about money.
A curious google reveals that my verbal diarrhoea actually has a name. Coined and applied in the business world, ‘financial transparency’ is the idea that sharing financial information with employees increases motivation to hit targets and improves workplace culture. Now, online commentators are speculating whether the concept could have social currency.
The timing is impeccable. A YouGov poll last October found that 22% of people are seeing their support network less as a direct result of the cost of living crisis. And, contrary to the ‘all in it together’ rhetoric, we’re really… not. Income inequality in the UK at the end of the 2022 financial year increased to 36.5%.
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that. It’s playing out on your WhatsApp threads, on your Instagram feed and at your Friday night drinks. And from the eye-wateringly expensive Airbnb someone’s suggested for a mini-break to the bag not-so-subtly in shot on your mate’s latest grid post, the subtext is clear: our pals are coming to the proverbial table with vastly different means. So it’s with recession-proofing our friendships in mind that I ask: is it time we started talking?
OVERSHARING IS CARING
Someone unequivocal in her belief that being open about your finances is a non-negotiable is Aja Barber, writer and consultant – often on sustainable fashion – and author of Consumed: The Need For Collective Change – Colonialism, Climate Change And Consumerism.
I give her a call after a post on her Instagram page – caption: ‘When people don’t talk about money with their friends…’ – generated 5,000-plus likes and a comments section alight with tales of relational destruction. ‘Ultimately, people around you are measuring themselves [against you]. So, your peers who don’t have that generational wealth are literally comparing themselves with you,’ she says – before analogising, ‘It’s basically a game where you’ve got a jet pack strapped to your back and everyone else is trying to run it. On foot.’
Barber’s position was born of personal experience. Namely from how a lack of openness around money from her peers impacted her mental health in her twenties. She was broke (her word) and living in her parents’ basement when all her similarly salaried friends in the white, affluent area of Virginia, US, where she grew up began buying houses. No context was given; the acquisitions downplayed.
‘For want of a better word, it made me feel crazy,’ she recalls. ‘I was just like, “What has my family done that we failed so magnificently?” I felt gaslit by my friends. And I believe that if people aren’t honest about generational wealth, especially in this economic climate, they’re gaslighting their friends – whether they recognise that’s what they’re doing or not.’
Former friends phased out (except one, who’d suggest free hangouts and insist on picking up the bill when they did go out), now that her employment situation has changed, she practises financial transparency within her circles. ‘If I know someone’s struggling, I won’t suggest we meet up at a restaurant. Or I’ll pay for them,’ she explains. ‘It’s not a big deal; we all go through rough patches.’
THE COST OF GIVING
I hang up the phone with a sense of clarity. I was so insistent about telling anyone who’d listen that my dad helped buy me a flat because I think, subconsciously, it felt fair.
Having spent most of my childhood housed in a dozen or so rented flats, I never expected to own property – certainly not in London (albeit 44 square metres, off a hallway that whiffs of bins – #stayhumble). I never expected there would be a chunk of family money available to help me. And I had eye-rolled at enough gleeful key-clutching front door photos (sorry, don’t hate me) to know that triggering a few conversational glitches with, ‘I don’t deserve congrats for having access to family cash,’ was worth it to prevent someone thinking my having hit said money-based milestone was because I was somehow smarter, savvier or more hard-working than they were.
To get an expert lens on this, I call Vicky Reynal, a psychodynamic psychotherapist who specialises in money matters. She works with high-net-worth entrepreneurs, multimillionaires who’ve lost everything, low-to-middle earners desperate not to replicate their parents’ money mistakes and, yes, people struggling to navigate wealth disparities within their social circles.
Unlike Barber, Reynal doesn’t believe that financial transparency is a non-negotiable for healthy relationships, but she believes it’s the kind approach. ‘It’s freeing to hear that people have vulnerabilities,’ she explains. ‘When so much of our lives are performed and perfected through social media, people sharing when they have had a leg up – or where they need to set limits – can help those who you interact with feel less financially vulnerable.’
Much like the original business context, financial transparency cultivates a sense of togetherness, which, in turn, breeds trust and engagement in that thing. And when the thing in question is a friendship, it can be a fortifying force.
HEALTHY BALANCE
That financial transparency can act as a kind of friendship glue is evidence enough of its potential as a health intervention; reams of research now exists to prove what you’ve felt for yourself after an evening spent belly-laughing with the people you love the most: friendships are vital for health, from ameliorating the stress of challenging circumstances to improving your immune response. But keen to hear about how this plays out in practice, I put in a call to Jessica*.
The 33-year-old copywriter started speaking up about her financial reality for self-preservation. Having just moved countries to Dublin, Ireland, and hungry for human connection following the lockdowns, she leaned in hard to her social schedule – and her overdraft.
‘It was alarming how rapidly I began to believe the image that I was projecting,’ she recalls. ‘I tapped my card without much consideration and avoided my banking app. Eventually, she realised that whatever nourishment she was getting from the workouts, brunches and laughs was rendered void by the stress of knowing her lifestyle was unsustainable. ‘I was ashamed to say, “I can’t afford that,” which is crazy because I would never judge someone for saying that to me.’
Eventually, ballooning rents forced her hand and she told people she was putting herself on a strict budget. ‘It felt liberating to be honest about what I was working with and to state what I would – and wouldn’t – be available for,’ she says. ‘I felt more powerful walking home after that conversation than I had done in months.’
But opening up also became a catalyst for deeper bonds. Her budding friendships – the ones she cared about, anyway – developed over home-cooked dinners and Friday nights talking nonsense while drinking negronis against a 70s disco soundtrack.
When I recount the story to Reynal, she isn’t surprised that Jessica reaped the psychological rewards of financial transparency so quickly. ‘We can spend an enormous amount of energy “keeping up appearances” or even building a public persona that’s more akin to who we would like to be rather than true to how we really feel,’ she tells me. ‘That takes a lot of psychological effort, fuelling an internal conflict because you know that, ultimately, you aren’t being genuine.’ Essentially, laying it all out – and in doing so, creating a clear boundary – will take a load off your mind.
COMING AND OWINGS
I’m struggling to discount a gnawing tension, though. If financial transparency is a way to cut through the ‘best life’ posturing fuelled by social media, isn’t it also a phenomenon that’s born of that very culture, one where the boundary between brands and individuals is hard to discern? In transplanting a principle from a business to a personal context, am I being the arsehole in forgetting that individuals don’t owe anyone an explanation of how they got what they have?
And, if I’m being a one-woman Advertising Standards Authority urging everyone to whack a #spon on their assets for the Bank of Mum and Dad, could a culture where people feel the need to share the minutiae of their finances spawn unintended social consequences more damaging than an awkward silence?
I take my questions to Clare Seal, author and founder of The Financial Wellbeing Forum, whose Instagram tagline reads ‘money chat with humanity’. The 35-year-old built her 106k-strong following after documenting how, as a mum of two young children with no familial financial support, she and her husband got themselves out of £27k worth of debt.
She agrees that humans are not companies and that they don’t ‘owe’ anyone information. But also (reminder: both things can be true at once) that being more frank about our finances – and leading by example when it comes to those around us – is a helpful way to improve your own mental health, with a positive domino effect. ‘I’m a firm believer that financial transparency is needed the world over – especially when it comes to things like salary and how people have managed to get on the property ladder – and that it’s important for your mental and emotional health,’ she explains. ‘Especially because there’s so much shame that’s bound up in money.’
Shame thrives in silence, so it tracks that breaking the informal money NDA is helpful for reducing the awkwardness around not having, say, £10k-plus in savings, investments or property in your name. But, she warns, opening the floodgates on money chat can also feed the shame people feel around their finances, especially if things are tight. She points to the rise of judgemental comments that she’s been fastidiously monitoring under her own posts about limiting her spending.
‘I’ve worked to reduce my feelings of shame around money, a big part of which has been understanding my own values and what I’m willing to spend money on,’ she shares. ‘And it’s amazing how quickly you begin to doubt yourself when someone says, “Oh, I’d never waste money on that.”’
So, when lifting the proverbial lid on money chat, how can you make this form of financial wellness work? ‘Just make sure you’re aware of – and sensitive to – the context when you’re discussing money matters,’ Seal offers. ‘And recognise the difference between being transparent about your own situation and offering unsolicited advice to other people.’
SMALL CHANGE
In times when abundant forces compete for your already stretched time, attention and money, I realise the irony of suggesting that you need to think about yet another thing – especially something so taboo.
But I suspect that you, WH reader, pay close attention to the ROI on your health habits – and this one pays dividends. Think about it: you can’t be in a great place with your health if you’re sticking your head in the sand about your finances; that higher financial worry correlates with high financial stress is shown, time and again, in research. The same goes for the reverse: you might have all your ducks in a row, money-wise, but if you’re failing to nourish your social health then you’re never going to be as healthy, happy or fulfilled as you could be. So, adopting a practice that tackles both makes sense.
Ultimately, what feels right for us around money is born of personal experiences. Ushering openness when it comes to finances and factoring in people’s different salaries or household expenditures before splitting a bill might feel laboured or unnecessary,
but it’s always worth asking yourself if the least well-off person in your circle would agree. I’m just piping up on behalf of anyone for whom the default mode isn’t working to remind you that, as de facto CEO of your own behaviour, you can rewrite your own rules of engagement around money. On that note, I can’t afford to split the bill at dinner next Wednesday, because I’m paying my dad back. Coffee date soon?
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