Why hard work is *not* the whole story (my privilege statement) 🙅‍♀️

I’ve been writing blog posts broadly nested under the category of “Ladies Talking About Money.” I share some of my story in my first post, “Money Doesn’t Matter,” but as I’ve continued writing and through conversations with my partner, I’ve realized I could have been and should be more explicit about something really important that we should talk about when we talk about money: privilege and access to resources. I wanted to share all the different ways I’ve experienced privilege in my life so far. I’d like anyone who is interested enough to follow along my posts to hold these truths up alongside the topics I explore.

I’m a white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied woman.

I grew up upper-middle class with a wide support net in the form of family — from lawyers to psychologists to entrepreneurs to teachers to accountants to authors to CEOs to professors to pilots to computer scientists to rockstars to food bloggers to movie editors to social workers to financial services experts. Not only is there an abundance of people in my family, but there’s an abundance of support and care. I have a lot of privilege in the form of human capital and love, and I am so lucky to have such a full and robust family tree.

I went to excellent, well-funded public schools from K-12 and then a selective, four-year, private, liberal arts college in Maine without having to take out any loans or incur any kind of debt and I had access to private SAT tutors to help get me there. My family paid for my tuition, my living expenses, my books, and my “fun”. I chose to get an on-campus job while in college, but certainly didn’t have to. I graduated with a few thousand dollars in my bank account — a mix of leftover “spending” money from college, money earned from my part-time college job (which I had the luxury of saving, rather than putting towards my tuition), and money from family graduation gifts.

I had the freedom to choose a job I wanted out of college; my only constraint was that I had to earn enough to pay my rent if I wanted to move to Brooklyn, which I did. I did not have to choose a job solely based on paycheck. I was free to pursue something that felt meaningful to me. Had I needed to, I could have lived at home with any number of different family members to save money on rent. Had I needed to, I could have leaned on family for support in finding work.

I have no obligations to support anyone in my family financially. While teachers are far from being the highest paid professionals in the US, all of the money I earn as a teacher is for me to spend, save, and invest as I choose.

If I ever find myself in a financial pinch, I know there are people I can lean on.

“Everything I have I earned because I worked hard!” is a nice idea, and there are shreds of truth here. Hard work, tenacity, and effort all count for something! But the subliminal message we send when we say this, however much we may not be aware, is “people who don’t have access to a lot of money or resources just didn’t work or try hard enough.” And this is a dangerous message to send.

When we look at structural inequality, we start to see larger trends that show us that hard work is not the whole story.

Did I work hard to get where I am? Sure. I stayed up late studying and cared deeply about school. But did I have the privilege to stay up late studying and care deeply about school? Yes. Did I have tutors growing up? Yes. Did I have access to excellent public and then private education? Yes. Did everyone around me assume I would go to college? Yes. Do I have endless family members who navigated the college process before I did? Yes. Were they willing and available to guide and support me? Yes.

And probably most importantly, am I white and do I experience racial privilege in a country with deeply rooted systemic racism? Yes. Definitely yes.

It would be easy for me to say, “It’s simple to be a great student, graduate with high honors, get any job you want, and live in the most expensive city in the world…you just have to work hard!” But here’s something closer to the truth: “It’s easy to be a great student, graduate with high honors, get any job you want, live in the most expensive city in the world…if you’re white, if you’re heterosexual, if you’re able-bodied, if you have access to an incredibly supportive family, and if you have access to resources and never have to go into any sort of debt.”

It would be easy for me to say, “It’s simple to invest $600 a month into the stock market, you just have to work hard and really commit to making it happen!” But my real truth is “it’s easy to invest $600 a month into the stock market if you graduated college debt-free and with an ‘emergency fund’ already in the bank, had the support to get a well paying job, and have no financial obligations to take care of anyone but yourself.”

I share this because I want to keep writing about my own experiences and lightbulb moments and learnings around financial literacy, but don’t want to pretend I somehow earned everything I have access to. It doesn’t mean I haven’t earned anything, it’s just that the idea of “earned” is itself skewed — I didn’t “earn” my family. I didn’t “earn” my whiteness. I didn’t “earn” my access to great schools growing up. I had access to all sorts of resources (human and financial) that set me up to then be able to work hard.

Despite all my privileges, I really did live much of my life without a ton of financial literacy or awareness around how money works. This was partially because I chose to stay ignorant; I really felt like “talking about money” just wasn’t for me as a woman (I also had the privilege not to talk about money because of everything I’ve listed above — everything was generally taken care of, so I wasn’t super incentivized to learn how money “works”) but also because systemically, women (and even more specifically, women of color) are kept out of these conversations. The system, overall, is one that encourages and supports men in becoming financially literate, but simultaneously tells women that money isn’t something they’re supposed to talk about.

If you identify as a woman and feel like you don’t understand money, I hope you know it’s not your fault — there’s a systemic issue here that keeps women out. But we do have agency inside of a system that excludes us to get informed and stop letting outdated narratives like “women shouldn’t talk about money” control us. We should know about money and we can start learning.

I’m excited about challenging this taboo — that women shouldn’t talk about money, but want to be simultaneously mindful of all the experiences and privileges that I bring to this conversation.