Financial speed dating questions that would make me even more forgettable…
This Blog post is actually a public note to myself about personal financial goals. The use of “speed dating” (which I know nothing about) is just a self-serving, shame-risking tool to help me remember my dedication to what is new.
What is new to me is actually applying a “principle” or “rule” about money that I’ve long intellectually understood for decades—but didn’t really incarnate as intellectual feeling. You feel me? I’m sure many of us have heard that, “Money is a tool.” Or something like, ‘Money is means to achieve goals that have nothing to do with the love of money.’
The problem with these intellectual concepts is applying them in life in intimate and meaningful ways. For example, in my apartment-dwelling-coin-operated-laundry-pathetic existence, 25₵ means, laundry (when I was a child, this meant lose at arcade game). My point is that money is a symbol that represents something else and should be treated as such.
So let’s get back to my deadly “speed dating” questions:
Deadly Question #1: Have you ever saved US $1,000 per month for 12 consecutive months?
When this question is asked of me, I assume that the sister asking me this question has easily achieved this goal more than once in her economic lifetime. And I have learned to make sure that when you read the previous sentence you understand that I am not being sarcastic. When a Black woman is willing to achieve she will achieve.
When I look at the sister’s physical body and see that she has clearly showed an interest in taking care of that as well, I am looking at someone effectively asking me, “I have shown self-mastery and therefore dominance in the realms of finance and physicality—and would like to share my life with a partner who has done the same. Are you that person? Do you have the demonstrable potential to become that person?”
In the real world, a certain kind of woman has very smoothly and elegantly asked me questions like, “Do you have a house?” Or, “What do you do?” (…not an inquiry about what you enjoy in life as a career but is the sophisticated version of asking, “Do you have job?”) Such questions (to me) are the equivalent of my ‘deadly’-precise (but more just) question posed above.
My answer today? No excuses, no details about the challenges of my life… my answer to that question is no. Boom. Done. Next.
Deadly Question #2: Excluding Tax-Deferred Cash Instruments, have you held more cash than credit card debt for at least six months?
The imaginary sister I have composited together from my memories, dating back to my childhood, is actually being generous here by asking for six months of self-secured vulgar debt. I would ask for at least 12 months. She is actually trying to give me a break here. She is likely to have done the research and knows that high-income-low-net-worth individuals “struggle” with credit card debt—often covering expenses for children.
And here I come again, disappointing her: my answer is no. What I am telling her is that I have failed to live beneath my means for decades. All my sister has to do is conjure up some memories of some Black man from her life—and her mother’s life—that was a pathetic, childish, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar financial drain and project her deep-rich hatred for that man on me. Her contempt for “me” is thick enough to cut with a knife.
Boom.
Done.
“Men” my daughter should stay away from…
I am too old to ask for excuses when it comes to finances. I am passionate about never getting a free ride in this economic arena. When parents tell their children they are “too young” to have a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” they are often speaking from a fusion of morality and biology. Let’s just speak from finances and suddenly it would make sense why so many Americans hate math.
The other deep fascist shit about giving the intimate other a free economic pass is the reality that the financially dominate person is actually unprepared to interact intimately with a person that is her equal. She is more culturally biased toward “dealing” with a financial superior or suckling an adult financial child. It is not what she “likes” to do—it is all that she knows to do. This is the other reason why I am so passionate about rejecting the ‘free’ pass.
So, should any of you find me years later and I am still single, understand the rasx() context: I’m still answering ‘no’ to my own deadly questions.