i'd rather fake my own death than ask my family and friends for money

when loved ones are also loan sharks

I wrote last time about my surprise tax bill wiping out my emergency savings account. Whenever someone partnered or with upper-middle class (or wealthier) parents (like me) talks about being in financial straits, I know the elephant in the room is: Why, for crying out loud, do you not ask your partner/parents/family for help?

And it’s a good question. One I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past week, as I’ve been forced to disentangle my feelings about money from the money itself. This is the financial corollary to a therapy exercise: the worry script, in which you think concretely and vividly about your fears instead of trying to avoid your anxiety surrounding the fears. By separating out your worry from the event itself, we can gain a more objective perspective on the event. In this case, the event is running out of money.

All loans are made by loan sharks, right? (Image from Finding Nemo (Pixar/Disney))

When I think through what running out of money entails, I get stuck at the part where “ask your partner/parents” for help usually goes. There’s a part of me that would rather move out of the country and adopt a new life than ask others for financial assistance or a loan. This instinct to figuratively die rather than ask for money help is grounded in two exaggerated, illogical beliefs about money which I developed as a teenager:

1. Anyone who pays or lends money to me will one day hold that financial support against me and use their previous financial support to try to control me.

2. It is impossible to give someone else money without feeling like they are taking advantage of you.

These two money scripts haunt me—and for good reason, too. There is a lot of support for these two scripts. #1 is prevalent thinking in Biglaw—the number of times I would hear some version of that’s what they pay us for as justification for a crazy ask or outright rudeness is wild. And it wasn’t just me. Common messages under capitalism primes us to adopt this way of thinking, too—there’s no such thing as a free lunch; it’s called “work” because it’s not supposed to be enjoyable; our hobbies should earn us money. No wonder it becomes hard for us to conceive of someone doing something—especially something that decreases one’s money—just because they want to, no strings attached.

#2 is also alluring because it is often true. We all have had that friend or acquaintance or family member who seems to hit us up for financial help more than they pay us back. We’re not made of money, and even if we were, it sucks to feel like you’re someone else’s ATM.