Money Talks No. 3: The Squishies

by Dan Masterton

For all the good of identifying positive habits to practice, there persists plenty of other things that make me feel uneasy or even uncomfortable. My wife, Katherine, and I often use the word “squishy” for this – some combination of discomfort, objection, and skepticism.

With money and things, these are my squishies, and I will call them my squishies. And they shall be mine.

Big, Empty Houses

When I would teach social justice to teenagers, I would hyperbolically put it this way: if you want to buy a ten-bedroom house, you are welcome to buy it, but if those ten bedrooms aren’t all in regular, needed use by your family and those in your household, you better be ready and willing (and maybe even proactively seeking) to host people experiencing homelessness or other needs in the open bedrooms. St. Thomas Aquinas, as quoted in Rerum novarum §22, taught that we have a right to private property but we must view it as common to all when it is needed by others.

A house should befit a family, both today and for whatever hoped-for or prepared-for future. I understand having an extra bedroom(s) for expected or hoped-for kids down the line, for work from home, for frequent out-of-town guests, especially if grandparents, siblings, or close friends don’t live locally but want to visit, or if there’s a likelihood of multi-generational living down the line. I get uneasy when those bedrooms sit empty and unused much of the time; on a similar note, it feels silly to me when “bonus rooms”, basement spaces, etc. go virtually unused.

Life goals, man.

Second, a house can and should have space for the hospitality that the household hopes to provide, but hospitality space has to be used consistently. When I used to watch House Hunters, it galled me when buyers obsessed over the hosting functionality of a house ahead of its practicality as a home for daily life. Often, I’d imagine the homeliness of a house for the household is likely closely tied to its consistency of hospitality.

Those are intellectual evaluations. Here's the reality, which is front of mind: no house will be perfect and completely efficient, and most of us will never have the means and timing to custom-build a right-sized home right where we need it. However, we can max out our mindfulness on the front end. I think we often ask (myself included), “How much house can we afford?” Then we go and look at the top end of the budget at the biggest, nicest houses we can find. I’m torn because I understand, especially for parents including myself, the desire for stability and comfort at home, but I feel squishy about how we perhaps over-emphasize fanciness, aesthetics, and size in pursuit of those ideals.

Antsy Spending Habits

Trying to decide if something is so worn out or broken that it warrants replacement is very subjective, and an easy place to rationalize.

I think it could go a long way just to apply a waiting period to these choices. It could force some time in between the thought to buy and the shopping, as well as in between the shopping and the potential purchase.

Cars are a tough one. When you pay off a vehicle’s financing and own it free and clear, it’s definitely tempting to identify its value, add that to a new financing line, and see what cars are out there at that price. The alternative is to simply continue in the car you now own with no monthly payments and drive it for free. If you really want to be proactive, you could take the monthly amount you had been paying, and put some or all of it in savings to pay down the cost of the next car you get, hopefully after driving the current car for free for a bit. I am currently living in this limbo as our fully owned car nears 100,000 miles and our need for a van nears.

Clothes are another. If it’s an integral hobby for you, then it comes from that constrained splurging, or if it’s a treat you allow yourself here or there, it can work. The tricky thing is that e-commerce has made it incredibly easy to entertain the impulse, buy, and ship. And when things don’t fit or look right, it’s easy to return. I get squishy feelings when someone takes a chance on a $50 item, tries it on, finds it doesn’t work, and exchanges it, or even uses it as cash down toward a more expensive item. The ease of purchase and return/exchange shouldn’t just grease the skids toward buying; it should also slow down our rationalizations to buy and spend more, and instead show us the simplicity of a pure return and refund. We be just as quick to spend that $50 as to get it back when it doesn’t work.

Then the ideas of “refreshing” and “updating” can really bleed into everything, especially in home ownership. A home is full of opportunities to tweak or upgrade – dining furniture sets, dinnerware, couches and sofas, lamps and tables, rugs, window curtains, bed linens, frames and wall decor, and so much more. If you wanted to do it, you could go to HomeGoods or Bed, Bath, and Beyond or Target and come home with a new item to swap in or add constantly.

This whole squishiness comes down to a thought that most of us could stand to be waaaaaaay less antsy. We could easily use more of our things for longer periods of time and reduce a lot of the buying.

Fixations on Personal Wealth and De-Regulation

I’m a big fan of budgeting, saving, and investing. And it’s a capacity enabled in part by my privilege. I think some attentive work now prepares us immensely for short- and long-term future considerations. However, I don’t think it’s something that should consume us unless money is tight and there’s present-day issues to manage constantly – definitely a place where the regular mental energy I spend is in excess of the attention this needs.

I get uneasy, and a bit upset, at the obsession over amassing personal wealth, and how some are so wealthy that they, and generations after them, could live on passive income alone from things like rental properties in which a person is barely involved and puts in little to no labor. That extent of wealth, even when it funds philanthropy, is excessive and complicit in social injustice.

And I think it’s wrong when individuals and companies resist reasonable regulation of investment actions and use accounting might and loopholes to wiggle out of tax liability. There should be no wealthy $0 tax-payers.

I would not say I’m a full-on “tax the rich” proponent; I would say that, while “wealth tax” policies have typically failed, that there needs to be some kind of minimum that sets a baseline for what people of certain net worth, and companies of certain revenue, must pay, perhaps as a ratio of their conservatively estimated net worth.

It’s sick that big companies and wealthy people can utilize accounting to pay less in taxes than many working class and impoverished people.

Let's allow ourselves a smidge of imagination and
be able to conceive of rich and wealthy folks
who are also willing to pay a legitimate tax rate.

Causing Tension with People Close to Me

I think what makes me most uneasy is when I can tell, and when I know, that my outlook annoys, bothers, or even upsets people close to me.

It’s hard when someone asks my opinion about something relating to money or things because I’m not always sure how candid I feel like being. I typically look carefully at multiple views or considerations on an issue, and speak from those perspectives, before I necessarily get too far into personal commentary. The difference with questions on money-and-things questions is that I have stronger, more deeply held personal views, so my ready-to-share opinions rush out ahead of empathy and deliberation.

My approach varies from case to case, but I generally have adopted this principle: I will live this minimalism and resist consumerism as well as I can for myself, but I won’t have much, if any, expectations on how those around me respond to these questions. When decisions affect mostly me or only me, I feel secure being as austere as I can; when they affect my wife or kids or family or friends, I try to calibrate my comments and actions and be more deferent.

There are times where I choose to listen to the question or discussion and simply decline comment. Other times, I will just ask a leading question or give a very brief reply. Once in a while, I might attempt to explain what I’m thinking, knowing it likely may not be received well.

I try to pick my moments carefully because, even if I feel what I have to say or do is worthwhile, it still stinks to feel uneasy after an interaction with a loved one.