Andie* was my first college friend. We bonded over music, TV shows, and the secular Jew’s need to complain about everything. But after the glow of the first month of school wore off, I noticed she was nervous when I proposed to her. I’m going out to eat Off campus, it was something I did a lot because I was hunting for great food like a spaniel looking for squirrels. He didn’t understand why we wanted to spend money on dining out when we had unlimited drinks in the downstairs dining room. At that time I felt rejected because food adventures were my primary form of connection. Looking back, I can see that not only was he right, but he also had a point. this much food was available and had already been paid for – but his reaction was probably defensive about his own financial situation.

Before Andie, I had never thought about my socioeconomic status. I met her the first few days of my freshman year in college, at an already expensive, exorbitantly priced private liberal arts school. old money city – the kind of place where people talk casually about parking spaces for their yachts. I was 3,000 miles away from the California suburb that raised me; I always had friends there from wildly different backgrounds: some lived in spacious McMansions, others in modest apartments and single-story homes. My family fell somewhere in the middle. But when I arrived at college, where students were either stressed about money or busy flaunting their wealth, the invisible lines that separated us all by class suddenly came into sharp focus.

At age 18, I was ill-equipped to have meaningful conversations about my socioeconomic status because I was unaware of my own situation.

While my scholarship and financial aid eased the blow to my family’s budget, sending me to that school was still a huge responsibility for my parents and grandparents—though I didn’t know much about it because we didn’t talk about it at home. We also didn’t talk about how cheap it would be for me to stay in California (in-state tuition was deeply discounted). In the end, I was going to go to university no matter what. No matter what, I would choose the place. And we were going to make it happen no matter what. I didn’t ask any more questions.

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Aja EvansLMHC is a board-certified therapist, speaker, and author specializing in financial therapy. He is also the incoming president of the board of directors of the Financial Therapy Association and the author of “Feel Good Finance“

Many kids in college describe themselves as “poor,” but few actually mean it. Andie did it. He spoke openly about his family’s financial situation and the difficulties posed by his expensive education. If he was poor, I didn’t know what I was. But I knew I didn’t have the kind of money anxiety that followed him to every lecture, meal, and study meeting. At age 18, I was ill-equipped to have meaningful conversations about my socioeconomic status because I was unaware of my own situation. What I know now is that my ignorance of my own situation was a result of my financial privilege. Only once in my entire life have my parents had to sit me down for a tough conversation about money and what we could afford, in the middle of the recession in 2008. I really don’t remember it ever being brought up again.

Financial therapist Aja Evans confirms that the people who are least knowledgeable about financial realities are what we call the middle and upper middle class, people who fall somewhere in the middle, at the extreme ends of the spectrum. They are generally more knowledgeable about money and whether they have it or not. Even if a wealthy child is not directly involved in conversations about money management, at least some of these conversations are likely to occur around that child. Conversely, children growing up in low-income families learn—directly and indirectly—at an early age how and when to spend money. Those least familiar with money conversations are often kids like me: kids who grew up comfortable, never wanting anything, but not necessarily having trust funds.

“Education hasn’t always been available to everyone,” Evans says, and out in the open, which means going to college where economic disparities are suddenly on full display, can be jarring.

“Entering a new bubble full of diversity, whether it’s economic diversity, social status, wealth, race, can be really shocking,” he tells PS. “You might be saying, ‘I had no idea 18-year-olds were driving in brand-new Infinitis,’ or ‘Don’t everyone have a car?’ If this is different from their standard of living at home, this will be new for people.”

An open dialogue about money and my family’s financial situation would have benefited me greatly before I went to college. I could more easily meet Andie where she was and discuss how we create different values ​​that stem from our unique, individual relationships with money. Maybe it would help me be less judgmental of Andie and not respond to her concern with my own. And maybe that would have prepared me to make healthier financial decisions after college instead of spending. beyond what my media salary can really afford.

I don’t blame my parents or grandparents for not sitting me down to talk about these issues. They have worked so hard to bring our family to such a comfortable place and have given me more than I could ever repay them financially, emotionally and genetically. (I have beautiful hair.)

I also acknowledge that these conversations are really difficult, something Evans emphasizes.

“Talking about money is notoriously difficult, and parents haven’t yet figured out how to talk about it with their kids,” she says. But this is starting to change. With the pandemic, recent recessions, and the spread of financial health, debtand even bankrupt influencers on social media, talking about money is taboo He adds that it is slowly pouring out.

The truth, says Evans, is: “You can’t predict someone’s socioeconomic status without asking them directly.” Most of the time we don’t know where a person’s money actually comes from. “People assume that someone can afford something just because they do it, but that’s not always true. This person can drown in debt”

Comparison is so central to the college experience that some of us have become experts in it. For many young people, college is the first time they are around a group of kids whose lives, until that moment, seemed different from their own. This can be confusing, but it’s also one of the best arguments for going to college if you can: you meet new people who challenge your worldview, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. Socioeconomic status is just one of the differences that students are sure to notice, and that’s healthy. But Evans warns that comparison is useless if it ultimately makes you feel bad; Andie and I needed to hear that, too, at that age.

“Please try not to tie your net worth to your self-worth,” she says. “You’re a valuable person whether you have money or not, and either way, if there’s someone who’s going to treat you badly, it’s probably not your people. It can be really hard at some point in life when those friends feel like the most important thing in the world.”

Andie and I didn’t remain friends, not because of money but because of other (actually significant) incompatibilities. (I’m sure it didn’t help that he caught me at a time when I was saying out loud that bisexuality wasn’t real. Joke’s on me, My Chappell Roan obsessionand my growing collection of small tattoos.) The lessons I learned about myself, my situation, and my world may have outlasted my friendship, but I’m still grateful.

*Name has been changed for privacy purposes.

Emma Glassman-Hughes (o) He is the associate editor of PS Balance. During his seven years as a reporter, his beats spanned the lifestyle spectrum; She covers arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate and farming for Ambrook Research.