Income Envy

One of the judgments around retiring early nine years ago was about money. Did I have enough? I had been well paid, well overpaid really, for fourteen expatriate years, and had paid off all debt and then saved what seemed quite a lot. There was a severance package available, half of a house in England to cash in, and the prospect of starting my pension at 55 if need be. My daughter would soon be off the payroll.

I can’t recall the calculations I made. No doubt there was some fancy spreadsheet. But whatever it said, it was hopelessly wrong. I did not reckon on significant earnings after retirement. I did not think about the prospect of an inheritance from my mum. I didn’t consider income from investments. But most of all, I underestimated my expenses. Part of that was about separating, remarrying and taking on two new kids. A lot of it was about moving to an expensive city like New York. And some of it just did not account for inflation and societal changes.

Luckily, even if almost every line of the spreadsheet turned out very wrong, the bottom line has turned out to be close., at least so far. Once upon I time I saw a documentary where all these rich people were shown obsessed with money and concerned to make more and more. One guy near the end of the show was different and seemed to enjoy his life a lot more despite having only modest wealth. The narrator asked him how much he had, and he responded with a single word – enough.

For sure bad things can happen. The stock market is bound to collapse at some point. One of the kids might need help. One of us might lose our good health. But most of the time, when I think a bit about it, I think I am the guy in the documentary. I have enough, probably, and what a rare blessing that is.

Most of the time, that means I don’t have serious negative thoughts about money. But occasionally I do, indeed more often recently. So I wondered what might have caused that. My answer is not about spreadsheets, but about stories. I have become susceptible to income envy.

I remember when I clearly had the first such twinge. This one did not directly concern money, but ambition. Shell has a system called CEP, in which people are assigned a job level to indicate where their careers could reach, a ceiling if you like. It is a good system, though it has flaws, mainly in how it is executed. I remember the day I found out that someone who had previously been my direct report had been promoted to a level that was higher than my own CEP.

For some reason, this briefly made me envious. It was a sign of being terminally overtaken in some great race. The feeling was quickly usurped by ones of pride and pleasure, but it had been present and was uncomfortable.

Of course, that experience quickly became commonplace, as my career plateaued and those of the many talented people I had tried to coach blossomed. Since then, many of my former reports have risen to impressive levels, inside Shell and outside. Some have thrown me some generous crumbs, and many are still kind enough to remember the help I gave them. I am not envious, even when I observe lifestyles that I never enjoyed and certainly are way beyond me now.  Well, maybe just a tiny bit envious, in weak moments.

My lifestyle is on a steady glide path downwards, yet I choose to live in a city of extremes where others have openly opulent lifestyles and many are on a stratospheric path. There could be a four-box model here, with wealth or the past on one axis, and income or the future on the other. Each box has its own characteristics and its pitfalls. My own box, of high past and modest future, can be a relaxing place to be, but can open up spasms of envy, and also of making unfair judgments on those in other boxes.

A typical New York story occurred recently when I met a choir friend for coffee. She explained that she might have to miss a few rehearsals because her husband had just changed job, from one Wall street firm to another. I expressed the hope that at, even if the new job meant longer hours and more stress, there might at least be the consolation of more money. Oh no, she said, he took a pay cut of $200,000 per annum, to move to a better environment. My jaw dropped. The passing twinge of income envy followed soon afterwards.

We have a good friend who is a Chinese lady in her late twenties. Other friends of ours had played an informal foster-parent role for her when she had lived in England, and we were delighted to inherit that responsibility when she moved to New York. We still give plenty of personal help and companionship to her, and we are delighted to serve and get a lot back in return from her. But within two years she has rocketed from the low past/ unrealized future box to the affluent present / spectacular future box in my model. Two years ago we were stocking her fridge and always paying for dinner. Now she spends more in a month than we do in a year. It is lovely to see it, and she remains the same unaffected young lady she always was, but I have to confess to just the occasional pang of income envy.

The stories with people I know well are always the most poignant, but in New York there are opportunities for income envy of strangers every day. My recent experience of buying a car had few positives, but one big negative was fighting off the envy of recognizing that others were shopping in an altogether more glamorous market than I was.

Occasionally I get some evidence that makes me rethink assumptions. My dentist is a lovely lady who works hard and deserves her success and high income. But, one day while with my mouth wide open in her chair, I started advocating against income inequality, and was quickly reminded that she was still paying off six figures of student debt, in her late forties with two kids in college. Both axes in the model can weigh heavily, and can challenge easy assumptions.

I once had a good friend who was in the same box as me, but in a more extreme place within the box. We called him the poorest rich guy we had ever met. He owned a huge estate, but it offered him no income at all and he lived as modestly as anyone I have ever known. Then we have all encountered the converse, someone addicted to luxury but mired in debt. Appearances can deceive, and models can be complicated.

Like all failings, the first step is to acknowledge it, and nowadays I have learned to recognise the income envy feeling and have found ways to move past it. It can help to cast my eye just a little wider and to observe the many people who are worse off than I am. But for this particular negative feeling, I can do that and then consider a more structural fix.

The fix goes back to that documentary and the magic word “enough”. The envy feeling always starts with a mental reference to a race, and the sense of being overtaken and having no way to overtake back. But if think a bit harder we can realise that there is no such race against others, just our own journey meandering through life. If we can convince ourselves that we have enough, then that journey can be peaceful even if we are overtaken, by one close friend or by a million New Yorkers. They are welcome to their own race; indeed I can wish them all the best and cheer them on from my seemingly diminished vantage point.

For me, that realisation helps every time the income envy twinge comes around, and helps me to find peace. For others, that same realisation could be even more powerful, if it stops the urge to stretch to buy something they can’t afford, just to impress the neighbours, wife, parent or ego. Positions in four-box models are subject to change, after all.