Safety & Security Outside of Accumulating Wealth

We need to talk about money. Seriously, one of the "rules" of the white wealthy family is to keep money a secret and to not talk about money with anyone outside the nuclear family. This is one of the ways that wealth inequalities across race are perpetuated in this world.

Iris Brilliant is an anti-capitalist and social justice money coach. She works with wealthy couples, families and individuals. We’re going to explore three of her articles that break down the rules of the white wealthy family, how to break them and how to understand safety and security that aligns with liberatory social justice values instead of wealth accumulation.

We encourage folks, especially white wealthy folks, to read each article in full. But let’s dive into some important takeaways, with a focus on the myth that wealth accumulation fosters safety and security. These articles are written specifically for folks with wealth - enough wealth that they even have options in the first place to hire financial advisors and invest in savings and retirement funds. These rules and norms among wealthy people, especially white wealthy people, must be directly confronted and spoken aloud if we are to ensure all areas of our lives are moving in greater and greater alignment with redistribution and liberation. We need to name that and face it together in order for folks with wealth to begin to shift their lives in these deeper ways, to truly break these destructive status quo norms and build communities that can ensure safety and security with each other regardless of the initial wealth disparities between community members. This, like all things, requires internal transformation in order for us to begin to make different choices that challenge the norms we were raised with and the pressures we may hear from family and "advisors".

We want to highlight three of the rules of the white, wealthy family from Iris Brilliant’s article. The first one is about the nuclear family being the only legitimate form of family. There are many ways that the structure of the nuclear family perpetuates racial capitalism that is beyond the scope of this piece. In this context, it is important to recognize, though, that this basic foundation of a family structure in our society serves to reinforce wealth inequalities across race and class. This, combined with another rule of not sharing money outside the nuclear family, and a third rule of not even talking about money outside the nuclear family, sets us up to sustain these systems of massive inequality and destruction.

When we restrict money to the family, we cause the racial wealth divide to expand. White people own 90% of the wealth in the United States, and white households on average have about four times as much wealth as Black or Latinx households. With the vast majority of marriages in the U.S. between people of the same race (in 2019 it was 89%), it is precisely the practice of confining wealth within the family that keeps wealth in the hands of the wealthy and white and deprives others of resources. - Iris Brilliant

Making these rules explicit helps to illuminate how we sustain these systems and can help set us on a path of truly aligning our lives with liberatory values. We love how, according to Iris’ article on breaking the rules, it begins with stepping outside of the confines of the nuclear family and remembering that we can define family for ourselves, in our communities.

In order to take steps towards abolitionist, liberated futures we need to step back into interconnection with our wider communities outside of nuclear families, including human and non-human beings that we share this precious planet with. Part of the disconnect of white supremacy culture that perpetuates inequalities is that we have forgotten that we all belong to each other and this earth. We each have a responsibility to contribute to the wellbeing of everyone in our communities, which means no one ultimately "owns" any wealth as an individual or a nuclear family. We have responsibilities to distribute resources among our communities. Stepping back into that responsibility also means opening our lives up to the abundance of support and love that gets returned to us when we can shift our lives to re-embed ourselves in community in this way, in the way that most if not all humans require in order to truly thrive – to truly feel safe and secure.

This moves us into the third article, on how to create safety and security outside of accumulating wealth. In this article, Brilliant breaks down the myths that perpetuate beliefs that wealth accumulation brings security, the "vicious cycle of wealth accumulation" and how to re-orient ourselves to true safety and security that encompasses the wellbeing of all.

The Vicious Cycle of Wealth Accumulation that we get trapped in

The first truth to confront is that no amount of wealth accumulation can guarantee us a long and comfortable life. Money gives wealthy people the illusion of control, which if not discussed and critiqued, can be desperately grasped onto in times of crisis. Of course, we do not deny the power that money brings in this world and how it has allowed control of our societies to be highly concentrated. However, it is ultimately a facade of racial capitalism that anyone can control the outcome of their life in this way or control what is going to happen as these systems perpetuate global disparity and ecological collapse.

The second truth Iris Brilliant encourages inheritors of wealth to become aware of is that "financial advisors are not god". In our culture, economics and finance are sometimes held up as these inscrutable fields that only experts can discern and fully understand. Money comes with a lot of power and people with wealth are pressured in many ways to be "financially responsible" by making decisions that are presented as neutral or obvious but actually carry harmful assumptions that perpetuate the status quo. Brilliant reminds us that financial advisors are trained into fiscally conservative worldviews and are trained to coach their clients into hoarding wealth as a way to prepare for any possible disaster. This is presented as the only way to ensure security and prosperity for oneself and their family. Brilliant provides an example of a woman who had inherited $2 million and entered into a meeting with a financial advisor with a plan to redistribute at least $1 million. She was told that it wasn’t "safe" to redistribute more than $100,000 and that doing so could “lead her down a path of poverty”. Remember that when you decide to make choices that deviate from or challenge the status quo, you may be confronted with many people including family and "advisors" who will confidently tell you why your decision is unsafe, immature or irresponsible. This is the reality of what it feels like to chart a new path for yourself that aligns with different values than the dominant culture. It is important to find ways to ground yourself in your values and know that this pushback is actually a sign you are successfully making choices that align differently than the dominant culture.

The third truth is about our concepts of "enoughness" and critiquing what we are told we need, or what we grew accustomed to growing up in wealthy families. Brilliant points out that this is not to deny the importance of everyone having enough resources to actually meet their needs. Again, this is a reflection for inheritors of wealth specifically to examine what they consider to be "enough" and whether a certain luxury is actually impeding someone else’s ability to meet an actual basic human need.

Take a moment and ask yourself — how much money would you need to have to feel truly and permanently safe and secure? Then ask yourself — where did you get that number from? If everyone in the world felt they needed that same number, would that even be economically viable? As people become wealthier, their magical number increases dramatically…Even with hundreds of millions of dollars, people still feel the need to increase their wealth to be happier. This demonstrates wealth can create an endless hunger for more money. Money is addictive, people!

The fourth truth feels like it gets right to the core of what wealthy folks in our hyper-individualistic culture have become disconnected from. It is that "focusing on individual safety and survival creates less safety for everyone."

If you’re the only well fed person in a room full of starving people, how safe do you feel? - Ed Whitfield, co-managing director of the Fund for Democratic Communities

We feel this gets at the heart of the message here on a truth wealthy folks really need to reconnect with in order to fundamentally shift their relationship to money and their ideas of what brings safety and security. Going back to that financial advisor who told their client it was "unsafe" to redistribute more than $100,000 – it’s crucially important to examine this concept of safety. In a world where most of humanity does not have their basic needs met, where wealth inequalities are rising and our ecological systems are collapsing, what does it even mean to think of hoarding wealth in the stock market and savings accounts as bringing any kind of safety and security?

White supremacy culture strips us of our fundamental interconnection with all life on this planet. Our safety and our security is and will always be intertwined with the health, safety and security of everyone else. It was always an illusion that we can separate ourselves from this fundamental truth of our world and find any kind of safety, "peace" or "prosperity" on our own individual mounds of wealth as we disconnect more and more from our neighbours, communities and all of life. It is truly anti-life and anti-liberation to hoard wealth.

On this note of our interconnection, we land on the fifth truth that Brilliant explores - that wealth accumulation obstructs solidarity and inner resilience:

When we rely on money instead of people, we lose out on the incredible experience of relying on a friend to help us simply because they love us. We miss out on a friend relying on us because they trust us to show up for them. And of course, the financial implications of each decision are significant. This reinforces the vicious cycle because it prevents us from experiencing real intimacy or a solid community. We then continue to see people as commodities and objects to meet our needs rather than as complex human beings with whom we can have relationships.

The second part of this article dives into what Brilliant calls "the five pillars of true safety and security." There are reflection questions for each one. Again, we encourage folks with wealth to read the full article and take some time to sit with these reflection questions.

The five pillars include building self trust and integrity, which can be greatly improved by aligning our financial choices with our social justice values; nourishing the collective by learning how to be a generous and trustworthy community member; learning to be vulnerable and receive support from our community; learning practical skills that we can offer community and increasing our adaptability, resilience and resourcefulness.

I want to remind you: there is so much to be gained by shifting out of a framework of wealth accumulation and into community, fulfillment, and integrity. Of course, your feelings of scarcity will arise as you give away money. But don’t let those fears run your life, and don’t hand over your own thinking to your financial planner, partner, parents, or anyone in your life. Listen to that part of your gut that is calling for you to change your ways and to step into the unknown so that, at the end of your life, you can look back and be proud of who you were, how you showed up, and what you stood for. No amount of money can buy you that satisfaction.

I want to conclude by touching on feelings of shame that may arise in wealthier people as you read this post or reflect on your relationship with money. As Brilliant points out in the rule of the white wealthy family that requires keeping money a secret –

Keeping money 'private' is key to preserving wealth within the family. The truth is, wealthy people don’t want to disclose their wealth because on some level they don’t want to share the money. Most things labeled ‘family secrets’ are unhealthy, and secrets about money are no different. Secrecy protects the wealthy from having to consider sharing wealth beyond the family and from reckoning with power dynamics in their relationships with those who have less money. Disclosure forces people to grapple with their own ethics. The more honest and transparent they are, the more they will feel self-conscious and aware of their financial choices, and the more likely they are to make changes to align with their values. Wealthy people wouldn’t need to keep their wealth a secret if they didn’t feel shame about it being unethical. Being honest about and confronting the huge disparities that exist means experiencing the consequences of privilege more than if these disparities are simply ignored.

I don’t want to gloss over the reality that for folks with wealth, confronting our relationship to money in this way could bring up levels of shame that may feel intolerable at first. The reason I want to highlight this is because we need to acknowledge the discomfort that truly shifting these deeply ingrained patterns will bring up.

Experiencing shame is not inherently something to push away at all costs. But that’s exactly what shame wants us to do – when shame arises, many of our first reactions are to push whatever has brought the shame away, to hide and conceal even more. Shame loves secrecy. As Brilliant says in the quote above, we wouldn’t feel shame if we didn’t know, on some level, that it is unethical to hoard wealth in this way, especially when we claim to hold abolitionist and liberatory values.

It takes time, patience and support to sit with shame in order to move through these initial reactions and allow the experience to guide us into making different choices. But the process is not going to be comfortable or easy. That is the point. That is actually how it feels to deeply shift cultural patterns and norms. How it feels to walk down a path that may differ from your family, your close friends and your advisors.

As I stated at the beginning, this work, like all abolitionist work, requires deep internal transformation. If we truly want more for this world, and to look back on our lives with the security of knowing we lived it in alignment with our values and deepest longings, we need to learn to sit with shame and let go of the myriad of "escape hatches" this culture provides for wealthy people to push those feelings away and stay in their comfort.

Another liberatory money coach, Morgan Curtis, spoke well on how wealthy folks can allow shame to guide us to what we need to take responsibility for, so I will conclude with her words:

Guilt and shame are natural, empathic, human responses to benefiting from injustice…to feel something in a world that is painfully wrong and to be on the side of that wrongness in such a way that's giving us perhaps, material comfort, perhaps, some semblance of safety for however long, but ultimately, is hurting others along the way. If we're not feeling something about that, that's the first step is to figure out to listen for, to notice where our heart is able to open and to lean into that and to let it shake us. And it's also not the destination. I think, shame and guilt points us somewhere, it takes us somewhere, like you said, it can bring us to work that's ours to do, it can bring us to responsibilities that are ours to take, but it won't sustain them. It doesn't have an energy that carries us through the challenges we inevitably face when we make different choices than the ones that dominant culture or our families are wanting us to make. And so I think what more deeply sustains us is that which we are called to, that which we are longing for. And it's from that place of looking out of and to the horizon of what do I really want for this one, wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver says, what do I want for my people, for all people, for this Earth? And how can I let that longing move through me? - Morgan Curtis

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