1
I think about money a lot. I’m sitting in a room surrounded by an estimated net worth of 13 million pound. In 2017 it was 4 million more; the pandemic has hit the hotel business hard I suppose. The chandeliers, the fireplaces, the high ceilings, the art on the wall; it’s an obvious display of wealth but that’s not why I think about it.
2
Every Monday I open three excel sheets: one for my personal, one for my business spendings and one for my business’ cash flow for the coming 6 months. I like to type in the numbers and to see whether I made a profit. It’s an easy task on a Monday morning. I like to tick it off my to do list just as much as I like to watch countless YouTube videos from finance experts telling me how I should make a budget, how much I should save for retirement, what side-hustle I could start for passive-income.
Life feels more tangible, rational and calculable, when I listen to the YouTube finance people. If you do this: you’ll be safe. You’ll be happy. You’ll belong.
They talk about investing and stocks and EFTs and I still don’t understand how it all works but I’m signed up on a trading app now, so that’s a start. I don’t actually have any money to invest yet but I want to understand what people do with their money when they have it. What this world actually looks like that not enough people talk about openly. Because if they did – if we all did – we’d get a much clearer understanding of the unfairness of everything. We’d get a much clearer view on the reality we live in.
3
I’d like to stop pretending.
4
It’s May 2020 and I am added to a WhatsApp Group that I have since left and deleted. It is a 21 days program to manifest your dream life or some sort of other catchy tune. I don’t actually believe in it but I have a lot of time on my hands in May 2020 and I am interested in how it would work, what they promise so I start the program in a manner of: why not?
If you google the manifestation course one of the first headlines you’ll find is: “You Can Buy Deepak’s New Movie, Or Eat For a Week.” It’s from September 2020, urging people to not buy into the fraudster techniques of Deepak Chopra selling you ideas you don’t need.
In the first week we are told to visualise a lot and listen to the guided meditations. We’re told that everything is abundant and if we draw dollar bills on a white sheet of paper: we can manifest them. “It’s all just energetics.” I draw the bills; a one million bill, a two million bill, until the sheet is full of money. However after a couple of days into the workshop I start to feel icky and kind of stupid and even as a research project it seems to go a bit far and so I end it around halfway through.
The thing that felt so icky, besides the weird cult vibes and delusion, is something I often feel when I think about money: while I agree that money isn’t technically real. That it is in fact just a piece of paper we all agree upon, pretending that it is something else; a currency, a symbol. I also know that nothing is eternally abundant and everything is finite. That resources end if you don’t replenish them, that not everything can be replaced and: that not everyone can be rich.
While manifestation rhetoric, well any sort of I can make you rich scheme pretends that this is not the case. Or at least not something to worry about.
5
Ever since Succession’s final episode came out I hear the word ‘quiet luxury’ thrown around a lot. Or ‘stealth wealth’. Or ‘old money aesthetic’. The girlies at the airport are wearing large bows at the back of their heads and chunky gold earrings. It’s Christmas and I’m on my way home to my family. Their hair is slicked back, they’re wearing muted colours, everything is chic without chi-chi. They certainly got the brief and already started their reformer pilates classes and barre sculpt sessions.
On TikTok is a guy in a pink bathrobe who likes to dissect rich people’s habits like creating, assembling and separating masses of ice cubes in their respective ice cube freezers; his punchline is always the same: “You don’t do this because you’re poor.”
6
“You ever notice how it’s only people who have money that think money isn’t important?”1
7
“In the morning if my face is a little puffy, I’ll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1,000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub.
Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask, which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturiser, then an anti-ageing eye balm followed by a final moisturising protective lotion.”2
It’s the opening monologue of American Psycho, where a beautiful, young Christian Bale takes us through his character’s morning routine. In the next scene we will see him enter a large office complex, sporting a walkman listening to the tunes of “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. His character Pat Bateman takes care of himself; he tans, he wears the right watch; he constantly gets mistaken to be someone else. He’s a stereotypical Yuppie.
– And he’s also a murderous psychopath.
But it doesn’t really matter. Don’t worry. He gets away with it, because it just doesn’t make sense that he could be a serial killer, that he killed all these people out of pettiness, for no real reason, just because they were annoying.
And his wealth protects him as well as the uniform look of business people is covering his tracks: they’re all interchangeable anyway.
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.”
Despite his hatred for his job, his girlfriend and all of his friends, the interesting thing about Bateman is that he still wants to fit in, that he still feels this deep need to belong to some group. That he cares more than anything that they all love his new business card. That he still wants to pretend.
8
The Yuppie Generation was the big buzzword before The Millennials entered the stage. Yuppie short for “young urban professional” was a way to describe the college-educated and socially mobile group of people entering the work force in the 80s to the late 90s in the US and by means of movies and popular culture the term washed ashore over to the continent as well. It was a word to describe a specific lifestyle notion, that money could buy you status and that status was everything.
9
“Well no one thrives for free, so –”3
10
I hear the term again like an echo from another era in Netflix’s 2023 hit show Beef. '“Stupid yuppie-ass house”, one of the main characters called Danny yells as he is driving up to seek revenge; on the side of his car it says ‘I AM POOR’ previously written in white paint by the yuppie-ass house owner.
Beef is a show about two characters on the polar opposite of the wealth spectrum continuously colliding after a road rage incident between them, one-upping each other in a furious revenge cycle, digging themselves deeper into the ground until they eventually hit rock bottom. And then hit rock bottom again.
A show that is about a lot of things but what ultimately struck me is the way both characters are pretending. And the way they feel about it. While they're both trapped in an entanglement of lies, Amy (brilliantly portrayed by Ali Wong), the rich “yuppie” is tired of pretending, while for Danny (equally brilliant Steven Yeun) it is his last resort. But both can feel distinctly that if the stop pretending everything they built will crumble.
11
The dictionary has a quite negative view on pretending and defines it as: “to behave as if something is true when you know that it is not, especially in order to deceive people or as a game.” Which may be true in some cases however I think most people pretend because they feel like they have to, because they don’t see another way to protect themselves or others or both. Because it is easier to fit in than to stand out. Because we all must belong somewhere.
12
I think about money a lot because it’s everywhere, when we hide it, when we show it: it is the biggest pretence there is. But I wonder if it’s worth it. “I just wanna know, if I gotta get to where you are.”, is a question Danny asks Amy at one point, to which she replies bleakly: “everything fades. Nothing lasts. We’re just a snake eating its own tale.”
And I wonder what could happen, if we stopped.
If we could?
YOUR TICKET TO TODAY’S MUSE SALON
This month’s Muse Salon I want to talk about staying in the liminal space of grounding and rest. To take a moment and be grateful for this new year before we clutter it with plans and goals.
A mindful meditation to create pockets of peace at the beginning of this new year.
Opening from 6-7 PM (UK-time).
Free for paid subscribers, see ticket below.