Net Worth vs. Self Worth: They’re Not as Equal as You Might Think
Image via Wikipedia
Just the other day, I was talking to one of my teacher friends who works at a different school than I do. He was telling me about the recent cuts his school district has suffered – even though the economy seems to be picking up again, schools are often the last hit and the last to recover – and how he was working so hard this summer to make up for the decrease he’d see in his paycheck come August that he barely has time to see his wife at all. As you can imagine, she’s unhappy because she was looking forward to spending time with him during his summer off; he’s unhappy because he really could have used a summer off, and he misses his wife. He was asking me for advice.
Instead of advice, I asked him a very simple question: “Do you need the money? I don’t mean need it for a down payment for a house or need it for new shoes. I mean, will you be able to eat and pay your rent and take care of all the other of your most basic needs with the money you had before your second job?” His response: “Well, no…,” to which I replied, “Then quit your second job or cut back on your hours and spend some time with your wife.”
Too often, in this capitalist society, we equate our self worth with our net worth. If we’re not making 6-figures right out of undergrad – or, at least, by the time we’re 30 – we’re not successful, or we always feel like we could have done more or been more. And if we choose a profession like teaching, well, you better be prepared not to make 6-figures until the very end of your career, if ever. When you have the government and media pummeling you and telling you that you don’t know how to do your job and kids aren’t succeeding and you shouldn’t even be paid as much as you are, well, it’s pretty easy to feel like it’s time to find something else to do with your one and precious life.
You might say that equating self worth with net worth is more of a problem for men than it is for women. After all, men have historically been the providers in the family. They’ve gone out and made all the money while the women have stayed home with the children and tended to the house. In today’s economy, that just doesn’t even seem possible even if one partner landed that 6-figure job right out of undergrad. Tim and I make really good money combined, but we are still struggling to buy a house in the location we want. I’ve seen this put pressure on Tim to make more money, and we’ve had many conversations about how we don’t need more money, but we do need to spend more time together.
However, and you might take my feminist card away for saying so, I think this is a slippery slope for young women, as well. When we do our career unit in my English classes, I ask students what they are interested in doing when they graduate high school. Many of the young women I speak with reply that they don’t really care as long as they’re making lots of money because they “don’t want to depend on a man.” As admirable as that sentiment is, is making a lot of money worth not exploring a career you might actually enjoy? And do they realize that you can support yourself just as well as an engineer or lawyer as you can as a baker or teacher? And whatever happened to the idealistic sentiment of “the biggest risks have the biggest payoffs”?
Young women today are hell-bent on making more money than their male counterparts, and that’s great, but at what cost (no pun intended)? I might be biased, but I find my lower-paying job as a teacher (and my almost zero-pay job as a blogger/writer) more fulfilling than I would a high-power corporate job. Maybe that’s just me, but as far as I’m concerned, the glass ceiling can kiss my @$$. I’m going to do what I want, even though I’ve been told my whole life that I’m “too smart to teach” and that I could be doing better. While I don’t think that every person who has tried to persuade me to leave teaching has wanted me to make more money, the thought is always there. I’m doing “women’s work,” I could be working in another profession and paid more, and if I can, I should.
But here’s the thing. My self worth is not tied to my net worth. When I write a blog post that people comment on and share, I feel like I accomplished something. When I am teaching a lesson and there is an audible “ah-ha!” moment throughout the class, I feel like I accomplished something. When I get an email from a student I had in class a few years ago telling me how much I helped her just by accepting her for who she is, I feel like I accomplished something. And, contrary to what you might hear, those moments happen more often than you’d think. I don’t need the money to tell me I’m worth something; I have people for that.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m immensely privileged to be saying this. I make a good enough living that all my needs are met. But I’m not talking about taking a job out of necessity. I’m talking about taking a job because it pays more, even if you won’t enjoy it as much. I’m talking about taking on extra jobs to make more money you don’t need at the expense of your relationship with your partner.
Sometimes, it might be better to focus on jobs that produce self worth, especially for women. I’m not saying the pay gap isn’t important to fight (Why don’t teachers make as much as lawyers? Why are women paid less than men for the exact same job?), but I am saying that taking a higher-paying job doesn’t make you worth more. Only you can define your worth, and that is an important message for everyone.