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The False Binary of Financial Success

The success/failure binary is very prevalent in our society. Like most binaries, it can be quite harmful. The idea that we either win or lose, succeed or fail, does not leave room for the valuable nuances of life.

If one succeeds, their goal has been met. End of story. No need to keep learning or seeking further growth. Alternately, failure means one is a loser, so there is no point in trying further.

In reality, we all experience failures. If someone never fails, it means they are never trying anything new. Failure is an indication that we are striving, growing, learning. We also experience success. Successes help us to identify our personal strengths and validate our growth.

Set Up To Fail

While I was trying to work recently my six year old came into my office and was distracting me. In an effort to occupy him I said “I have a job for you. Will you shred these papers?”

He immediately agreed and enthusiastically stepped into the role by grabbing one of my old business cards. He altered it to add his own name and “Paper Shredder” as his job title. Then he started to shred…or at least he tried.

The paper shredder was jammed. After an unsuccessful, albeit quick, attempt by me to fix the shredder, he gave up. He returned to his business card and wrote “FAILED” across it.

Honestly, he wrote the card humorously and was not particularly perturbed. I was relieved that he went on to find an activity away from my workspace.

Still, the occurrence struck with me as reminiscent of the pass/fail approach to life. We are an immediate success, deserving of accolades. Or, we encounter resistance and label our attempt a failure.

In my above example, my son’s lack of success had little to do with his shredding skills. It was a result of my neglecting to empty my paper shredder. He was set up to fail. Since I will not allow a six year old to clean out a shredder there was no way he could have succeeded.

Had the shredder been in operating order, my child would have been able to complete his task. He would have felt successful. In actuality, the failed attempt had the potential to provide a greater opportunity for learning. If time had allowed, we could have done some trouble shooting. He would have been exposed to the mechanical workings of the shredder as I modeled problem solving techniques.

Internalizing Failure

This takes me back to a “failure” of my own; a teaching job I had twenty five years ago. Mid-year I was assigned a class of twenty one first graders who had been pulled from their former class because they were disruptive or struggling academically (or both). Most of the students were awaiting special education evaluations for a range of cognitive, behavioral, and educational challenges. I was even told at the start that they did not expect any of the students to pass the first grade.

Not surprisingly, I failed. The kids learned little and were hard to manage. This failure weighed so heavily on me that I changed careers (hello, personal finance!). I decided that I was clearly not cut out to be a teacher.

With decades of perspective I can now see that, like my kid with the broken shredder, I was set up to fail.

I was an inexperienced teacher, without a special education background. I was responsible for a class twice as large as any self-contained special ed classroom, without the benefit of formal diagnosis, IEPS, para educators or outside support. It is unlikely anyone could have managed it. Yet, I allowed this to influence my views of myself and my abilities for many years.

Labeling People as Failures

Our society is hyper focused on individualism and accountability. Along with the success/failure binary, we are very invested in the dualities of success/failure, good/bad, right/wrong. If my class did not meet specific goals then I was a failure, regardless of the situation handed to me. That meant that I did a bad job and was in the wrong profession.

Even more concerning, the kids struggling to perform in a traditional classroom setting were labeled “bad kids.” At the age of seven they had already been designated as failures.

The harsh, traditional classroom setting promoted at the school was deemed as right and morally superior because it operated in the same manner that schools had for decades. When students or teachers did not succeed, it was their individual fault and not the result of a broken system.

Some kids did succeed. Therefore, the blame must lie in the shortcomings of the individual children rather than the structure that made minimal effort to accommodate their needs.

Systemic Influences on Financial Success

In the United States we love a good Horatio Alger style, rags-to-riches story. We propagate the bootstrap myth and the idea of rugged individualism.

It is easy to see why these fables are so alluring. We all want to believe that everyone has an equal chance to succeed. That means that we, our loved ones, and our communities, have a good chance at success. All it takes is hard work and dedication.

Conversely, we hear from politicians on the left that “the system is rigged.” But what does this mean? How is the system rigged?

Politicians often use the phrase “rigged” in the discussion of corporate tax breaks or voting laws. I do believe that these systemic biases impact our individual capacities for success.

If we ignore all extenuating factors and simply label things as success/failure we are missing out on the nuance. We are failing to acknowledge accomplishments because they don’t fit squarely into the box labeled success.

Disparate Availability of Education

Unequal access to education is one way in which inequalities influence individuals levels of wealth and financial “success.” In the United States people with more education generally make more money.

With public schools being funded primarily by property taxes, schools in rich neighborhoods are much more resourced than those in poorer neighborhoods. We know that the history of redlining in the United States has led to people of color being disproportionately located in poorer neighborhoods.

Additionally, the average annual cost of college in the United States is $35,331, a price tag out of reach for many Americans. Clearly, the educational system is rigged to prevent people from improving their economic situation.

Unequal Access to High Paying Jobs

The gendered nature of professions, and the corresponding compensation, is another example of a rigged system. Careers labeled as “female” generally pay less than those labeled as “male”, even when they require similar education levels.

Working with many wealthy clients throughout my career has made me very aware that children of the wealthy, through their social proximity to business owners and high level professionals, have a much easier time finding a high paying job. Connections play a huge role in professional success.

If financial success were really dependent only upon personal ability and hard work, it follows that wealth would be spread evenly among all genders and races. The existence of wealth and wage gaps is evidence that there is not a level playing field.

The Psycho-Social Effects

We may know at a logical level that our financial success is reliant upon societal factors. But this does not stop us from blaming ourselves when we feel unsuccessful. This awareness often does not prevent those in positions of disadvantage from feeling shame and recrimination.

Personal accountability is important as a means of both personal growth and community building. When we acknowledge our errors we and others are able to learn from them. But when we assign responsibility for systemic shortcomings to individuals then we are helping to prop up an unjust system.

Very few of our experiences in life are purely successes or failures. We may play the best soccer of our lives and still lose to a more skilled team. We might (just a random example) create an amazing workshop and then schedule it at a time that is inconvenient for attendees.

Rather than buying into the success/failure binary, let’s examine the underlying components and circumstances. Success, including financial success, exists on a spectrum. Looking beyond the absolutes allows us to recognize and learn from the components that worked as well as those that did not.