How much money is required to achieve true financial security? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mona Chalabi spent five years tracking the lives of 10 Americans—ranging from those living paycheck to paycheck to those earning six-figure salaries—to find an answer. Her latest book, *Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are*, examines the reasons why financial stability remains so difficult to attain.
“It’s called 10 Lives because I specifically didn’t just want to focus on the 1%,” Chalabi says. “Instead I wanted to talk about how the 99% of us aren’t all in it together, and the kind of power differentials between us.”
Economy
Gas prices dip below $4 but regarding their financial future, even those with significant <a Across the board, everyone just seemed to be expressing this feeling of panic that I think is really, really particular to U.S. capitalism, which is an incredibly precarious and cruel system where you are one crisis away from experiencing a real economic shock," she says.Consider This from NPR
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Chalabi also observed that many of her subjects identified as middle class, regardless of their actual income levels. She argues that this disconnect between wealth and class perception has real-world implications, affecting not only self-image but also how individuals are perceived by others.
“To be poor in this country is to encounter an enormous, enormous array of obstacles, including assumptions about your intelligence [and] your educational level,” she says. “And so it’s actually quite rational sometimes for people to try to present themselves as middle class, maybe even to try and signal wealth with the clothes that they buy or the cars that they drive. I don’t think it’s simply aspirational. I also think it is them trying to avoid the discrimination that they might face if their real income level were disclosed.”
Interview highlights
On the importance of parents when it comes to financial security
If you really want to understand somebody’s economic security, you need to understand who they can turn to when times get hard, and obviously a household is an imperfect measure of that. People sometimes even live with spouses that they can’t necessarily lean on. … But one of the things that came out time and time and time again from the book is how much money your parents have is so profound in shaping your economic security. …
Class is about more than the number that is printed on your pay slip or the number that’s in your bank balance. Our class identities are very often tied to our households that we were in growing up. They’re tied to the professions that our parents had. …Most people who are born in poverty in this country do not make it out.
On younger generations choosing partners for economic compatibility
There was this TikTok trend that I saw a while ago with people talking about how they were looking for a partner who was 6’5″, blue eyes and working in finance, which has never been any partner of mine. I grew up with a particular model of feminism that was about being able to support yourself, not relying on a man. But I also think that for my generation, there was this … understanding of romance that it’s somehow supposed to be post-materialist, that you’re not really supposed to talk about wanting a partner from a particular set of economic circumstances. …
