Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Checks/Balances


I first set foot in ladymag land in the fall of 1999, when a teen magazine hired the 23-year-old me as the lone editorial assistant. Since then, I’ve worked in women’s magazines in some capacity—running the gamut from fitness rags to fashion, teen to adult, highbrow to lowbrow, freelance to staff and back to freelance again—for the majority of my 13 years of being in the workforce, which is to say the majority of my adulthood. Which is to say that for the majority of my adult life, I have spent thirty-five to, oh, eighty hours a week working on women’s magazines, or physically surrounded by them, or thinking about them, or reading them. And as a copy editor, which has been my primary professional role for most of those 13 years, when I say “read” I mean I read, very closely, every single word on every single page. There have been repeated 12-hour stretches of my life where—and I am not exaggerating—I have done nothing but eat, drink, pee, and read women’s magazines.

Have I made my point clear? I think I have. I have spent a lot of my life reading women’s magazines. Not as much as some of my colleagues—those who have been on staff instead of having extended freelance stretches like I have, those who work harder and more intently than I have, those who have simply been in the workforce 
longer—but I think it’s fair to say I’m in the top 1% of the population as far as taking in women’s magazines goes.

I still work in them in some ways—pinch-hitting in the copy editing department, penning the occasional piece—and I’m generally happy to do so, because as much as I’m critical of the velvet steamroller of women’s magazines, I’m also supportive of them in many ways. My ambivalence on the world of women’s magazines could fill a blog of its own, but suffice to say: I support what they do, and I want them to do with aplomb, and I also know that until we have a societal sea change, there will always be a stopping point in how far they can go toward truly serving their readers in all aspects of their lives.

Anyway. I’ve broadened my copy editing client base in the past couple of years to include publications outside of women’s magazines. One of those clients was a personal finance magazine, which meant I went from proofing columns about the difference between lip balm, lip stain, and lipstick to proofing columns about fixed annuities, variable annuities, and perpetuities. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I enjoyed it—the 
copy could be as dry as the Mojave—but certainly it was educational, and I came away from it knowing much more about personal finance than I had when I started.

The first week or so that I worked on this material, it only made sense to apply what I was reading to my own finances. I transferred my short-term savings to an account with a higher interest rate; I double-checked my bank fees; I eventually even rebalanced my IRA portfolio. But the fact is, I’m unmarried, child-free, and l
azy; my entire financial empire could fit in a shoebox. There’s only so much I could do to check up on my finances, you know?

Not that that stopped me. I started repeatedly checking the balances of my checking and savings account. Daily. Not because I was going to do anything to them—no transfers, no withdrawals, no deposits—but because I just wanted to make sure that what I thought was there, was there. It wasn’t a conscious decision I made; it just naturally happened that midway through reading an article about saving, I’d have to stop 
reading immediately and look at the number on my savings account to make sure it hadn’t magically changed in the past, oh, 18 hours.

A brief aside about my temperament: I’ve been blessed with a relative lack of anxiety about money. Part of this is sheer privilege—a largely middle-class upbringing and the accompanying assumption that I’d go to college and land in a field that would allow me comfort, if not wealth. My father grooves on finance stuff—indeed, his lifelong career was in the financial end of health-care systems on Indian reservations—so while I’m lazy in handling my finances, I grew up with the idea that dealing with money matters could be a source of satisfaction (which, in me, mostly manifested itself in a love of filling coin rolls. Better ’n’ Quaaludes! So relaxing). When I’ve been under financial duress, I’ve usually had few problems adjusting my budget; while I’m not the best saver on the planet, neither am I the greatest spender. Basically, while I get the occasional jolt of nerves about money like anyone, overall it’s just not on my worry list.

Yet there I was, 
checking my balances daily, sometimes more than once a day, almost ritualistically. Seeing the number I expected to see soothed me, allowed me to take a deep breath and remind me that the world was in order, or at least my world was in order.

At a certain point I realized that my “sudden” need to check in on my bank balances was directly correlated to the content I was reading all day. Reading about how to improve my financial life did a little to actually make my financial life better, yes. But the number-one thing it did was instill in me an anxiety about my finances—an anxiety that was either latent or nonexistent before. Surrounding myself with personal finance material for eight hours a day for only a few months, off and on, had done something to me. Nobody else was making withdrawals or deposits to my accounts; nobody else was making transfers. I was the only one whose hands touched my money, but somehow that knowledge was no longer enough. My incessant checking of my bank accounts reflected a loss of trust in myself—a trust I didn’t even recognize I had until it was gone.

And once I’d realized where this sudden compulsion came from—and more importantly, once I’d stopped working for that magazine and quickly went back to checking my account balances monthly instead of daily—well, surely you already know what I wondered next: Maybe what you’ve spent the past 13 years reading has done something to you too.

17 comments:

  1. Okay, this post is serendipitous because I am going to put up a post today about how I haven't bought a women's magazine in over a year, and the effects I've noticed in the way I think about myself and the world as a result. (I actually cite some things you've said about the positives of women's magazines, so as to not be all "BASH THE LADYMAGS!") It really has been astonishing to see just how deeply I was affected by the images in the magazines, and how freeing it has been for me to walk away from them. Of course, in the process I ended up giving up good stuff - like quality features and personal essays - but overall it has been worth it. It's complicated, is what I'm saying.

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    1. Your comment here has me thinking--I'm wondering how women's magazines have changed as far as quality content (features, essays) pre- and post-internet. Because there's no shortage of excellent female-directed essays out there online, I wonder if/how that's affected the print magazines? I should spend an afternoon browsing 1993 Glamours to see. In any case, love how our experiences intersect!

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  2. You are brilliant. That is all.

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  3. I was never a very regular reader of women's magazines, but I've found that blogging has had this effect on me! And, yet, it is also a great counterpoint to reading important liteRAture all the time too.

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    1. Terri, after I posted this I got to wondering what effect blogging about this stuff has had on me. I'm not about to quit blogging but I need to recognize that I might not be helping my cause, you know?

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  4. Nice. This is a great article.

    I read a lot of both fashion and personal finance publications and wholeheartedly agree that this is an immediate impact -- and that there are both concrete positives and negatives to the impact they have on one's outlook.

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    1. Thanks! I wonder if it's just a matter of moderating both our intake and our perspective--I don't want to quit either entirely, but is it possible to moderate these things?

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  5. I found you through your inspiring essay in this month's Whole Living. I'm now thinking of trying the mirrorless thing myself! And I can totally relate to this post. I also write/edit for women's magazines and recently took a finance editing job that's totally out of my wheelhouse. But like you, learning a lot. Funny how work life seeps into your "real" life:) So glad I found your blog!

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    1. Hi Lindsey--pleasure to "meet" you! I encourage everyone who is interested in the mirrorless experiment to try it, even if just for a few days. It was a fascinating experience, and in fact I'm repeating it--not really writing about it, just doing it for myself, because I experienced such a feeling of serenity.

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  6. I think you're underestimating the importance of novelty in triggering your obsession and the effects of habituation if you'd kept up the personal-finance editing. Eventually you'd know the formulas; become bored, confident, or both; and go back to occasional checkbook balancing, plus perhaps once-a-year portfolio rebalancing.

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    1. Heh, much like I did with the hordes of beauty products given away at ladymags--grabbed everything for my first couple of years, and now you'd have a hard time getting me to get anything except mascara from a beauty sale. Bored and confident is something to shoot for, in personal finances at least...

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  7. Hello! New(ish) reader here; I love your thoughtful writing.

    "Maybe what you’ve spent the past 13 years reading has done something to you too."

    This! Oh yes. Recently, the concept of "curating my thoughts" came into my consciousness. It has definitely changed my overall online reading habits. Musical listening habits. And subsequently, thinking habits.

    I went through a phase similar to yours late last year. I was reading a lot of personal finance blogs. I finally started a budget, and somewhat kept to the budget. I also found myself logging into Google docs umpteen times a day to fiddle with the budget, then into my bank account to look at my spending habits, then back to the budget. It became cyclic and time consuming. And annoying. Of course, once I stopped obsessing, I fell off the budget. A... bit. Climbing back on board after this next credit card bill is paid off. ;)

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    1. Pleasure to "meet" you, Monique! And oh man, it can be hard to hit that sweet spot between obsession and laxity, in finances and other things as well. I find having a formula of sorts helps--pay bills on X date, etc.--but still! And thought curation is definitely one of the symptoms of living in the age of social media. If a thought falls in the forest and nobody Tweets it, does it make a sound?

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    2. Oh, I like the idea of having a formula. I'm going to work on developing one, otherwise I'm pretty sure I'll vacillate between both extremes indefinitely.

      "If a thought falls in the forest and nobody Tweets it, does it make a sound?"

      Ha ha! Now that's worth quoting! I'm grateful to [whatever] that Twitter has no appeal for me. Got to curate the thoughts, curate the time, curate the distractions, curate the food temptations, curate just about everything these days. I (we?) have too many choices. :)

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    3. Monique, I'm guessing you've heard of this book but in case you haven't: The Paradox of Choice looks at exactly this question. I've only read parts of it but found it illuminating--if nothing else, it was a relief to know that the overwhelm I feel on a regular basis (that I didn't feel 15 years ago) isn't necessarily just me.

      http://www.amazon.com/The-Paradox-Choice-More-Less/dp/0060005688

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  8. Really good story but with lack of action in my opinion.
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    Clash of Clan hack.

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