Young Money by Kevin Roose
I've had an aversion to money for as long as I can remember. I struggle with the handling of it, the responsibility of using it wisely instead of just getting another article of clothing. I even used to hate people that had money. I mean, how dare they have money while I'm sitting over here broke.
I think most of my aversion to finances comes from a huge lack of understanding. I grew up pretty poor. I wasn't going without meals, but I certainly never knew what it was like to own a brand new pair of basketball shoes. That is, until a lady from our church took my little brother and me to Sears and bought us each a pair of "name brand" shoes. This same lady bought me a giant puffy Adidas coat that every kid on the planet seemed to have—one I had envied for some time. We never went hungry, but I do remember thinking we weren't like my friends from church. We got excited to go out to eat at Taco Bell once a month and order two items off the menu.
I say all that because I've finally started to learn about money. I've started facing my demons, figuring out why I was so opposed to it, and why I tended to judge those that had it. I also wanted to learn how any young, educated, seemingly rational person could want to go into Wall Street after all the events of 2008. So, I picked up a book by Kevin Roose because instead of being afraid of what I don't understand, I decided to learn about it. It's a world that has been vilified, yet also draws some of the smartest, driven, cream-of-the-crop Ivy League graduates. I wanted to learn about how these people think and why they do what they do. Young Money was just the book.
I found out about Young Money from an article in the New York Magazine. Kevin Roose crashed a Wall Street elite fraternity party where heavy hitters in the industry joke about crashing the economy and how much the 99% whine about not having money. They also dress in drag and have to perform for the members of Kappa Beta Phi. If you want just a taste of what it was like you can hear the opening remarks here. The chapter that talks about the secret party of the the most powerful people on Wall St confirmed all my assumptions about what these rich and powerful people think about the world and how completely out of touch they are with the world around them. But there was still something about the young people that go into this seemingly money-hungry career.
In Young Money, Kevin Roose follows eight entry level workers into the Wall Street world. He interviews them, drinks with them, and probes the reasons as to why they pursued jobs into Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and other major financial institutions. The reasons and desires of the young people vary as to why they took these annalists jobs. They are much like my peers and I: intelligent, educated (either self taught, or college level and beyond), ambitious, and completely aware of the shifting economy and how nothing is guaranteed anymore. They know that just working a job isn't enough to make it anymore. They are promised higher paying jobs than most of America for two years of dedicating their lives to the highest names in Wall Street. With this comes security and its own education about how money truly works.
What I found fascinating about Roose's book is that each and every character was profoundly changed by encountering the types of people that work in the Financial District. Everyone seemed money hungry and only interested in saving their own skin. But the young idealism of the recent graduates seemed to be subsumed by Wall Street's own culture of making money for making money's sake. The only problem for these entry level people is that there is never an end. They will never finally have enough money, and neither will the people they are working for.
Another thing that Roose discovered is that, like the middle class of America, the supposed security that Wall Street promises is no longer there. People were laid off from companies in droves all across America. The numbers aren't as high now, but after the big named firms received the bail outs, they still had to fire people who thought they were secure. No one was "safe" anymore after the crash, even the annalists that are promised two years with hefty bonuses can get canned.
This wasn't a book about the 99% - It wasn't even a book about the 1%. It really is an investigation into young people trying to make sense of the financial world and questioning the old way of doing things ("too big to fail"), are worth it anymore. The new generation truly seemed to want a more rounded life, none of them seemed solely after the money anymore because the dollar only went so far in their eyes.
Even if the only change happening on Wall Street is that people want more out of their lives than money, that is a step in the right direction, in my opinion.
