We’re told as we grow up that the three great conversational taboos are politics, religion, and sex, but in fact, people discuss these subjects all the time. No, the real taboo in our social discourse is money, as I was dramatically reminded this past summer.

My young son and I joined a bunch of old and new friends for a rafting/kayaking/ camping trip down the Klamath River. Of course, outdoor trips like this always speed up the process of intimacy; when you live together with others for five days—without obligations, without cell phones or PDAs, and sharing a latrine—you get to know them pretty well pretty fast. On this trip, the process moved even faster because of the forest fires that plagued northern California. The air was pungent with smoke, and the sun was always blocked, so there was a persistent sense of early dawn—a perfect setting for sharing our innermost truths, I’ve always thought.

Sarah and I had been acquaintances before the trip—my son and her daughter were pals from school—but on this trip, we grew really close. Although the fire danger meant there was a ban on campfires, we nevertheless sat and talked each evening, hunkered down in our low-slung camp chairs, our muscles weary, our kids safely in their tents. We talked about our past and present marriages, politics, religion, health, and our kids, sharing our concerns and vulnerabilities about each of these topics. It quickly became clear that ours was one of those friendships in which any subject could be fully explored.

As the trip grew to a close, we adults began to think and talk about tipping the wonderful river guides who had kept us safe through the Class 3 and 4 rapids. So on the last night, as we were settling into our camp chairs, I said to Sarah: “Have you thought about the tip? I’m thinking of giving a hundred bucks. What are you going to give?”

In the orange glow from the fires 30 miles west of us, I could see the look of stunned astonishment on Sarah’s face. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t feel comfortable discussing that.”

And that door slammed shut.

What is this? Why is money a blacklisted subject we hide behind a veil of secrecy as if we and our money were in some sinister conspiracy together? What made Sarah shut down? After all, I hadn’t asked her how much money she had in the bank or what her bonus had been last year. Nor had I suggested she tell me how many boyfriends she’d had in college or what her SAT scores had been. And the fact is that Sarah had told me some pretty private stuff about a rough patch in her marriage and about her own family history. That she could speak freely about such deeply personal matters made it even odder that she would shut down like a clam when asked what she planned to tip the next day.

What I can’t figure out is why. What makes people so uncomfortable talking about money? My guess is we see money as a measurement of our identity—and thus as a wedge that can separate us. That is, the person who “measures up” higher—i.e., with more money—feels he has to protect what he has from the person who measures up lower, while the person who measures up lower feels in danger of being exploited. I don’t know if that’s it, but when Sarah and I finally talked about her response to me, she said it was because she had indeed planned to give more than I was giving, and the difference—the separation it might define—made her anxious.

But if I don’t know exactly why we clam up about money, I do know the impact of all the secrecy: stress. And that stress makes us do stupid things in our money lives. It takes away clarity about money and cuts us off from any wisdom we might bring to our money lives. It leads us instead into a money madness that impels us toward dumb decisions about earning, spending, saving, investing, and giving money. In my own family, my father and his sister had been estranged for the last 30 years of their lives over a money secret!

I’ve been there too. I’m the guy who could talk a blue streak about my sexual history on the second date with the woman who became my wife—but for the first three years of our marriage never said a word about our assets, our debts, my income or possessions. Those were the conversational taboos I stuck to. And the dumb decisions I made as a result of that madness-driven secrecy were very costly indeed.

Yes, there are good reasons for keeping certain aspects of your money life private, but I think we’ve gone too far on the secrecy side. The money taboo has become so automatic that we no longer have a choice about whether to share or not to share details of our money life; it’s just not an option anymore. Yet most of the time, a secret or lie about money causes us stress, loses us money, and diminishes our intimacy with friends and family. That’s enough motivation for me to re-think what is the real conversational taboo—money talk.

My great-grandparents didn’t think much about their retirement. Neither did yours. Chances are they didn’t have one.

The whole idea of retirement is fairly new (except for the very rich, of course, who always lived a life of retirement). Before the Social Security Act of 1935, most people worked till they were no longer physically capable of doing so, then got by on savings, help from family members, or perhaps a pension, which, given the life expectancy at the time—about 60 years old on average—usually sufficed for any remaining years.

Social Security provided the guarantee of an insured income for the post-work years of life, and then came all the advances in healthcare that have extended our lifespan, and what do you have? A marketing opportunity for the producers of financial services—the newly minted phenomenon of “retirement planning.”

That’s what’s behind all those richly filmed, vibrantly scored, emotion-stirring, heart-pounding commercials for retirement funds. You know the ones I mean: a fit, good-looking couple in their fifties is flying off to some spectacular lake in a part of Alaska reachable only by private bush plane—he fishes, she photographs—as the husband announces that “when we retire, we’ll take trips like this all the time.” Or an equally fit, equally good-looking couple in their sixties is on the tee of some spectacular golf course in a part of the Caribbean reachable only by private yacht—they both golf—as they exchange a glance that tells us that once this hole is played, they’ll be off to the condo for some passionate afternoon love-making.

It’s a whole new fantasy: in retirement, we’ll live even better than we do now! We’ll be better-looking! We’ll fly to exotic destinations! We’ll have so much leisure and fitness that we’ll be making love with the vigor and excitement of 20-year-olds!

Moral? Do whatever it takes to grab the money bonanza now so we can really live later!

In a marketing minute, the retirement income once seen as a blessing for working families has become yet another arena of money madness. The guarantee that once blunted our anxiety about getting by in the last years of life has now become fertile territory for all kinds of new stress: how much money will I need to reach this golden lifestyle I’ve seen only in ads? how and where will I get that kind of money? Better work harder/sacrifice more/defer pleasure today/make the killer investment so I can make the grade.

But when a fantasy about tomorrow makes your life today seem worthless by comparison, and when you find yourself making one sacrifice after another to achieve that fantasy, it’s time to re-think the retirement game.

What kind of retirement do you really want? (By the way, not one of my wealthy clients ever “retires;” they all just change the shape of their engagement with life, although, granted, they have the wherewithal to do that.) More to the point: what kind of life today do you want?

I’m reminded of the old story about the wealthy ship owner who returns to the little fishing village where he was born to live out his golden years. One day on the beach, he sees a young man lazily fishing, and he gives him a lecture. “Why, when I was your age, I had ambition and enterprise. I worked hard, bought a boat, fished round the clock, bought another boat, then  another. Today, I am the owner of a fleet of ships, with enough money to do exactly what I want.”

“And what is that?” the lazy young man asks.

“To come back here and fish”—the ship owner gulps—“just like you.”

Moral: if you want to kick back and fish, think about doing it today—and consider how much of a fleet you really need to own first.

Here are some recent posts about retirement, and resources for you to explore :

At the end of my Cure Money Madness talk last month, I had a great opportunity to dissect a common—though complex—money madness situation. On the last day, a 50 year-old man came up to the podium and said, “I’m not sure if I have money madness.” He went on to share that he hadn’t filed a tax return in almost a decade, not only to avoid taxes, but also to avoid the hassle of completing an administrative form.

After we talked about some numbers, he publicly confessed what he already suspected, and what I knew—that he wasn’t actually saving much money by not filing. Then, he blurted out, “I’ve also kept my income low all these years so I’d be below the IRS’ radar – too small a fish for them to fry…But now I’ve spent my small inheritance and am struggling to make ends meet.”

“OK,” I responded, “let’s get clear about what your money madness drives you to do. First, earn less money than you’re capable of earning. Second, reject work that would increase your net worth and refuse to ask for better compensation for the work you’re doing. Third, shirk your legal obligation to pay taxes.”

He agreed that this was a fair assessment, so we explored the money messages on which this behavior was built. Three important messages emerged.
1. The “system” is unfair, and a hassle, to boot.
2. You should get away with something if you can
3.Not paying taxes makes perfect sense, given #1 and #2.

Curing money madness begins with examining the costs of money madness. In this case, money madness locked him into making less than he needed to live, into doing uninteresting work that didn’t capitalize on his genius qualities and into a constant state of stress at the specter of being caught by the IRS.

Then, he had to accept the numbers we’d just looked at, and truly understand that while he might have avoided an end-of-the-year check to the IRS, what he avoided in earnings was far greater than any taxes could ever have been.

Next, he had to make the connection between not paying taxes and his self-confidence.  One consequence of the system he’d concocted was that he lived a smaller, less public, more limited professional life, which no doubt affected his personal life, too. His system both reinforced and created low self-esteem. He had to see that the whole thing was, for him, a way to avoid personal pain, yet a source of the very pain he was trying to avoid.