Are they really kind or just broke? The money-personality debate
Financial limitations can shape how people show up in the world.
What you need to know:
- Through real-life anecdotes, are kindness, humility, or quietness always authentic—or sometimes survival strategies born from dependency?
- Behaviour can dramatically shifted after financial stability, hence we can never know someone’s true character before they attain independence and comfort.
My friend Josie stopped me mid-story with a calm but piercing question. I was telling her a hard luck story of an old friend whom I consider nice because he is always present to help people. I was bemoaning the fact that he has never had a job in his life, which I thought was unfair considering how nice he is as a person.
"Is he a good person, or has he been forced by circumstances to be nice because he has no choice? Have you considered that his niceness is the only reason you all support him, and he can't risk losing that?" she asked.
I tried to push back, to tell Josie that I have known this person for a long time and he has always been pleasant. "The character that people have when they are not financially able to support themselves is hardly their true self! Don't trust it!" Josie continued, with a conviction that seemed to come from somewhere more complex than my mind was grasping at the time.
She told me the story of a woman she believed was kind to everybody in their apartment block. She is married to a man who did not have a stable job initially, but they were getting by. Everyone thought this lady was amazing. She volunteered to help neighbours with chores, spoke kindly to people and carried herself with humility.
Josie and most of her flatmates concluded that they had a fine young lady as their neighbour—they returned her kindness and prayed and hoped that her husband would get a good job and support his young family. The young woman seemed comfortable being a housewife.
"The day her husband was enlisted into the army was the last day we saw her kindness and her humility," Josie said, bursting into laughter. This previously "role-model" neighbour started looking down on everyone.
"Until today, she is one of the neighbours I hardly ever speak to. Now we are used to this new side of her. That is why, Daisy, I am telling you: unless someone can comfortably afford their lives, or the lives they desire, it is difficult to draw a conclusion about their character," she said.
I agreed with her assessment because I remembered a certain guy I met in the course of work. I thought he would be a perfect guy for me because of how quiet he was. We interacted several times over work things and he rarely spoke except to say what was necessary.
He seemed to me like a guy uninterested in the noise of the world. I concluded that he was quiet because he had a lot of wisdom. I also thought he would be my perfect match because he would balance my energetic self.
Months passed, and soon it was two years since we started interacting regularly. In those two years, he had received a promotion at work and had travelled internationally. The guy was not quiet anymore. He did not stay away from his friends when they were having ego debates like he had done in the past.
Suddenly, he was very much interested in debates about why cold pizza should not be eaten in the morning or why headphones were better than earphones. I realised he is easily the most argumentative person I have met in my adult life. His voice had been muzzled somewhere. Whatever draw I had towards him faded, not because he was a bad person but because he was simply not the kind of person I had imagined he was.
Change is constant. Many people change as they grow older, discover more about life and go through certain experiences. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Josie's neighbour changed when her husband got a stable job, or my acquaintance who took on a new personality after getting a promotion and a chance to travel.
Josie's verdict was that a lot of these changes are tied to money. It does not have to be a billion dollars, but just comfortable enough to give someone a sense of independence. She believes that until someone has had money in some shape or form, we can't truly know them.
There is a running joke online that some people are "introverted" only because they are broke. What is your take? Can you trust the character of someone who has never had enough money to finance the lifestyle they'd want?
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG ([email protected]).
