I'm jealous of my friends making six figures - I'll never catch up |
I don’t think of myself as a particularly jealous person. I don’t covet my neighbour’s house. I don’t lust after material wealth. But the green-eyed monster came for me hard last month, thanks to a couple of conversations between me and some friends, one of whom had just taken on, in their words, a “big money job”.
It was the first time they’d ever discussed their salary with me. How big was it? Well, as they put it, it wouldn’t cover the deposit on a three-bed Chelsea townhouse, but it certainly puts them in the running for a generous family home somewhere in London’s Zone 3. Then I ran into a former colleague who congratulated me on my work and said offhandedly: “You must be in the six figures now, right?” Six figures? The only time I’ve seen that number of zeroes is when I’m covering billionaires on my podcast. What made me feel worse, though, is the way in which he said it – a chummy tone of voice that heavily implied that he was already in the six-figure club himself.
Millennials mostly spent our twenties chugging along the same tracks as everyone else: graduating from university, getting our first job, moving into a series of flatshares and slowly becoming acquainted with what it means to become a fully-grown, functioning adult.
We got the same IKEA Kallax shelves, danced at the same music festivals and caught the same easyJet flights. But something strange happened when me and my friends entered our 30s – though we never discussed money in our twenties, some of us had started pulling financially ahead of everyone else. Designer furniture and hand-flocked wallpaper started mysteriously populating their homes. They booked last-minute flights like Ubers and breezily split the bill at expensive restaurants. Cheap and cheerful group holidays suddenly became the terrain of bougie wine vineyard tastings and boutique retreats.
Arguably, the worst part is that nobody talked about it. These things simply started happening, until one day I realised that I was spending half my yearly electricity bill just trying to keep up with the Joneses.
I know I’m not alone. In fact, two out of three Brits are still uncomfortable talking to their friends about their salary, according to a Virgin Money survey. Perhaps this is down to a very British sense of shame and embarrassment – nobody wants to be seen as boastful. And guess what? The green-eyed monster adores uncomfortable silences. It luxuriates in them.
Personally, I think I’m on a pretty good wage – I’m proud to be freelancing successfully after being made redundant two years ago. I can comfortably hit the average London wage. But envy has a delightful habit of masking itself as other emotions. First it sprang up as self-righteous indignation: Surely journalism, a certifiable public good, should pay just as well as finance or tech?
Then came depression and inadequacy: I’m never going to catch up. I scroll through Instagram, silently taking note of which friends have managed to swing WFH from increasingly exotic and plush locales – these people are on superyachts, and I’m in the equivalent of a leaky paddleboat on the Thames. Oh, and there’s a storm coming.
At this point, you might be asking: Why not just get new mates? It’s not that simple. I don’t advocate sticking with a toxic pal who makes you feel bad about how much you earn, but true friendship is never that straightforward.
You might never know what’s going on in a friend’s life – that high salary could be going towards supporting a sick parent or helping a sibling with rent. A car breaking down, the addition of a new mouth to feed, an unexpected hike in rent – people’s circumstances change and their fortunes wax and wane. There might come a time when I earn more than them (I’m still holding out for the National Lottery) and they find themselves on the back foot. Would I want them to treat me any differently then? Plus – and maybe this is my inner Pollyanna speaking – the idea of basing friendships purely on the fact that you occupy the exact same socio-economic level seems, well, a little sad.
Right now, my green-eyed monster is in its acceptance stage – arguably a much more comfortable road to walk than just stewing in rage over the salary gap. After all, I’ve chosen a career that doesn’t historically bring in the mega-bucks – I knew that going into it. But it does allow me some creative fulfillment and lets me meet interesting people from all over the world. Unlike my higher-paid friends, it’s also spared me from a job that involves spreadsheets and massaging the egos of insecure CEOs and senior managers.
I wouldn’t want to do their jobs – in fact I think I’d be objectively terrible at them. Once I acknowledged that, I was able to let go of jealousy – and hang onto my friendships. After all, as the saying goes: To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing.