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Executive function economics
Terry Pratchett wrote a wonderful piece on how being poor keeps you poor. It mainly revolved around boots, if you don't know it and want to Google.
I'm currently working myself out of an economic hole. Partly, I'm just down the lower end of incomes anyway. Partly pandemic and a hideously draining relationship put the boot in on my financial stability. Because executive dysfunction keeps you poor.
I'd spotted a cheap refurbished washer dryer over the weekend, but my brain hurt too much to make the decision and sort it out. I've been intellectually fucked all year as I made bad choices to keep working on a toxic relationship where I was, as usual, the only supplier of emotional labour. And that drained me down to the empty bar.
When your executive function battery is empty for whatever reason, financial planning and money management is a joke. You can't really see beyond the next few hours to be honest. And this hits you harder if you're already broke - it's easier to have a dysfunctional brain when you can keep buying in solutions.
So an example - you're exhausted, so planning and preparing and cooking a meal is beyond your abilities. But you have a kid to feed. So you can buy a pizza from Tesco Express which is only a couple of quid. But then you really need to add some vitamins. And while you're there you buy a bottle of wine because that will stop you feeling less of a shitty failure. And with the best intentions, your reasonably priced just for today stopgap becomes a tenner you can ill afford. And so on.
Same with the washer drier. I could really do with one, one that lasts a bit longer than all the secondhand scrounged ones that I've been living on. So I have to find a reasonably priced one AND one with finance options I can afford AND have the brain energy to get it right then before it sells out. And that just doesn't happen.
And it's not just me - every day I see someone I love suffer because their brain isn't normal and can't deal with the pace of this fairly brutal capitalist world.
I don't have a solution, but it needs to be talked about. People continually get more and more fucked by this. The solution is that we all help each other out, I suppose. But this isn't the way the world actually should be.
I'm currently working myself out of an economic hole. Partly, I'm just down the lower end of incomes anyway. Partly pandemic and a hideously draining relationship put the boot in on my financial stability. Because executive dysfunction keeps you poor.
I'd spotted a cheap refurbished washer dryer over the weekend, but my brain hurt too much to make the decision and sort it out. I've been intellectually fucked all year as I made bad choices to keep working on a toxic relationship where I was, as usual, the only supplier of emotional labour. And that drained me down to the empty bar.
When your executive function battery is empty for whatever reason, financial planning and money management is a joke. You can't really see beyond the next few hours to be honest. And this hits you harder if you're already broke - it's easier to have a dysfunctional brain when you can keep buying in solutions.
So an example - you're exhausted, so planning and preparing and cooking a meal is beyond your abilities. But you have a kid to feed. So you can buy a pizza from Tesco Express which is only a couple of quid. But then you really need to add some vitamins. And while you're there you buy a bottle of wine because that will stop you feeling less of a shitty failure. And with the best intentions, your reasonably priced just for today stopgap becomes a tenner you can ill afford. And so on.
Same with the washer drier. I could really do with one, one that lasts a bit longer than all the secondhand scrounged ones that I've been living on. So I have to find a reasonably priced one AND one with finance options I can afford AND have the brain energy to get it right then before it sells out. And that just doesn't happen.
And it's not just me - every day I see someone I love suffer because their brain isn't normal and can't deal with the pace of this fairly brutal capitalist world.
I don't have a solution, but it needs to be talked about. People continually get more and more fucked by this. The solution is that we all help each other out, I suppose. But this isn't the way the world actually should be.