The best books that combine financial well-being and life well-being

Rachel Sherman’s book let me peek into the lives of people much richer than me, people whose annual income is in the millions and whose wealth is many multiples of their income.

They enjoy high financial well-being, yet many suffer diminished life well-being because they compare themselves to those even richer. One wealthy woman said that she does not feel wealthy because she knows many wealthier people with drivers and private planes. 

Natasha Warikoo’s book made me understand why so many people in my Silicon Valley neighborhood drive their children so hard to get into Ivy League and other prestigious colleges.

Graduating from prestigious colleges adds little financial well-being over graduating from less prestigious colleges, but it adds much life well-being in high social status. In the past, white upper-middle-class and wealthy families were almost always successful in placing their children into prestigious colleges, but in the last few decades, their children encountered competition from children of families who immigrated from China and India.

A white woman said that her children are very bright and very motivated but feel like average students because there were so many children of Chinese and Indian families who are even brighter and more motivated.

Members of the elite are different from the members of the working class in terms of college degrees and high incomes. I am a member of the elite. Marianne Cooper’s book helped me understand the lives of members of the working class as it places their financial and life well-being next to those of the elite.

Family is central to the life well-being of the working class. A working-class woman described her grandmother to her children as a woman who worked hard her whole life, and when she was old, she lived with her daughter and got a small amount of money from Social Security. But she would give the grandkids little amounts of money and say, “Here’s a little bit of Gran to take with you.”

In contrast, Cooper quotes the sad words of a child in an elite family whose father, a college graduate, earns high income as a white collar professional: "My dad is at work a lot. I don't talk to him a whole lot.” 

Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’ book helped me understand the financial and life well-being of the poor as it compares the marriage and childrearing norms among them to those of the elite.

Elite mothers raise their children as “hothouse plants” and measure their success by their children’s educational and career accomplishments. Poor mothers raise their children as “field plants,” expected to grow naturally, expecting few educational and career accomplishments.

Poor women know that marriage is fragile, and so they make their primary emotional investments in their relationships with their children. A poor mother of a four-year-old son described him as her heart. She’ll have her son even if her marriage goes sour. She’ll say to her husband, ‘You leave! This boy is mine.’”

Viviana Zelizer’s book told me the fascinating story of the cultural transition from a time when children provide to parents mostly financial well-being to a time when children provide only life well-being.

In the 18th century, in America, parents welcomed the arrival of their children mostly as workers when children were young and as security when parents were old. By the mid-19th century, however, parents of the urban elite welcomed their children mostly for their life well-being benefits in love, smiles, and successes that make parents proud.

Children, in Zelizer’s language, became ‘sacralized,’ economically worthless but emotionally priceless. By the early 20th century, working-class and poor parents joined elite parents in sacralizing their children.