Talking About Money Book Club: Maid by Stephanie Land
Maid by Stephanie Land describes in vivid detail one woman’s journey to fight her way out of poverty through sheer force of will, while at the same time caring for her young daughter.
I admit that I dragged my feet in reading Stephanie Land’s gripping memoir, Maid. I did so because I thought that I already understood Stephanie’s story. After all, I have been working with people (more or less) like Stephanie for the past 20+ years, in the financial counseling/education/coaching programs that I run. I figured that this book would be more “preaching to the choir” and that I already knew the message.
But I was wrong.
I ended up picking up this book on the encouragement of a friend of mine who is familiar with the work that I do. Her family and mine were vacationing together for a week, and every morning when she appeared at breakfast she would say, “You know, you really need to read this book. You would really like it.” Once we got home I got my hands on a copy, and I am so glad that I did.
A Book That All Financial Capability Professionals Should Read
Stephanie explains in carefully crafted prose what it was like to raise her daughter as a single mother in the Pacific Northwest with little family support and no college education. She talks about accessing the social services that she needed to survive, and the way that people in her orbit judged her for taking even the most meager of public assistance (that barely made a difference). She describes how hard she worked in very physical jobs that she felt were the best choices for her at the time: landscaping and cleaning homes. And she conveys what enabled her to get up and do this back-breaking work day in and day out – the love that she has for her daughter.
Why it was important for me to read Maid – and why it is important for you to read Maid – is because it is the detailed story of a mom and her kid struggling to survive poverty that we as service providers rarely get to see the complete picture of. When I meet with the hard-working people that I serve, I see them at a moment in time. I tend to meet with them in the evening, after a hard day’s work. When they come to see me I am usually the last thing on their to-do list for the day, that last hoop they need to jump through before they can go home and collapse on the sofa. But I do see my clients make the best of it, eating the pizza dinner that the agency provides for them and making small talk with their fellow students.
What I don’t see is the string of minutes and hours that comprise their days before they come to sit in the community room with the mismatched furniture and fluorescent lighting to talk to me about money. I don’t see how hard it is for them to navigate the public assistance world that might help them pay for rent or utilities or food. I don’t see the looks that others give them when they use their EBT card at the grocery store. I don’t see how little time they get to spend with their children because their work requires long commutes and rigid schedules, with none of the flexibility that I enjoy in my own days. And while I gather how day after day and month after month the fatigue wears them down and erodes their hope, I don’t see the rest. Because whoever tells an acquaintance the entire story? I know that I don’t.
What I will say that I get to witness in those evening classes that I facilitate is my clients considering lives that are bigger and brighter than the ones that they are living right now. I get to watch as they try on new perspectives and behaviors with regards to their relationship with money that might help them attain their goals. And yes, there are times when I get to witness my clients have those all-important “light bulb” moments, when a thought or a realization hits them and sends them down a road to what will become a brighter future. And I am grateful that I get to share these moments with my clients.
I think that reading Maid by Stephanie Land has made me a better financial capability professional by letting me peek behind the curtain and view the scenes from my clients’ lives that they omit when they are talking to me. It taught me about the grinding work that my clients do day in and day out for wages so low that they are unable to get ahead, no matter the precise budget that they pledge to try to live by. It reminds me that what my clients need are two things:
More Income
When we intellectuals talk about poverty alleviation and someone makes the quip, “Just give them more money,” that actually is a good idea. What working families need in exchange for their labor is enough income to pay for the basics of life like safe housing, enough heat to keep from freezing in the winter, and healthy foods to stave off medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
Nowadays when I see someone out in the world working an entry-level (or lower) job I ask myself, “Does that person make enough to pay for their housing? How hard is it for them to make ends meet?” I also ponder what it would be like if we as a society decided to compensate each and every person in such a way that they could pay their bills and support themselves without the need for public assistance. Could Universal Basic Income be the answer?
More Time and Space to Make Plans
I felt that Stephanie turned a corner when she moved into the apartment above the garage (not too much of a spoiler alert, I hope!). As I read the pages I could visualize her shoulders relaxing once she moved into better housing for herself and her daughter. But the question that came to me – and one that I wonder if Stephanie could answer for herself – was, “What got you there? After all the days of working so hard, what inspired you to take this chance and make the leap to move to better housing?”
“The Cognitive Cost of Poverty”
Recently I listened to an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” where Sendhil Mullainathan talked about “the cognitive cost of poverty.” In this captivating conversation Sendhil and Ezra discuss Sendhil’s work as it appeared in his book Scarcity. [If you have not read Scarcity, please do!] Understanding the concept of scarcity as is relates to poverty was a real game-changer for me. What it means is that through the constant lack of time and lack of resources, a person is so focused on surviving the here-and-now that there is no ability for that person to take steps to plan for the future.
Stephanie describes this “cognitive cost of poverty” so well in the chapters that detail her grinding daily schedule of dropping her daughter at substandard childcare so that she could drive the miles and miles to clean homes for paltry wages, only to pick up her daughter, spend precious few moments together during their bedtime routine, and repeat it again the next day. We see how Stephanie is bone-tired, her daughter is constantly sick, and any deviation from their carefully orchestrated days could lead to lost wages and falling even deeper into a financial black hole.
And when health care providers tell Stephanie to “do better” in caring for her daughter, we can feel the anguish in considering the impossibility of “doing better” given her circumstances.
Applying Lessons Learned from Maid to Financial Capability
I will posit that there is opportunity in the financial capability work that you do to give your clients the time and space to consider their future. Maybe what is most valuable in your time spent with clients is to sit with them, maybe share a simple meal of pizza and soft drinks, and give them time and space during their busy days to sit and reflect, and to make a plan that honors their hopes and dreams for themselves and their families.
And while you’re at it you can slip in some money management skills along the way.
