A Breadwinner’s Tragic Tale
The Costly Lie of Financing a Lifestyle with Debt
I came across this article a decade ago, but I’ve carried it with me for all these years to remind myself how easily it can be as a husband and father to create a lie, a false legend over my own family. Sure, I might rationalize it as my responsibility to provide for my family, but in the end, a lie will always be exposed. And if the lie is a major infrastructure support beam of a family, then the tragedy that ensues can be unimaginable.
David Whitford wrote this first hand account for FORTUNE magazine, entitled, “A Breadwinner’s Tale.” His dad died at home on Father’s Day at the age of 84. Throughout his life his dad had been what Whitford called a “world class provider.” He himself lived modestly, drove his cars for years and years. His focus, his sense of responsibility was to provide for his family. He managed to put five kids through college and four through graduate school. They had “the big stone house with the tennis court, the European vacations, the club memberships…” As Whitford confesses,
“Dad’s money was almost like tap water to me: never to be wasted but always available.”
And as Whitford’s mom thought,
“We’ve even reached the point where I can buy whatever I want, whatever I need, without even thinking about it.”
In the last year of his life, the lie began to unravel. The children began to sense that something was seriously wrong. But how do you confront your own father? When they did, the results were predictably terrible – full of anger and tension. However, in the end, he relented and they came to discover that he had been hiding an immense six-figure debt load, mostly on credit cards, that he had been carrying for years. And now near the end of his life, he could no longer keep this house of cards together.
As Whitford painfully gets his dad’s estate in order after the funeral, he shares,
“This past fall I spent hours at my father’s desk, in his chair, going through his papers – his bank and brokerage statements, his correspondence, his journal. While I dreaded what I might find, part of me was hoping for a clear-cut explanation, no matter how shocking or painful. A mistress, maybe. A gambling habit. A fatal weakness for penny stocks. Well, I found nothing sordid. The only skeleton in my father’s closet was his astonishing debt.”
Whitford delves further into his own search to find out why his dad did this. Simultaneously angry and sympathetic, he writes,
“It’s clear to me now that our family’s standard of living, going back years, was partly a lie. Dad made it look easy, but beneath the surface he was paddling like a maniac to keep his head above water.”
But the toll of keeping up the lie was worse than that.
“He had a Formica desktop in his office and he used to write all over it. In pencil, mostly, in that shaky cramped hand of his. Phone numbers, passwords, odd dollar amounts. And this, which I found two days after he died: ‘Help me. I’m drowning.’”
Poignantly Whitford writes,
“Dad, we had no idea. I wish you’d told us.”
As I’ve reflected on this article over the years, I’ve determined that as seriously as I take my responsibility to take care of my family, that I cannot build it on a lie. Easy credit and debt do not have the structural integrity upon which to build a household. It may provide the appearance of wealth, but that is all that it is … appearance, not substance.
Second, Whitford’s dad did not include his wife as a partner in the financial responsibilities of the household. This is an error to avoid at all costs. The accountability and the shared counsel can save you from a multitude of temptations and mistakes.
Third, there is nothing wrong with living within your means. It’s a lesson that must be taught to children. It is a good and responsible thing to teach your family to be content, to learn to save, to learn to earn.
Fourth, don’t live a lie to your family. Authenticity and integrity are a better heritage to pass on than money.
Fifth, don’t believe the lie that if you don’t provide magnificently for your family that they will not respect or love you.
And lastly, here’s a troubling conclusion. Whitford phoned Jacob Needleman, a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University, and the author of Money and the Meaning of Life. After listening to Whitford’s story, Needleman, after a moment of silence, gently observed, “If I could say so, I think if you took anybody in this world, anybody who reads FORTUNE, and you scratched a little bit under the surface, in eight out of ten you’ll find something as startling and troubling and self-contradictory as your father’s story.”
With acknowledgement: Dan Wooldridge
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