Entitlement can be a very hard thing to come to terms with. After many years and experiences, I have come to the realization that I have felt a sense of entitlement during some periods of my life. This realization however, also opened my eyes to the entitlement of others. I notice now the behavior that is typical of entitlement and I would like to connect this with many of our day-to-day money problems in this post.

What is Entitlement?

On a basic level, I think most people are aware that entitlement is the belief that someone is inherit in deserving of privileges or special treatment. How though, does this relate to our financial habits?

I have been stressing in many posts now, that our financial habits reflect many things within ourselves and our internal psychology, that really have little to do with money in the first place. They are usually linked to irrational emotions which may be connected to feelings which were born out of traumatic events or habits we picked up from our surroundings as children or young adults. Either way, becoming conscious of these types of behaviors is the first step towards avoiding them and the money problems they produce. On an emotional level, a sense of entitlement may show up in the following types of behaviors in some people:

• Expecting others to keep up with unrealistic demands of them, even if these are not reciprocated.
• Sulking or punishing someone when they don’t get their way.
• Constantly seeing people as competition or threats.
• Having a hard time negotiating or compromising.
• Craving admiration or adoration.
• In order to succeed in life, they are willing to go to any length.
• They feel sorry for themselves when things don’t work out and display this to others in melodramatic and attention seeking ways.
• Taking more from friendships and relationships than they receive.

Sometimes these behaviors arise out of mistreatment or not getting what is needed early on. “I deserve to be taken care of or treated with compassion and respect, just like anyone else” they may think. Many times people who have been mistreated start to feel a sense of entitlement that is healthy, that they feel that they deserve better than they have been getting and start pushing back on the people and circumstances around them to create a more just and fair environment for themselves.

When this is combined with a healthy respect for the needs and desires of others it is a good balance. When it goes too far the other way though and starts to exhibit itself like in the behaviors I mentioned above, it can actually start to push away the things you want and feel you deserve in your life: friends, partners and money.

I don’t want this to digress into a post about relationships with friends and partners so I will keep my focus on the money part. When people start to become imbalances with their entitlement in terms of money, it may exhibit itself in the following ways:

• Constantly spending money on wants but can’t always save for their own basic needs.
• Feeling the need to keep up with the Joneses.
• Expecting a job or career to be given to you because of your education.
• Expecting friends and family to give or loan them money when it’s known the other person has it.
• Spending money secretly without a spouse or partner knowing about it when it’s known they likely wouldn’t agree with it.
• Guilt tripping and blaming their problems on those that have denied them money when they asked for it.

These are classic bad money behaviors that are, in reality linked to the emotional entitlement described above. In fact, if you are close to someone who feels entitled, you may experience both the financial issues mentioned as well as the emotional ones.

My Own Sense of Entitlement

I have experienced my own sense of entitlement at times, but time and time again, I was lucky enough to have something jolt me back into humility and humbleness to become a bit more balanced.

The first was when I was graduating college. While I loved economics and finished my degree in 3 years, I had something to prove to myself. I had thought I wanted to be an engineer, partly due to the fact that it was a degree that was perceived as difficult and for some of the smartest people. So I took many of the difficult required courses in math and physics. Eventually I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer but I still took 2 more years to complete a separate math degree which I thought would make me stand out in the job market.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I graduated, I was ushered into a stadium of 10,000 other graduates and they only read the names of those receiving doctoral degrees. To add insult to injury, it started to pour rain halfway through the commencement speech. It was my first lesson in life: even though you thought you worked hard, you aren’t special. Now walk home soaked.

The other time was later in my career. I had busted my hump for many years and moved up the corporate ladder. I moved into an expensive apartment and started to slack off a bit at work. I was tired I thought, I had worked hard and I deserved this. I thought as I get older, I should be able to have a nice apartment and I should be able to fall back a little at work and still make a decent living.

When I was laid off and had to downgrade my apartment it was quite a shock. It made me realize that I really wasn’t happy in that role but I was too scared of change to go out and find a new one. I also was shooting myself in the foot financially by not being more humble and feeling I was entitled to an expensive apartment for my hard work, rather than face the reality that I was paying for more than I could really afford.

How to Get Over Entitlement

The key to understanding this behavior is to know that it may be linked to earlier trauma and a sense to right past wrongs. It’s also linked to a sense of anger towards that past trauma or those past circumstances. Maybe this trauma wasn’t even experienced by you personally, it could have been experienced by a parent and you just learned this behavior and assumed this is how people dealt with money decisions growing up. Whatever the source, there are steps you can take to try to become more conscious and reduce the money destroying part of this behavior.

• Realize that you are unique but not special – Maybe bad things have happened to you and only great things have happened to someone else early on in life. This doesn’t mean you are deserving of special treatment. Life isn’t fair and we can’t change the circumstances we were born into but we can change how we respond to those circumstances. We all are unique but it doesn’t mean we have to be treated different than anyone else. The only way to get special treatment is to put in special effort to make you stand out.
• Take Responsibility – It starts with you, no one is going to be able to help you more than you. If you are an adult, you are in the place in life that you are in now because of decisions only you have made. Embrace this and the fact that you have the ability to change your situation yourself and that no one else owes you a better life but you are deserving of one that you give yourself.
• Learn to deny yourself sometimes – Our happiness is not linked to material things. They may make life easier or provide temporary excitement but start to understand that these things have zero effect on your long term contentment and happiness. You can be just as happy in a cheaper pair of shoes or smaller apartment, as long as you have the right attitude, any material situation is just a temporary inconvenience. What will bring you more contentment in the long run is overcoming hardship and achieving those long term goals and dreams you always had.
• Stay in your lane – Everyone’s situation is unique. What someone else has or is experiencing has exactly zero to do with your life and your situation. Add to that you have no idea what people are going through behind the facade of appearances. Keeping up with the Joneses only projects the image of your own insecurity, not that you are necessarily doing well. If other people are impressed with those things, chances are they are hurting inside as well. Keeping focused on yourself will also allow you to start to genuinely feel happy for others and their own success.

Conclusion

If you saw yourself in any of these descriptions it’s OK, in fact it’s very common in today’s society, some would call it endemic. Starting to realize this is difficult and uncomfortable but also very freeing in the long run. Tackling entitlement can help you take charge of both your finances and help towards repairing relationships, ignore it at your peril.

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