Susan Ritz on the complexities of having more than most

Susan Ritz grew up in a wealthy family in Minnesota, and for the past 36 years, she's lived in central Vermont, where she writes books and is an active philanthropist.

In this episode of "What class are you?" reporter Erica Heilman talks with Susan about the complexities of having more than most.
 
Susan Ritz: In the town where I grew up, I was not the richest person at all, but my grandparents, they had butlers and maids. You know, you'd go to their house and you'd sit down and somebody would serve you dinner. And both of my grandfathers started from nothing and ended up running two of the biggest companies in North America.

Erica Heilman: Is this the first time that anyone has asked you this so directly?

Susan Ritz: Yes, and I've recently been working on some writing about my life, and the person who's been mentoring me asked me to write about the absolutely hardest thing, the thing that I didn't ever want to reveal. And that was it.

Erica Heilman: Really?

Susan Ritz: Yeah.

Erica Heilman: What makes it so hard?

Susan Ritz: Judgment of other people, I think. Because I have the same judgments about rich people. They're arrogant. The arrogance of wealth. I'll just say that. And I grew up with that, thinking I came from a special family. I was special. And it took me a long, long time to get over that and realize I was not special in any way. The only difference between me and everybody else was that I had a lot of choices that other people don't have, and that's what I think the best thing about wealth is: choice.

But I think the thing that's surprising is how much shame goes with it. At least for me. The fact that I never had to suffer makes me feel invalid. But I've always held people who've had to struggle for their livelihoods or who have made something of themselves, like my grandfathers did, in high esteem. And I've never had to do anything.

I never had to push myself or get ahead or finish a project or finish the book or — it didn't matter. Nothing ever really mattered. I wasn't going to be poor if it didn't matter. I wasn't going to not be able to support my family if I didn't do it. There was really, like, no motivation for me to do what I think I could have done if I had actually gotten a job.

Erica Heilman: Does it feel as though even admitting to shame —

Susan Ritz: Yeah, I hate admitting to shame, because how do I get to be ashamed? I should just be really happy with everything I got, and if I'm not happy, well then there's something wrong with me, because I've got it all. I don't have it all. Nobody has it all.

But, I mean, I hid for years. I hid out, and I think a lot of people here do. But people would always ask, "How do you get to stay home with your kids?" And then I had to come up with an answer. Or, "What do you do?" And I didn't ever have an answer because I didn't have a job. And then they go, "Well, how do you get to do that?"

Erica Heilman: What were some of your answers? What are some of the things you said?

Susan Ritz: "I made some good investments."

[Laughing]

Or, "Well, you know, I was just born really lucky."

Erica Heilman: Do you find that people make assumptions about the happiness you get to have?

Susan Ritz: Yes, and I learned very early on, money has nothing to do with happiness.

I grew up in a really bad household, you know, domestic violence, alcoholism, all the things that other people deal with. I dealt with all that. Neglect, which I always felt like I couldn't talk about that because I was protected. I mean, I wasn't protected as a kid. I was in the same situation as anybody is who has that happen in their home, and it happens everywhere.

And that taught me really early on, money does not make you a happy person or a good person. It only protects you from what the consequences could be of your behavior.

Erica Heilman: You're protected from the law.

Susan Ritz: Exactly. I don't know.

There's a song from Hall and Oates. "You're a rich girl, and you go too far, but you know it don't matter anyway. You can rely on your old man's money." but the last line is, "It don't matter anyway." And I always heard it as, you know, "You don't matter anyway."

If you grew up in the kind of family I grew up in, if you're a girl, you don't matter. Even though my grandparents tried to teach me a lot about money and what it meant to inherit money, and how I should never — my one grandfather was like, "This is a nest egg. Never rely on this. And you remember, every single mouth of what you eat comes from the salt of another man's sweat. Be grateful for every single thing you have, because somebody's working for it. Even if it's not you."

Erica Heilman: That sounds like very heavy gratitude.

Susan Ritz: Exactly. And so, my life became about philanthropy. That's ... where I could give back, or where I could make a difference, that I could use my money to create things that were good for this community and good for my family and also that I could enjoy. So that's what I started doing.

And I'll tell you, the older I get, the more my shame turns to gratitude. And being so grateful I can give money, being so grateful I can travel. I can help my children. They don't have debt from college. Being grateful that I live in a beautiful place. I get to live in Vermont.

Erica Heilman: Big money is not obvious in central Vermont. What do you know that I don't know, or other people might not know about how it exists here.

Susan Ritz: There's a network, and some people are out in the network, and some people are not out in the network.

Erica Heilman: You don't want to get too expensive a haircut.

Susan Ritz: Yeah. One of the things among a lot of people that I know that do have money and feel the same way I do — like, "I don't want people to think I'm a bad person" — when you want a nice car, but you live somewhere where nobody has a nice car, you don't get it.

But the philanthropy section, I think a lot of the stuff that gets done gets a lot of private funding, and I think that comes because I'm not the only one who loves being able to help the community. And coming here, I found other people who came here for the same reason.

So the people that do have money here are all pretty much in the same boat of, "What can we do with this money to make our lives better? And to make the towns better and to make kids’ lives better or farmers' lives better? What can we do to be helpful and useful in our community with what we were given just by being born?"