Talking about money in our society
Money is often a taboo subject in Western societies such as Canada and the USA. If we were to have a casual conversation, it would be a cultural blunder for me to ask how much you make or how much you have saved. That can change between close friends depending on your friend group of course, but the default is still to keep quiet about it. There are many reasons for this, and everyone is different. But one common point, wether you think you're on the rich or poor side of the equation, is that most people don't want their relationship with others to change because of how much they make. If you make a lot more than your peers, you probably don't want to set the expectation that you'll pay for lunch just because "you can". Likewise, if you make less, you probably don't want others to take pity on you. While I'm going to list a couple of reasons I've seen from my own experience, this is in no way an exhaustive list. Hopefully not all of them will resonate with you, and you'll learn something new.
The subject goes deeper than just who gets to pay for lunch today. Recent statistic shows that around 78% of US workers and 44% of Canadian workers live paycheck to paycheck. Would you be comfortable sharing that you have a big chunk of money saved aside knowing this? I don't, and to help you understand why I'll share these quotes that come from my own experience. They were not directed at me, I only heard them in discussion:
You have money, why don't you just buy a new car?
I know how much he makes, he can afford it.
My colleague is taking 2 weeks of unpaid vacation, I don't understand. They must rolling on dough, I could never do that.
Before someone points out that I'm making fun of the less fortunate, all of these were said by someone in the middle or upper middle class. It's really not about how much you make, but about how much you spend and/or save. I don't think any of them meant it with bad intentions either, it's just that they applied their own viewpoint of the world to someone else's situation. But when you hear this kind of comments, it doesn't really invite an open discussion, and this is only one side of the equation. I can only imagine that the other side is equally as uninviting, when a group is discussing how they saved hundred of thousands for their retirement and you can't manage to have an emergency fund. The "why" and "how" you got there is unimportant, the end result it what matters here.
For a lot of people, their self-worth is tied to their income. What's the first thing you ask when you meet someone new? If it's not their profession, then congratulations! There's still a good chance the other party will bring up this question though. Since asking for salary directly is not advised, the next best thing become proxies for it: your profession, your house, your car, how you dress, etc. As a bonus, it's easy enough to fudge with debt (don't do this), so you can appear to have a better status than your income would otherwise provide. This has the perverse result of shifting the focus for a lot of people to consumer rather than saving, which could explain the attrocious saving rate we're seeing: for 2018, that rate was between 3 and 4% in North America.
Another reason is more nefarious: it's often bad for business. If you knew how much your coworker made, it could make you resent your employer or even worse, ask for a raise. If your coworker is making 20k$ more than you annually while doing less work, that would give you pretty good leverage to either get a promotion, or pack up and leave. That gives companies every incentive they need to discourage employees from sharing salaries between them. This lets them pay the least amount to most employees, and only pay slightly more to those who negotiate, usually because they already had a higher salary or were just really in demand at that moment in time. This creates a reality where in most companies, your salary is not a factor of your usefulness, but just a number that you managed to negotiate when you start. This of course only applies to skilled work, if you get a minimum wage job there is no negotiation to be had.
After writing all of this, I feel like I've painted a pretty bleak picture about what I wished was a more opened subject. I guess I'm just as entranched in my culture as anyone else. I'm very open and love talking about financial subjects in general, but shy away from participating in conversation when it's time to talk real numbers. The more we do talk about these subjects though, the less judgemental we'll get.