Not everyone needs to know your paycheck, your grades or your savings. Some numbers are need-to-know.

A number told becomes a number compared, and the comparison rarely stops at the number. Once people know what you earn or scored, it colors how they read everything else you do, and you cannot take it back. Privacy here is not secrecy; it is declining to hand over a measuring stick.

Have a pleasant deflection ready for when it comes up: enough to get by, or I do not really talk numbers. Decide beforehand which few people genuinely need the figure. Everyone else can have the honest version of you without the arithmetic.