My Relationship with Money
an ever-evolving story you'll prolly relate to
I don’t know what specifically it is about me, but for as long as I can remember (or, up until very recently) I’ve had a wildly avoidant relationship with money. Strangely and concurrently, I also seemed to think I was really good with money. I always saved, I never overspent, I hardly every “splurged.” I prided myself on avoiding luxury anything. In my mind, these things were what used to make me “good” with money.
This worked for me, sort of, or at least it felt like it did while I was in a marriage where I was more responsible for the domestic realm of our lives than I was for earning. My responsibilities entailed making sure our domestic life flowed, bringing in part time income, and responsibly dealing with the money that we earned. (While I worked full time for a few years of my marriage, as time went on, my then partner became the primary breadwinner and I held down part time jobs that brought in extra income.)
Post-marriage, I came face to face with precisely how avoidant and crippled my relationship with money was. I remember being asked, “If money was a person, a woman you could be friends with, how would she describe her relationship with you?”
I had to guffaw. How would she describe our relationship?! She… wouldn’t. She don’t know me, lol. I stayed as far away from money as I could. I felt flustered and ashamed when I was in the room with it. I peered at my bank account through squeezed fingers over my eyes. I spent money with an elevated heart rate and anxiety level.
Starting to think of money as an entity or energy with which I related, even if only for the thought experiment, changed everything for me. I realized that I actually had a whole bunch of fucked up ideas around money.
I thought money was inherently bad. I don’t really know where this came from. Maybe it’s my dad’s commitment to working as little as possible so he can be a free man (which I commend!) or his disdain for the fast-paced consumerism and capitalism of America, or his love for the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi (picture him on his bed, exclaiming “wabi-sabi!” as he stitches holes in 15 year old pants and socks). I think the way my dad lives is beautiful. But somehow, I mistakenly equated all of this to mean that money itself is wrong, and bad to pursue in any way.
I believed there’d never be enough money. My parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. We didn’t take any fancy vacations, we hardly ever ate out (and when we did definitely no appetizers or drinks, lolllll) we bought a lot of our clothing second-hand. My parents lived frugally because they had to, and I deeply internalized this behavior to mean that spending money is dangerous! You should hoard whatever you have! Be careful! It might NEVER COME BACK.
I assumed relating to money would always be inherently stressful and insecure. Spending money should require a lot of stressful deliberation. Letting go of money was a bad thing and always put you in a vulnerable place. Looking at my bank account should be scary. Paying my bills should incite panic or anxiety. Spending was disempowering, saving was empowering.
I believed success with money simply was not for me. I knew there were other people that had figured out money. I just sort of assumed that people who acted relaxed about money were either out of touch and mismanaging their money, or perhaps were inappropriately prioritizing money and needed to take it down a notch (notice my accidental moralization of my own money attitudes projected onto others). The concept of me being a person who either felt secure with money or had the capacity to have enough money, felt very foreign to me.
I believed the only way I could feel good with money was to have a shit-ton of it. I’d talk about how amazing it would be if I could buy whatever I wanted. How free I’d feel if I didn’t have to work. How luxurious my life would be if I could be rich. The idea of my life feeling luxurious, free, or amazing without having as much money as I could fathom felt difficult to imagine.
Deciding these were simply one version of a myriad of ways I could relate to money shifted so much. And over time, I’ve worked on new ideas around money.
I decided money was neutral. Sure, there are “bad” wealthy people, irresponsible wealthy people. There’s also “bad” middle class people. “Bad” poor people. Whatever it was I was defining as “bad” (I’m not loving that word here but for simplicity’s sake, you get what I mean) the truth was, I could find that anywhere.
I decided to believe I always had enough. Whether the month came with robust income, or very little income. Whether I had enough money to take my kids out for a splurge on the weekend, or only enough to stretch groceries another week and make a homemade pizza and eat it while we watched a movie on Netflix, I learned to claim abundance in all of it. I learned to romanticize whatever I had. Big house, little house, fancy clothes, thrifted clothes. It didn’t matter. The magic is in me, and nothing could take that away from me. This put a lot less stress on the dollar amount I thought I needed to feel safe.
I saw money as energy transaction, not as a finite resource I’d never get back. I stopped hanging onto it like it was the last dollar bill I’d ever see. I started thinking about what spending money could bring me in alignment with my values. I eased up on the idea that the only appropriate thing to do with money was to hold on tighter. This meant I started spending my money differently. For the first time ever, I began investing: not even in stocks lol. Investing in myself, investing in projects that I knew would bring me MORE money. I learned what spending to earn meant.
I decided to bring a different, intentional, warm energy with my relationship to money. Instead of avoiding it, I truly began to try to think of the money in my possession as a person, a person I wanted to want to be around ME. I looked at my bank accounts more frequently. I thanked the money I had for being in my life. I told it I would take care of it, use it well, help it grow, and check in with it often. I stopped ghosting it, and started being extremely intentional and unafraid with it.
I decided success was for me. Ok, yeah, this one is a doozy. This takes a long time to deprogram. But I got very clear on understanding just how deeply I actually believed that real success wasn’t for me. My success was cute little crafts. Being a great mom. Having a cutesy side-hustle. Girl power that stayed in the lines. I decided I was made of the same material as everyone else in the universe, and I was allowed to claim success.
These lessons have fundamentally changed how my whole life feels. What about you, did any of this resonate? I’d love to hear about what your relationship with money feels like right now. Thanks for reading!
Jolie
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