The Heart of Money. Deborah L. Price

which involves doing something new and different from what we’ve been doing

      3. Implementing new tools and behavior strategies

      4. Accountability and action to create meaningful and lasting change

      Remember, we were not given the proper training and education we needed to be financially successful, which often means that we have some unlearning to do before we can create and implement the new learning. Through our inner work and perseverance, we can begin to heal the money wounds that have caused us to become confused about what really matters. Money is a tool and powerful resource, but it is not something to make your life about, nor is it ever going to keep you warm at night or comfort you when you feel sad or lonely. Money cannot buy you anything that you really need outside of food and shelter. We forget that those who came before us lived for millions of years with little else and seem to have managed (albeit not as comfortably!).

      Our money issues can, however, cause us to become confused about what really matters. They can lead us to believe that we need more than we do; make us desire things over people and our planet; and at times, when we are fearful, cause us to forget that, in the end, the only thing that can heal us or save us is love. As we begin to heal our lives and our relationships, we increase our capacity to create a far better, more financially mindful and sustainable world.

       YOUR MONEY STORY AND PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY

       The experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience.

      — ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, quoted in Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion

      We all have a money story that began in our early childhood and evolved through time into our adulthood. Our money stories evolve out of our experience, through twists and turns, plots and subplots, and ultimately develop into the “story of our story” — our own personal mythology. Our individual mythologies are the narrative we use in daily life to express and explain how we came to be who we are. Our money stories and personal mythologies serve as a kind of guide and road map in helping us to navigate, discover, and create meaning out of our inner landscape, our experiences, and our lives.

      My Early Money Story

      When I was five years old, my “rich” aunt and uncle came to visit us and gave each of us children a crisp, new ten-dollar bill and said we could do anything we wanted with it. They took my sisters to the toy store, but I declined. I needed time to think about what I wanted to do with my money. Later that day, I walked to the corner store and asked the cashier for ten one-dollar bills. Then I went back to my neighborhood and gave nine of my one-dollar bills away to my friends, keeping one dollar for myself. It made me very happy to do this. Later that day, my mom came home and asked where my money was. I joyfully told her that I had given all but one dollar away to other kids on the block. She became angry and punished me for being “ungrateful” and for wasting what I had been given. She seemed embarrassed and ashamed of me. I felt sad and confused. If it felt good to give, how could it be bad? Wasn’t it my money to do what I wanted with? “No” she said, “go get it back.” Forced to ask for the money back, I felt deeply ashamed and humiliated.

      I always knew we were poor, but by the age of eight, I began to realize that if I wanted anything, I’d have to learn how to get it on my own. So, I began my first entrepreneurial venture and ironed clothes for others, charging five cents per item. Later, I moved on to cleaning the houses of some of my mother’s friends. I was good at cleaning and felt well paid, even though sometimes my arms hurt for days from washing windows. The ladies were kind to me and fixed me sandwiches for lunch. I didn’t mind that other kids played while I worked. I had my own money and used or saved it as I pleased. Mostly, I liked to save it for something special.

      My mother worked long hours as a waitress. I remember feeling sad that she had to work so hard. Most of my friends’ mothers stayed at home and didn’t have to work. This didn’t seem fair to me. I tried to keep the house clean to make my mom happy.

      I was an exceptional student and almost always got straight As. Sometimes I would be given a dollar for each A, but only for the As. I soon learned that Bs or below were “worthless,” and this made me feel confused and angry. Why are Bs not good enough? I thought. They should be worth at least fifty cents if an A is worth a dollar.

      Every September, my mother took us shopping for school clothes. We always shopped at sales, but sometimes Mom would treat us and let us shop at Robinson’s (a chic and more expensive store), which is where she said the rich people shopped. She was the queen of bargain hunting. Before we got home, Mom would make us put our “loot” into Kmart shopping bags and hide the evidence of the Robinson’s bags in the trash. We were sworn to secrecy. Mom always said, “We may be poor, but you’ll always look rich.” How we looked was very important to her. We didn’t have much, and what we bought was always on sale, but it was always nice. I felt this was the way we hid our poverty, as though it was something to be ashamed of.

      My father gave his paycheck to Mom every week, and she handled the finances. I somehow knew that there was never enough and that she struggled to make do with what there was. We ate a lot of beans and potatoes. Sometimes, when things were really tight, my mom would make a chocolate cake, and we’d eat chocolate cake with beans on top. This was our family’s version of a gourmet meal. It helped to compensate for another night of beans and felt like a celebration to us.

      When I was ten, my father lost his blue-collar job at the steel factory where he was a foreman. They closed the plant due to the recession (the oil crisis of the early seventies). He could not find work, so we moved from California to Utah, where he was offered a job. We were very sad in Utah and were treated like foreigners. One day, I woke up and found my mom packing up our things. She said that we were moving that week to Arkansas. We were shocked. Mom was frantic and said that something bad was going to happen if we didn’t leave. She had had a premonition. We packed and left like gypsies in the night. Our two brothers promised to move and join us later. I felt very scared. We had little money, and my dad had no job.

      We drove nonstop to my grandparents’ house in Batesville, Arkansas. They were dirt-poor and lived in the boonies. But there was no work, no money, and no future in Arkansas, and soon we left. We drove to St. Louis to see if my dad could find a job there. We moved in with my aunt, who was a widow and lived alone in the ghetto, but she refused to move. There I briefly found a home as one of the only white kids in a poor African American neighborhood that filled my life with a sense of belonging. Being poor didn’t matter. I was accepted and even allowed to perform as one of the “Supremes” (in my Afro wig!) in our makeshift neighborhood street theater. I felt rich for the first time.

      When I was twelve, we moved into our own house, which was in a horribly poor neighborhood. Within a few months, I awoke early one morning to hear my mother screaming and crying. I walked into the kitchen and discovered that our older brother had been killed in a hunting accident in Utah. Something bad had happened there; Mom’s premonition came true. My brother’s death devastated our family. We barely had enough money to get to California to bury our brother in the family cemetery. When we returned home, we didn’t have enough money to rent our own place. My parents asked their best friends if we could stay with them until we got on our feet, but they said no. This crushed my mother’s spirit. She had just lost her son and had traveled all that way to bury him, and her friends couldn’t find it in their hearts to help us. Our dog even died on the way home from heat exposure. My parents never bad-mouthed those friends. They said they understood, but it took me years to forgive this betrayal. Everything else during this time is a blur, except that my mother was devastated, and we didn’t have enough money to bury our brother properly. I don’t think my family ever recovered.

      We moved into a housing project and were forced to go on welfare. The recession continued, and my father