by Renee leNobel | Feb 16, 2016 | Finances
I am curious about the stories people tell themselves about money. I have been gaining self-awareness about how my stories have majorly impacted my life and so I was interested to learn if other’s stories have had the same impact on their own lives.
A friend kindly offered to share her story with me. She already knew she had “issues” around money and so was happy to explore this idea with me.
She recently came to understand that she has a deep seated belief that she does not deserve to have money. She joked around about it and said “as what we believe tends to come true, is it any wonder that I feel like I don’t have money and never will?” She has been pushing money away her entire life.
So how did she get to the point where she believes she does not deserve money?
Well, as in many of our lives, she inherited the seedling for her belief from her parents and her life experience further solidified it in her psyche.
She grew up in a small town with the following story:
As a girl she was told that she needed to find someone to take care of her, she was not allowed to be driven as that is not considered ladylike. Women that go after money are mean and hard and that is not the type of girl to be.
She was abused as a child and so therefore learned to try to make herself small so as not to be abused again. She learned to stay out of the way and keep quiet. The abuse led to other thoughts that she was a bad person and undeserving. In her words, she was dirty, unworthy, had no value and was stupid.
At the same time, she learned that it was important to put others first and to be grateful. Christian charity was drilled into her every week at church. You must feed and clothe others before yourself and simply be grateful for what you have as it is more than many others.
All this experience made her feel like she was at the bottom of the list of deserving people.
What did all these thoughts do to her spending habits and money patterns?
She believed money belonged to other people, but not her.
She believed that she was never good enough. There was always one more thing she needed to learn or become to command the salary or wages that she was entitled to.
This story she was telling herself created layer upon layer between herself and elusive money.
She learned to tell people – “you don’t need to pay me for that (I don’t deserve it) – I’ll do it for free.
At the same time, whenever she got into a relationship she gave up all control over the finances as that is what she had learned. She was to be taken care of. So any money that she had saved while she was single, she ended up spending once she was in a relationship. As she described it: it trickled through her fingers and disappeared.
So what happened to help her get out from under this heavy story?
In her words:
“Actually, what I did was was take a good look at the “story” and examined it and then rewrote the story for myself with help from a coach. We rarely if ever think about our thinking… the thoughts that were there whether loud and clear or a whisper. I removed them and replaced them and on a daily basis I work at keeping my thoughts right…”
I know this about her – she is battling her money story and she is winning.
by Renee leNobel | Feb 10, 2016 | Finances
The stories that play in our head are often put there by what is happening in the world around us as we grow up. We hear the stories from our parents, friends and society and depending on how loud and prevalent they are, we tend to adopt them as our world view.
When I was growing up, the story that was playing was that you have to be very careful with money and save for a rainy day that was surely coming. We could not continue to count on our good luck as someday it would change and we needed to prepare for that change.
There are many reasons why this story was prevalent in our household and in similar middle class households around us. Most of our parents were children of war and depression impacted parents and they had had this story drilled into them. Our parents simply passed along their beliefs.
Everyone interprets the stories they hear differently. One person might take the story that good luck can’t last and go out and spend their money so there is nothing to lose when that bad day comes. I chose to believe that I had to save every dollar that wasn’t going to a clearly defined necessity such as food or shelter. Every spending decision for me became a debate in my head: “do I really need this or would it be better to save my money for the day when I will not be able to make any money and will therefore otherwise be destitute?” The rainy day always won the debate in my head and I simply stopped spending money.
The only time I spent money on “fun” things was if I was with someone else who had a different story playing in their head. As a self-proclaimed people pleaser, I would tend to weigh other people’s arguments more heavily than my own. If they were telling me it was ok to spend my money on that item of clothing or fun night out, I would do it. And then I would feel horrible guilt and would spend time justifying my spending after the fact.
Sometime in my thirties, I began to recognize that I was a bit extreme in my spending habits and I modified my behaviour slightly. However I still strongly believed the story that I was going to be broke someday. Then I got married and had kids and my ability to save was severely impacted. I worried about money all the time. It was fairly exhausting.
Then I got divorced.
Well, this was all the proof I needed that I had been correct that someday things were all going to implode. My story had been confirmed.
Starting out again after a divorce is challenging. Starting out again after a divorce with the belief that the end of the world just happened and there is no way to ever get back to even a remote semblance of the financial stability one had before divorce is even more challenging.
That day that I had been planning for all my life had finally arrived. I would be financially unstable for the remainder of my life.
It is hard to move forward with that belief. For me, I tried to mitigate the damage by not taking any risks. I would horde my remaining savings and make them last until I was dead.
Then I started to notice that other people had different stories. One story that I was particularly fascinated by was the one where if you run out of money, you can simply go out and figure out a way to earn more. Really?
Another story I noticed was the gratitude story. Some friends were grateful for their good fortune of living in Canada and having jobs and felt like they were living in abundance. I noticed that they seemed to have more joy in life.
I also began to realize with time that in actual fact doomsday had not come for me. In reality, I had not become destitute. I just believed that I had. It was not true. I realized that my story was creating my not so fun reality.
What did my financial story do for me? Some people might argue that it helped me save and saving is a good thing right?
That story did help me save and I am grateful for the fact that I had some financial stability coming out of a divorce.
But did I need that story playing in my head while I saved? Did I need guilt and buyer’s remorse as my constant friends as I went through life? I would have to say I could have done without it.
I could have saved and set aside for a rainy day without all the extra baggage of guilt going around in my head. Really, it is quite easy to do. What is that saying? It is “pay yourself first.” I did that. When I got my paycheque every month I put a percentage aside as savings. That part was not hard. Why did I then have to continue to feel guilt about spending the money that was not designated savings? Because I truly believed a made-up story.
Do you have a story about money that is playing in your head? How does it affect your life and spending patterns?
Recognizing the stories we tell ourselves can illuminate how we are making decisions in life. Are you doing things based on a made up story or are you living your life according to your true values and beliefs?
Next week I will tackle a friend’s story. In her words: “my story is that it is ok for everyone else to have money – not me…at least not yet. I don’t know when it will be my turn”.
by Renee leNobel | Aug 6, 2015 | Finances
Step 1 – Identify Your Financial Personality and Spending Habits
What is the dream you have that money will serve?
Answering this question for yourself will go a long way to self-awareness about your values and beliefs around money.
Everyone is unique and has different values and beliefs concerning money. In addition, we are all brought up with different levels of financial literacy. The interaction between personality and the environment we are brought up in leads to specific financial personalities. It is important to know yourself and understand what issues around money you bring to the relationship.
Our personal beliefs and values drive our spending. To understand your spending habits, you therefore need to know your values. There are a number of free online personality tests out there that can help us get to know ourselves. Meditation also leads to a greater level of self-awareness.
To gain an understanding of your spending habits, you will need to start tracking your spending. This is where a number of people get stuck. You can first try yourself to do this but if you continue to put it off, then it might be a good idea to find someone to help you with this. There are a number of free websites and phone apps that will help you track your spending. Note that tracking your spending is not a quick project. To get a good understanding of what you spend your money, it is good to track your spending for at least six months. With time you come to understand the link between your spending habits and your personal values.
Step 2 – Talk with Your Partner
Once you have self-awareness around your financial personality and spending habits, you will want to talk about it with your partner. It is important that you both go into the meeting truly believing that neither one of you is controlling the agenda. Therefore, when you schedule the meeting, you will need to give your partner an idea of what you want to talk about and you will want to keep the topic as neutral sounding as possible. Better yet, your partner will already know because they have been tracking their own spending as you have.
If this is something you’ve taken on on your own, then here is a potential conversation starter:
“I would like to talk to you about household finances. I want to find out what is important to you and share what is important for me so our relationship can move forward successfully.”
Now don’t expect this to go over completely smoothly with your partner. We are trained from infant-hood and are biologically wired to see danger and conflict in even the most innocent sounding statements. Reassure your partner that you truly want the conversation to be collaborative and neutral.
You want to share what you are like with your partner and you want them to be open and share as well. This needs to be a non-judgmental process. If you are already knee deep in relationship woes because you are a different financial personality from your partner, you can still rescue your relationship by taking this step and it is really important that this discussion takes place on neutral ground at a an agreed upon time that is booked in advance. If this discussion at any point starts to get heated, then stop and make an appointment for another day. I also suggest you limit your talk to 45 minutes. Sometimes if you go too long you can go off track. If you don’t finish discussing everything within 45 minutes, schedule another meeting. In fact, it is a good idea to have regularly scheduled meetings. You can decide together the frequency of meetings that works best for your relationship.
Topics to talk about:
What you spend money on
What you absolutely must spend money on in order to feel life is worthwhile
How much money you need in the bank to feel safe
What you are willing to forgo spending money on to keep your relationship positive.
Do not state what you think is dumb to spend money on – this is not being non-judgmental and will shut down communication in about two seconds flat.
That should about cover it. Now you can see how easy it is to discuss and plan as opposed to having a relationship meltdown because you didn’t take these easy steps!
by Renee leNobel | Nov 6, 2014 | Finances
You are not alone and not surprisingly this is one of the leading causes of breakups and divorce. Many partnerships are comprised of these two opposing personalities which makes sense as opposites attract and when they get together each gets to see how the other half lives. Living with a spender can be fantastic fun for the normally conservative saver. At the same time, the spender might like the practicality and planning ability of the saver and will feel taken care of and supported.
Saver and Spender are as opposite on the financial personality spectrum as it gets. Saver thinks about the cost and the future before deciding to do anything and Spender is all about living in the now and seizing the day. This couple can make a powerful twosome. Spender opens Saver’s eyes about having some fun in life and letting go of worry and Saver helps Spender see that fun can still happen with planning. If there is discussion and openness about each other’s financial personality then this relationship can work with some pro-active planning and discussion.
Difficulties arise when Saver and Spender do not plan. Saver and Spender can drift into a long term relationship without ever laying down the financial ground rules. Once Saver and Spender get married, have a child or even just move in together, things will get rocky and eventually implode if discussion and planning hasn’t taken place.
With no planning, Saver and Spender each think that the other person has bought into their way of doing things. Saver is thinking “Spender wants to live with me and my rules. Spender has realised my way is best.” What’s Spender thinking? The exact opposite. Saver and Spender are headed for relationship disaster.
Why? Spender keeps spending and Saver is doing all the saving for the household. If this pattern continues, Saver will become resentful of Spender and when resentment kicks in, other behaviours are not far behind. Saver is likely to start nagging Spender, specifically, Saver will ramp up his/her efforts to prove to Spender that their household finances are a sinking ship and spends more time thinking and worrying about finances. All this worry on Saver’s part will cause Saver to nag Spender even more and now Spender is getting grumpy too! Saver is constantly talking about money and trying to control Spender!
Spender and Saver live miserably ever after… until they can’t take it anymore and break up in a soul-destroying conflict laden implosion. If they don’t break up, then in all likelihood Spender will die first and Saver will discover that Spender spent all the savings. I bet you’ve heard that story before.
And this could all have been avoided with….
Financial Strategies for the Spender/Saver Relationship.
I am curious about the stories people tell themselves about money. I have been gaining self-awareness about how my stories have majorly impacted my life and so I was interested to learn if other’s stories have had the same impact on their own lives.
