The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Money. Part 3 – I Will Never Be Able to Retire

by | Feb 24, 2016 | Finances

photo-1415226581130-91cb7f52f078Retirement takes up a lot of space in society’s consciousness. It dominates the financial stories we hear about. Retirement is what we are all mainly saving for, right? 

Retirement. Talking about it is particularly prevalent now as many struggle to make ends meet while working flat out! 

How can we save for retirement when we can’t manage now?

I guess we should all give up. Maybe the world will end by then – who needs savings anyway?

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Interestingly, many people are still saving  – what stories are they telling themselves?

Perhaps the savers are noticing that there are a lot of impoverished and vulnerable seniors out there, and it is scary to think that you could end up a senior with no savings and no ability to earn more money. That’s a good reason to try to start saving. 

Or perhaps they have hope for our world. Or maybe they are simply hedging their bets. 

What stories are you telling yourself about saving? Because it’s the stories you are telling yourself right now that are impacting your ability to live and save.

I began noticing how our stories impact our day-to-day lives when volunteering with the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program. In one particular year, I helped prepare and file 44 personal tax returns for low-income seniors, and the highest earner in the bunch made $28,000. 

During tax season, there is a line up out the door and around the corner at the Senior’s Centre. The criteria for having your taxes done for free is that you must earn less than $30,000 for the year, but again, this is high for most people in that line. The income for most seniors in the line comprises Old Age Security benefits ($9,341.40 per year in 2023) and Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits, which were a maximum of $15,678.84 in 2023. If you worked all your life, contributed the maximum to CPP, and have no other savings, you will earn $25,000 per year. That’s a lot of low-income seniors,and they all have different stories. 

One lady I help has lived in subsidized housing for 20 years. She moved in when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack, and she discovered he had gambled away all their savings. She was 65 at that point, had not worked her entire life and had nothing other than about $20,000 she had inherited from her mother. She has since lent that to one of her children, who no longer talks to her – a terrible situation and every time I see her (I have seen her three times now), she reminds me of it. It is the daily story that goes on in her head.

The other thing I notice about her is that she is very put together. She looks fantastic at 85 years old. She gets around quickly, seems in great shape, and has a lovely home in a great location. She has grandchildren and great-grandchildren who visit her, but she is not focusing on those things. She is focusing on her story, and I can see the worry and stress emanating from her face.

I helped another gentleman at the same housing complex. I don’t know what his story is. How did he end up as a senior living in subsidized housing? He offered me tea while I prepared his return, and we talked about the music we like and our hobbies. He had a dog that he tries to walk daily, though walking is getting hard for him. He seemed upbeat.

What is the financial difference between these two seniors? Nothing. They are both in similar financial situations, coping and living within fixed and minimal means. 

Yet, they are living very different stories.

We all find a way of coping with what we are given. How we choose to manage and the stories we tell ourselves make a difference in how we perceive our lives and present moments, impacting our future. 

Most of us will eventually retire. There will come a point where we just cannot earn money or work.

I do recommend planning for retirement. If you want to know where I stand when it comes to financial planning – it’s in the “I’m hedging my bets,” category. It is easier to remain positive and hopeful when you feel you have financial control over your life.

Next week’s topic? How do you start planning for your old age when you don’t think you have enough money to retire? It’s always possible to change and take control of your life.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Money. Part 2: I Don’t Deserve It

by | Feb 16, 2016 | Finances

photo-1422189668989-08f214d6e419I 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.

Shifting the Stories We Tell Ourselves

by | Feb 3, 2016 | Divorce

photo-1451943744133-d6335204a0a3I think our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves drive our lives. It is what your head is telling you that determines if you will have a good day or bad day. Yes, I believe we manifest our destiny by our beliefs.

I came to this realization after a lot of self-reflection. What is it that makes one person happier than another? It is basically that the happier person believes that they are happy.

I know this from my own experience.

When I first separated from my husband, I sank into a depression. The only thing that got me out of bed everyday was just my mom strength. I couldn’t crater completely because what would happen to my kids? So I managed to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.  I remember wondering how I had ever gotten to that place.  I had always considered myself to be a happy person. In fact, that was my persona. I used to love reading depressing books because I wanted to experience that emotion because I did not have it in my life!

Every morning I woke up and felt terrible. The stories started playing in my head and the big one at that time was “what is the point?” I imagined just putting in time until my kids were old enough to look after themselves. This story played in my head for about a year. It sucked in all sorts of evidence to confirm that life sucks and it got bigger and bigger until one day I realized I did not want to go on.

That was not a good thought. What would happen to my kids then? I am so grateful that at that point I had a wonderful coach in my life who came to me through the Minerva Foundation.  She understood what was going on and asked me the right questions to get me to the point where I could start shifting the story that I was telling myself.

The amazing thing was after a short time of telling myself a different story I started to feel better. This incremental difference in feeling felt so amazing that it was like a revelation. I started reading again (no, not depressing books). I started reading all those self-help books that I had mocked in the past. You know the ones and if you don’t, here is a list of my favourites:

Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life – Srikumar Rao

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom – Don Miguel Ruiz

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are – Brene Brown

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life – Byron Katie

Some of my friends noticed the change in me and asked me how I had done it. I said I just decided I was going to make myself better.  When I said it that way, it didn’t seem possible and I think a few people raised more than one eyebrow and thought – yeah, right.

It wasn’t easy and it has taken some time; two years in fact, and I still tell myself some stories that are not helpful. That is what is so incredible. I have first hand evidence that the main thing that determines how my day goes is what thought I buy into when I wake up in the morning. Is it going to be a good day or a bad day? It’s as simple as that.  What is not simple is letting go of those stories that make us feel terrible. They can get a hold of you and it can sometimes take a while to shake them. I rely on certain things to help me shake those stories, but that is a different blog post.

Why am I writing this post today? I was recently reminded of this by someone who wakes up everyday and says “Life is awesome!”

I had noticed that some of the stories I was starting to tell myself these days were starting to impact my day-to-day living again. I decided to adopt the “life is awesome, I’m going to crush it today” thought and for the last couple of days it has helped me get through the overwhelming thought of “HOW AM I GOING TO GET THROUGH TAX SEASON” that has been playing in my head for the last month. Life is awesome – I just will. That is my story today.

I want this blog to be the start of a series on stories we tell ourselves.

Next week’s topic? Stories we tell ourselves about money and how that affects our spending.

In that vein I would love love to have some feedback on a story that you tell yourself about money.  I know mine. Mine is I’m broke, I cannot spend. What’s yours?