Exercise: What is Your "Money Memory?"

I just started listening to a new (to me) book: The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom by Suze Orman. I'm already learning a lot.

The book starts with an exercise. She asks you to think back to your earliest memory about money. She says that everyone has an early memory that holds clues to what shaped your relationship to money as an adult.

For example, she writes aboout a woman who, as a child, had to move every time her dad got a promotion. Every time she started to get comfortable somewhere, she was uprooted again. To this day, the woman associates gaining money with chaos. Other people associate money with shame or early traumas of not having enough.

I thought and thought about it, and couldn't think of a single defining money memory.

I realized, right away, how lucky that makes me. How fortunate I am to have grown up not thinking much about money. I felt secure, and I am endlessly grateful for that.

In fact, I had no idea how much money my parents had or didn't have at any given time ... until we went to the Outer Banks each summer.

As it turns out, my parents worked hard and made smart financial decisions. But nothing about our lives really changed with my parents' income. For much of my childhood, I wore my neighbors' hand-me-down clothes and my parents shared one car.

But when we went to the beach, our accomodations over time went from a hotel room ... to a cabin ... to a beach house ... to an oceanfront property with an inground pool.

The annual vacation splurge was one of the only things that ever changed. For 51 weeks in between, we kept a lean budget.

So I guess my "money memories" are about my family living, day-to-day, below their means. Those are the habits that define the way I try to live today.

It taught me to appreciate things. It was exciting when my mom let me pick out a new school supply, or bought me a new outfit (always at TJ Maxx) that didn't smell like someone else. But it's why I feel so confused (and often defeated) when I see friends living so much more extravagantly than I do. Maybe they make more money. Or maybe they just worry about it less. (Maybe both.)

I still have a lot to learn about money, and this book is teaching me that. It's also inspiring me to dig out the 501k rollover paperwork I have shamefully ignored for 5 years (!!!).

But right now, at this moment, I'm thinking about my smart parents and the habits they instilled in me.

Thanks, mom and dad.