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.

How I Know I'm Not Young Anymore: 15 Ways

1. I can remember things that seem impossible now, like how restaurants and airplanes used to be sectioned into "smoking" and "non-smoking" seating. For that reason, I hated being friends with smokers. Sometimes the salad bar would be too close to the smoking section in a restaurant and it would make the food taste bad.

2. I still remember sharing one rotary phone with everyone in my house. You had to stand next to the wall, attached by a cord, to talk on it. If you were upstairs when your phone rang, you had to run downstairs really fast. If you missed the call, there was no way to know who'd been trying to reach you. You might literally never find out.  

We had this phone.

3. I remember what a big deal it was when we got an answering machine. It was exciting when you came home to see a blinking light.

4. I have owned a pager.

5. I once said I'd never own a cell phone, because I "just didn't need one." 

6. All of the celebrities I think are cool are old people.

Is that Eddie Vedder, or someone's cheesy dad? Oh wait it's both.

7. When my husband and I hear new rock songs on the radio, we exclaim, "This isn't rock music!" We shake our heads and feel disgusted.

8. I found myself "resting my eyes" at a concert last night. 😁

9. When anyone in my first grade class had a birthday, our teacher made the birthday kid go to the front of the room, where she paddled the kid one time for each year he or she had been alive.
My teacher did not get fired for this.
It was a different time.

10. After my dog passed away, I was so upset all the time, I got a wrinkle between my eyes and it never went away.  

11. I hate my chair at work because it lacks lumbar support.

12. I am about to take out a loan to buy a shit-ton of windows. I am excited about this.

13. Some of the smartest people at my job are younger than me.

14. My proximity to a rest room is a real concern I have to plan around. I just can't hold it all day anymore.

15. I am still sensitive, but I don't really care what you think of me anymore.

So at least there's that.
:)