Let's talk money. Part one.
It makes the world go round but we rarely talk about how we use it, save it, and invest it. Let's change that.
Welcome to another issue of MindfulMess! Today we’re talking about the dough, the dollar, the paper (sorry, I watched Hustle and Flow yesterday 😅). Money. We’re talking all things money. Since it is such an important topic and I really want to make it useful for you, this is a two-parter.
This is what we’ll look at today:
🤝 Our relationship with money: I'll talk from my own history with money and the negative misconceptions I had about it growing up
✍️ Journalling prompts: to help you understand your core beliefs around money
🧠 The psychology of money: both the book and the topic
🤣 Memes of the week: to end on a light note
Next week we’ll look at:
💰 My personal history with saving and investing: how that's going, and what I've learned so you don't make the same mistakes
🤓 Resources: to learn more about money and how to manage it properly
Now, let’s talk about this issue’s topic: money.
Our Relationship with Money
Money makes the world go round. However, it’s how we developed our relationship with it in our early years (think childhood, teens and early twenties) that will dictate how we manage it—and how we keep it.
To put things in perspective, let’s dive in into my own relationship with money: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I’ll be honest with you, in my childhood, money was never really an issue. I was lucky enough to be the daughter of a successful businessman. In his early 30s he started his own company, and it did pretty well for many years.
Although this was positive for us, there were a few things that it taught me.
First: money should never be discussed.
Although we never lacked anything, we never talked about it.
We didn’t know how much my dad made, if he invested it, how much he saved, how much he would give my mom. Nada. Nothing. Not even a word about it. It was like he-who-shall-not-be-named. It was never ever discussed, and in all honesty, that wasn’t so good.
It made me see money as this cosmic thing that I would never understand. It made me, for many years, a person that had no sense about saving or investing. Every peso that landed in my hand would be spend. After all, there must be a magic tree somewhere and I’ll never run out of it. That’s how it works? Right?
Oh, how wrong was I.
Second: money should only be spent in experiences and to help others.
Something my parents did extremely well (if I may say so), was to teach me that money was not really something to be used on some expensive shoes or fancy clothes. After all, those things don’t really give you anything of real value. A shoe with a luxury brand on it will help you walk the same miles than a shoe without a logo on it.
Instead, money’s purpose in my house seemed to be for experiences and helping others. Trips, restaurants, shows, and anything that would be saved like a memory with those you love would be a great use of money. And, as proud members of the Rotary Club, my parents would take us often to charity events, and to meetings where the topic was how to help others access better education and health services with the money they had.
That, I’ll admit, is something I still continue to have as a belief in money. We’re crafty when it comes to things, cheaper is always better. But when it comes to creating memories with those around us or helping them, there’s no price that would make us walk away from that.
Third: money is how you show love.
Now, bear with me, this one is a bit tricky. From my early childhood to my early teens, my relationship with my dad was not ideal (dad-daughter relationships are tricky, amIright?). He was always working, and when he wasn’t he would be stressed and angry at us.
However, the fact that he was the breadwinner and that whenever he wanted to do something nice for us (or apologize) money would be involved (Christmas and birthday gifts were more often than not cash envelopes) gave me a somewhat dangerous idea about money: it means love.
So, we shouldn’t be angry or sad with him for x or y that he did as long as he kept our lifestyle. And that is, truly, a shitty thing to say, but during quite a few years of my life that was the case.
The only good thing that came out of this belief was my huge desire to be economically independent from him. To prove to him that even if he never gave me a cent, I would still love him for the person he is, not for what he has to offer.
Now, those were my initial beliefs formed by what I had lived when I was younger. However, a whole new set of beliefs around money came when my parents separated and I went away to University.
Once my parents separated my dad gave my mom money every month and she kept the house we grew up with as well as her car. However, money would become a constant topic of conversation and concerned soon enough.
She was unlucky enough to have been screwed by the 2008 property crash in the states.
Let me tell you how that happened:
Since we were born she stopped working as a doctor (she even had her own medical center) and dedicated her whole life to raising me and my brother. This is something I will forever be grateful to the universe, but I know it’s something that made things harder for her after divorce.
How could a 50 something get a decent enough job after not having worked for more than 15 years? Let’s be honest, the job market is always tough for the older generation and even more so for someone that’s spend more than a decade “just” being a mother.
So, once she divorced, and seeing how getting an income was harder than expected, she decided to invest her money. She had seen many of her friends invest in the US real estate and then live happily ever after.
“What could go wrong?” she thought.
Well, 2008 happened. And she lost it all. After that, money was a constant topic of concern in my house.
Suddenly, the mystical tree that produced money was chopped and burned to the ground.
She tried her best to keep our standard of living, but the change was noticeable. My dad helped as much as he could, but my reality with money had definitely changed.
Instead of an abundance mindset, I started to hear and think of money from a place of lack.
This whole experience also made me someone very fearful of investing. After all, my mom had listened to the “experts” and still had lost it all. So, how could I ever invest? Best to just keep the money under the sofa and that’s it. Right?
Now, when I moved to the UK to go to university, there were a few new learnings and emotions about money:
There was a HUGE level of guilt. My dad was paying for my university and was supporting me through my uni years. I now understood that money was something you earned with your hard work, so having him spend so much on me made me even more grateful but also made me feel very guilty. Sure, he was my dad and all. But I could feel the self-imposed pressure to become economically independent as soon as possible. One way or another I wanted to pay him back, not just the money, but the effort he had gone through to made that possible, and all the support and trust he had given me.
I learned to keep detailed track of where my money was going. My dad would send me every month a lump sum of money and it was up to me to make it last. For the first few months he also asked me to send him my Excel showing him on what I was spending the money on. None of us had lived in the UK, so this was a way for him to understand how much I really needed for groceries, rent, uni-related expenses, and also a bit of living. This habit of tracking everything really helped me to get a realistic idea of how much I needed and helped me realize when I was spending too much on areas that didn’t add value to my life (late night drinks, I’m talking to you). It taught me to prioritize on what I was spending my money on.
I finally started to work. This was a huge learning for me. Getting paid around £8 per hour really made me appreciate the cost of things. I started to see prices not as X amount of money, but as X amount of hours and energy of my life. That was a mindset shift.
Work and money started to mean freedom to me. My first job was as a security guard for a Rugby cup. Standing in the cold making sure people would behave and cars wouldn’t cross certain roads. My first ever shift was 12 hours. No one could understand why I loved it so much or even why I was doing it. If my dad was paying for my life why would I even work? But you see, for me, it wasn’t about the job. No. For me, those 12 hours meant that my dad had to pay less for me. And that felt like bliss. It was freedom. I was slowly becoming a self-sustaining human. I was slowly being able to prove to my dad that my love for him was pure and not just a result of how much money he gives me. And that meant the world to me.
Let’s leave this story here for now—it’s already long enough. What’s important is to understand how the different experiences I had shaped a different mindset about money.
I went from picturing a magic tree that will always give dollar-shaped fruits to realizing what each bill meant: time and energy spent.
Whether you’ve been raised with an abundance or a lack mindset around money, it’s important to wonder where they come from and trying to mindfully rebalance our perceptions about it.
Money isn’t evil, however, it won’t buy you happiness. What’s for certain is that money is a valuable tool to understand the energy and time exchange that we do as humans. As a resource, it’s something that gives us freedom. Freedom to buy what we really need or want. And freedom to choose what we do with our time.
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✍️ Journalling prompt: quickly outline what was your money reality in your youth and what mindsets or beliefs did you form around money.
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Let’s now look a bit more in-depth to the psychology of money and how that affects our economic reality.
The Psychology of Money
If we go full hippie (which is my thing 🙃), you’ll see that our thoughts about reality shape the reality we live in. That’s why it is super important to understand what our hidden beliefs about money are.
Let’s do a little exercise for that.
Read the following statements and see how much you agree or disagree with each of them:
Money is evil
Having money is selfish
Money is an abstraction
Frugality creates wealth
Money demands attention
Money can be created
More money means more problems
I am not good with money
Money is scarce
I need to suffer to make more money
You can probably see you agree with some more than others. I would like you to ask yourself, if you’re happy with the amount of money you have now.
If you don’t, you need to start thinking which of those common beliefs might be getting in the way of you having more money.
Sometimes we say we want more, but we talk negatively about someone having more. We talk as if money was finite. Or we constantly joke saying that more money means more problems. Be careful with that, even if you don’t say it out loud, constantly having that internal dialogue will set you up for failure.
Just like with self-sabotage (previous issue of MindfulMess), it’s those deeply rooted beliefs that will program our thoughts, which in turn will control our actions, which will result in the reality we create for ourselves.
Additionally, try to think what you would do with more money. Sometimes we say we want more, but we don’t really have a purpose or vision for what we’ll do with it. Little tip, start to think about what money could give you AND those around you. Try to picture the positive impact it would have in your life and in other people’s lives.
Lastly, I wanted to recommend a superb book the the topic: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. I think it’s worth reading for anyone looking to have a better mindset and behavior when it comes to money.
Here’s a short summary for you:
Honestly, I encourage you to read this book. There are many books about money, but I think this one does a great job at making it simple for anyone, and taking you step by step through each of the lessons so that you understand it, and more importantly, start acting differently.
Memes of the Week
Just somethings that made me laugh this week, and I hope they gets a giggle from you too. 😁
That’s it for today!
Thank you for reading!
We’ve touched on some important topics and ideas so far. I hope I’ve made it relatable enough. I want you to see that whether you’re born into money or not, it means nothing to how your life will turn out—ups and downs are the only thing that’s certain. Of course, if you start from the bottom there will be more challenges to navigate, but it doesn’t set anything in stone.
My dad’s company shut down due to the pandemic. Something we never thought would happen. He is navigating this new reality like the strong dad he is, but that doesn’t mean it has been any easier.
My mom finally learned to invest in a way that helped her live comfortably enough these past few years. After her 2008 experience, we never thought this day would come.
As for me, I’m slowly learning to keep the wealth I have and how to invest it in a smart way for my lifestyle. Having seen my dad’s company close and my mom creating a new reality for herself has really opened up my eyes to the million of possibilities there are in our future. It has taught me how by starting to be mindful about money early on, we can really save ourselves a few headaches later in life.
Next week, we’ll talk all things saving and investing.
See you then!
With MindfulMessy love,
Cris. 💌
Ps. Feel free to message me about what you’ve enjoyed from this issue and what you would hope to see in the next issues of MindfulMess! I’m still getting the hang of this platform and way of communicating with others so feel free to drop any tips or feedback! 🤓