Mammon Off the Pedestal

In the mid 90's I had a pretty much total financial meltdown. It appeared that I had gotten my life back together fairly well - I had been clean and sober about 7 years, I had quit smoking, I had recovered from anorexia which had, unbeknownst to me, become my switch-off addiction when I quit chemicals, I had a good therapist and I had a good job with decent pay.

What I didn't know was that when I quit all the other stuff, I had transferred onto the big bad mammon train. I think a big part of the reason the denial was so thick was that I wasn't spending on things visible. I had massages twice a week, a facial a week, traveled back and forth to Key West every other month, went to the theatre a lot, took many, many cabs. Again, like any other addiction, immediate gratification. Nothing owned, everything experiential. And in the end I have nothing to show for my money spent.

They (you know, them again) say that food is mommy and money is daddy. And in my case, this is absolutely true. In just about every aspect of her life, my mother was a big old package of deprivation, sprinkled with a binge or two here or there. Not unlike anorexia, which is starvation simply for the purpose of feeling the power that only hunger can incite.

My dad was sneaky and secret with money, and as I stated in my last post, to this day I have no idea how much money he made and where exactly we lived on the scale from poor to privileged. I know he grew up very poor, one of six kids with a mother that worked three jobs while his father languished in hospital with tuberculosis for 10 years before he died. I know that every Christmas when we'd open a gift that we loved, he'd point at us and say something like, "Well, you better appreciate that because when I grew up we had nothing to play with but our toes!" Merry Christmas Mr. Buzz Kill, right?

So after I dropped the starvation thang, it seems that I picked up the credit card thang. Now, I did not understand the credit thing. I filled out an application and they approved me and sent me this plastic card with my name on it. So when I wanted something I handed my plastic card over and they "ran" it and it was over, as far as I was concerned. However, a couple of weeks later I would receive a "statement" in the mail tracking my purchases and have money due to the credit card company. Say What? What the hell is that? I gave them my card and now they want money too? This is how my brain reads credit. Give it to me, thank you very much, now buzz off.

Unsecured credit, that is, buying something that cannot be repossessed upon non-payment, is processed in my brain like water going down the swirling vortex that is a drain. A tumbleweed passes through the hole in my brain where credit sense should be. I don't get it. And even when I learned how it works, I still don't retain it and cannot resist the urge to "buy now, pay later." So I don't. Period.

How did this change? I got in with a group of people like myself, who didn't have a healthy relationship with money. You can overspend, you can underspend, doesn't matter; same coin, different sides. Money's not going to save you and it's not going to sink you either. I am powerful over money, it's just green paper that's used in trade for things. I'm just powerless over knowing how and what to do with it.

See, the nice thing about booze and drugs is that I just don't do them anymore. I don't have to develop a relationship with them. I put them down and I don't pick them back up or hang with people who use where they use. But food and money are different. I have to find a way to live in harmony with both. I have to eat and I have to make and spend money. Even though my perception of them both is like looking in a fun house mirror. I learn tools and I apply them daily, every single transaction, whether they make sense to me at the moment or not.

This started as an exercise: I carry a notebook everywhere and write down absolutely every penny I spend, even for a gumball. Everything. After a month, I break it down into catagories - and see where my money goes. I make X amount and I spend Y. They have to come into alignment for me not to debt. So, with the help of others, I look at my catagories and decide what's essential, like mortgage and electricity, and what's important to me, coffee, haircut, books - and see what's not as important to me, like gumballs and more towels (just because they're on sale doesn't mean I have to buy them now for the future) and magazines (they were all over my office) and my 24th pair of shoes. Although if 25 pairs of shoes were important to me, that's okay too. I would just have to buy 4 less books or skip a haircut, etc. And I personally needed a spontaneous money category too, because I needed to feel "free" to choose something "out there." So I figured that in too. And it's not called a "budget" because that word implies deprivation. It's called a "spending plan."

They taught me how to talk to creditors, how to pay off the IRS one tiny amount at a time for years, but how to make the good faith payments no matter what. And in no time I was debt free and living like my own adult.

The key, however, was for me to continue writing EVERYTHING down EVERY day - a day at a time for years. There's a lot of magic in THE TRUTH - and I have found that the truth creates abundance. Wealth of every kind, including money, just starts to show up once I start to obey the laws of "reality." But that's another discussion for another time.

Today, I'm grateful to be freed from the fears of money and of lack. But...Abundance? I'm still working on that one - still a little too scary for me.