The Heart of Money. Deborah L. Price

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СКАЧАТЬ treat us and let us shop at Robinson’s (a chic and more expensive store), which is where she said the rich people shopped. She was the queen of bargain hunting. Before we got home, Mom would make us put our “loot” into Kmart shopping bags and hide the evidence of the Robinson’s bags in the trash. We were sworn to secrecy. Mom always said, “We may be poor, but you’ll always look rich.” How we looked was very important to her. We didn’t have much, and what we bought was always on sale, but it was always nice. I felt this was the way we hid our poverty, as though it was something to be ashamed of.

      My father gave his paycheck to Mom every week, and she handled the finances. I somehow knew that there was never enough and that she struggled to make do with what there was. We ate a lot of beans and potatoes. Sometimes, when things were really tight, my mom would make a chocolate cake, and we’d eat chocolate cake with beans on top. This was our family’s version of a gourmet meal. It helped to compensate for another night of beans and felt like a celebration to us.

      When I was ten, my father lost his blue-collar job at the steel factory where he was a foreman. They closed the plant due to the recession (the oil crisis of the early seventies). He could not find work, so we moved from California to Utah, where he was offered a job. We were very sad in Utah and were treated like foreigners. One day, I woke up and found my mom packing up our things. She said that we were moving that week to Arkansas. We were shocked. Mom was frantic and said that something bad was going to happen if we didn’t leave. She had had a premonition. We packed and left like gypsies in the night. Our two brothers promised to move and join us later. I felt very scared. We had little money, and my dad had no job.

      We drove nonstop to my grandparents’ house in Batesville, Arkansas. They were dirt-poor and lived in the boonies. But there was no work, no money, and no future in Arkansas, and soon we left. We drove to St. Louis to see if my dad could find a job there. We moved in with my aunt, who was a widow and lived alone in the ghetto, but she refused to move. There I briefly found a home as one of the only white kids in a poor African American neighborhood that filled my life with a sense of belonging. Being poor didn’t matter. I was accepted and even allowed to perform as one of the “Supremes” (in my Afro wig!) in our makeshift neighborhood street theater. I felt rich for the first time.

      When I was twelve, we moved into our own house, which was in a horribly poor neighborhood. Within a few months, I awoke early one morning to hear my mother screaming and crying. I walked into the kitchen and discovered that our older brother had been killed in a hunting accident in Utah. Something bad had happened there; Mom’s premonition came true. My brother’s death devastated our family. We barely had enough money to get to California to bury our brother in the family cemetery. When we returned home, we didn’t have enough money to rent our own place. My parents asked their best friends if we could stay with them until we got on our feet, but they said no. This crushed my mother’s spirit. She had just lost her son and had traveled all that way to bury him, and her friends couldn’t find it in their hearts to help us. Our dog even died on the way home from heat exposure. My parents never bad-mouthed those friends. They said they understood, but it took me years to forgive this betrayal. Everything else during this time is a blur, except that my mother was devastated, and we didn’t have enough money to bury our brother properly. I don’t think my family ever recovered.

      We moved into a housing project and were forced to go on welfare. The recession continued, and my father still could not find work. Living in the projects was a trip. I quickly made friends in my now very racially mixed neighborhood and attempted to make the most of it. I focused on and excelled in school and was named student of the year. I wanted to compensate for my mother’s loss by doing well. I kept myself so busy that I didn’t have time to feel poor, until one day I was chased by giant cockroaches in our apartment.

      The next year, my father finally found work, and we moved to a better neighborhood. Now fourteen, I began working at Taco Bell. I loved making my own money and not having to ask anyone for anything. Fiercely independent, I had one and sometimes two jobs from that age on. Work had become my refuge from a difficult life. Working and making money were my ticket out of that life.

      I saved enough money to buy my own car at sixteen. I surprised my parents one day when I drove into the driveway with my primer-gray Buick LeSabre. They were stupefied and couldn’t understand how I kept figuring out all this money stuff on my own. They wouldn’t let me have a driver’s license, but I had bought my own car!

      I decided to go to college, and with the help of my high school counselor, I received scholarships and grants. When I told my parents that I’d been accepted to a top university, they laughed and said, “Yeah, right…who’s going to pay for that?” I told them, “Don’t worry, I’ve already figured it all out, and you won’t need to pay a dime.” That night, my father came into my room and told me that he was very proud of me and of what I had accomplished. It was the first time he had ever truly acknowledged me. Shortly after that evening, on the night of my high school graduation, my father died suddenly from a massive heart attack. He never made it to my graduation. He was only fifty, and his life had ended, all too abruptly.

      With his passing, my mother became a young widow and single parent of three. All that my father left her was a $10,000 life insurance policy, which my financially naive mother thought was a small fortune. Within a year, she began to realize that $10,000 would not last us very long. Now, with only a waitress’s income, my mother simply couldn’t make ends meet, and money was a source of constant stress and struggle from then on. She never really recovered emotionally or financially from my father’s death. When she died, she had very little to speak of materially, which bothered her greatly. But she was a great mother who did the best she could with what she had.

      I became the first and only person in my family to attend and graduate from college. Having witnessed so much financial struggle in my parents’ lives has deeply influenced my own life and choices. It is part of my own personal mythology and has informed my destiny. I was determined to learn how to be financially educated and empowered, and to help others to do so, too.

      Understanding Our Stories

      Each of our stories is rich with meaning and metaphor. We are not unlike great stone carvings being shaped into human form by our trials and tribulations. When we merge into relationship, our individual stories also merge and become entwined. The problem is, when it comes to money, our partners seldom fully know or comprehend the significance of these stories in our de-velopment. Without our stories, we cannot make sense of how our money patterns and behaviors were formed. Knowing each other’s money stories is essential to understanding present-day money patterns and behaviors. Without this understanding, we are prone to making assumptions, drawing conclusions, and, worse, judging one another. The sharing of our stories not only helps us to make sense of our own experience but also helps our partners to do the same.

      EXERCISE

       Writing Your Money Story

      I strongly encourage you both to write and share your individual money stories with each other. I recommend that you use this process as the foundation and building blocks of creating financial intimacy, which will deepen your relationship.

      STEP ONE. WRITE YOUR STORY: Begin by writing your money story from childhood to the point where you first met your partner. Write your story from your earliest money memory, and move chronologically through time, allowing your memories to come in one at a time. It is best to write your money story in a stream-of-consciousness manner without editing, judging, or analyzing your memories while writing. Include as much detail as you can, as it will help you to identify your money patterns and relevant themes. When you reach the point in your life where you met your current partner or spouse, title the next section “The Story of Us,” and write your money memories from when you began dating to your present-day life together.

      STEP TWO. MAP YOUR STORY: Once you’ve completed СКАЧАТЬ