by Elisabeth Donati | Aug 5, 2010 | Financial Literacy, Latest News
Question: What is the right age to start teaching kids about money?
Answer: If they are breathing, they should be learning about money!
OK, that may seem a little over zealous, but here’s the thing…
Just like our need for oxygen from the moment we pop out into the planet, most of us don’t survive very well without ample amounts of financial resources to provide for the things we need. We really do NEED money in our lives to survive well and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Even if you’re a monk, somewhere there is money exchanging hands to handle your needs.
The fact is, you can work for (trade your time and energy for), beg, borrow or steel, the things that you need to live: water, food, clothing, shelter, education, transportation, etc. Even if YOU are not working for these things, it took money for SOMEONE to pay for what you are begging, borrowing or stealing!
Where is MONEY on the NEEDS vs WANTS scale anyway?
Seriously. In any classic “needs vs wants” lesson, I’ve never seen MONEY on either side. This strikes me as absurd because without MONEY, it’s hard to have anything on either list.
Legislatures Debating Over What Age to Teach Financial Wisdom To Our Kids
All over America, governing bodies of well-meaning adults are trying to decide when financial education should be taught in school. The answer is quite simply…
IN EVERY GRADE and at EVERY AGE!
We have been teaching kids and teens about money since 2002 and many of those kids and teens have taken Money Camp and Camp Millionaire several times.
What we know based on watching and listening to the participants who have attended more than once is that the ones who have guidance and coaching at home tend to remember some of the information. The ones who don’t have ongoing guidance and coaching, don’t.
Why? Because as one of our wonderful coaches said, Repetition is the mother of skill. No practice, no lessons. No lessons, no skill. No skill, well . . . we know what happens when there’s no skill. You have a society like ours that’s deep in debt with no knowledge of how it got there or how to get out.
It is only through the actual practice of USING money on a regular basis that a child truly will learn to use this resource wisely. That’s why the right type of allowance is so important.
What to teach and When to teach it
First and foremost, you must know that children learn the most by the examples that are set for them in their closest environment. That means whoever is caring for them needs to really watch their financial Ps & Qs if they want their little charges to grow into financially savvy adults.
Once you have the ‘set the best example’ thing down, you can move onto teaching them more specific things at different ages.
I don’t generally buy (no pun intended) the guidelines I’ve read by others on when children are ready for certain financial lessons. I think you just need to throw information at them all the time and it will stick when it’s meant to stick.
The Teachable Moment
I’m big on letting circumstances dictate what should be taught at the moment. And by teaching, I do NOT mean preaching. I mean sharing personal lessons, asking the child questions about their experience, listening to what they say, exploring information together as a team. No one likes to be lectured to and lecturing a child about money is the worst thing you can do in regard to preparing them to be financially savvy adults.
In my Ultimate Allowance book I talk at length about teachable moments and give you plenty of actual money conversations you can have with your children based on actual events that may occur.
Here’s some rough ideas of what to teach kids at different ages
Remembering that every child will be different in terms of what information they are ready for, here goes…
In Kindergarten…teach them about coins and paper money. Let them start learning to equate cleaning up the room with a number of coins (let a local bank sponsor this lesson). Teach them how to accumulate coins and money at home and make it FUN to watch the amount of money grow. It doesn’t matter if they can count it yet; they just need to get excited about having more of it.
In 1st – 5th Grades...continue teaching them about coins and paper money and begin equating the money with what the money will buy AND the amount of time and energy they have to trade to get that money. Start talking about what you do with money when you get it, i.e., how to manage it (we teach The Money Jars system). First and foremost, teach them, Pay Yourself First!
Start talking about how they can MAKE money themselves; literally ‘make’ the money, rather than ‘earning’ it. This is the way you begin to plant the first seeds of entrepreneurship.
Most importantly, make sure your children have at least TWO bank accounts, not just one (see the money jars system for more information). It’s critical that kids have money they are accumulating to invest (the savings account) and money they accumulate to spend. And that money should never be in the same account. This is most adults biggest problem!
In 6th – 8th Grades…continue the entrepreneurship conversation and start adding in how you start businesses, run businesses, looking at the money part of business. If you don’t know how to teach this stuff, check online for a variety of great entrepreneurship programs. Bizworld and Kidscashcoach both have simple business programs you might like.
This is also the perfect time to start introducing your children to assets and passive income. The Money Game® is a great choice for a family or group of students. It teaches the kids the power of investing in assets and they quickly develop the understanding that it takes assets that produce passive income to make them financially secure and eventually financially free.
In 9th – 12th Grades…time to introduce budgets, balance sheets, business plans and the idea that they are the CEOs of their own lives. Keep having conversations about how they can MAKE money for themselves rather than EARNING it by working for someone else. Though a huge percentage of adults never take the leap to owning their own business, if they know it’s a viable option, it’s easier to make that leap later if they want to.
Start talking about different kinds of assets: real estate, stock market, businesses. You don’t have to be an expert. Find experts in your community and invite them to talk to your kids or students. They love sharing what they know with kids. (Make sure you interview them first to see how they’d be with kids:-)
SIDE NOTE: We had a panel of parents and grandparents attend the last hour of our recent Moving Out! for Teens camp here in Santa Barbara. We asked them to share with the teens their biggest regret. Know what it was? That they had waited so long to start their own businesses and work for themselves!
In 11th – 12th Grades…now is the time to start teaching them how to move out and stay out. They are so interested in types of bank accounts, renting apartments, buying cars, credit cards, insurance, getting jobs, resumes…anything that has to do with stuff they’re about to have to do is fair game and readily consumed.
Our recent Moving Out! for Teens camp showed us how hungry 16-18 year olds are for this information. They have no idea why they’re learning what they are learning in school but when handed LIFE-STUFF in camp, they gobbled it up and wanted much more. Feed it to them!
The Right Age To Teach Kids About Money – Summary
Hopefully you see that every age is the right age to teach kids about money. Don’t wait. Don’t not teach them because you don’t want them to have to worry about it. They’ll have to WORRY about it if you don’t teach them!
Share the topic of money at every turn. It’s part of life. It’s ubiquitous for most of us and just like air to breath and water to drink and food to eat, if we want an abundance of money in our lives to experience the best that life has to offer that money can buy, we have to know how to use it wisely. And that takes repetition and exposure to the topic of money all throughout childhood and beyond.
Now go out there, set a good example and see how many money savvy adults you can create.
Just something else to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 10, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
I have been holed up since Tuesday of this week (7/6/10) teaching a new group of trainers how to use accelerated learning to make financial education programs like Camp Millionaire more effective and so much more fun for the participants.
Though I haven’t had much time to do anything but teach and sleep, I always take time to reflect back on the week of teaching. I am always meloncholy at the end of my trainings because even though I know that these people’s hearts and souls want to teach financial principles to kids and teens, the road they are about to start down isn’t going to be an easy one.
The people of America make it seem like teaching kids and teens how to make, manage and multiply their money is a great occupation…and it is, don’t get me wrong. But getting the school boards to see IT as essential topics that should be taught, empowering our nation’s teachers with the information themselves and asking them to teach it in their classrooms and getting parents to send their children to community financial literacy programs is another thing altogether.
What I can say after being in the financial literacy industry (and it is an industry) since 2002 is that for each person I am able to impart even the most basic of financial principles and I see that it affects his or her life in a positive way, I am changed.
And that’s why I love doing what I do…teach kids and teens and adults about money.
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 1, 2010 | Financial Literacy, Financial Literacy Principles, Latest News, Uncategorized
There you are…faced one morning, noon, or evening…with the stark reality that you don’t have a clue how to manage your money, let alone how to prepare for the R word…Retirement.
How will YOUR older self be living?
Though the concept of retirement has recently moved aside and allowed the idea of financial freedom to pass it by, one basic fact hasn’t changed…one of these days you’re going to look in the mirror and see the older self that lives inside of you right now and that older self is going to be living the life you are currently preparing for him or her to live.
That visualization, for most people, isn’t a pleasant one. Tears, fears and anxiety often follow as you realize you aren’t doing what you need to be doing so that YOUR older person can live a nice, comfortably secure life without having to work for a living anymore.
Making The Decision To Change
The decision to change yourself, and in essence, your life, can be the hardest decision you ever make. It means giving up your excuses, your reasons, your comfort zone (which usually isn’t very comfortable). It means that you have to stop blaming others for your situation. It means giving up the way you currently ‘do money’ and taking on a whole new paradigm of making, saving, spending and investing money now and in the future.
It means changing your priorities, asking bigger questions, answering questions from friend and relatives who don’t understand why you’re changing or are jealous because they haven’t been able to make the same decision yet.
It means that once you make this decision to change, your whole life is going to morph into new and unfamiliar territory. This will ‘eventually’ be a wonderful thing, but it can be a little scary at first because you have to let go of what you know in order to move toward what you say you want for yourself.
What It Takes To Change
Let’s look at this change with a critical eye. What you’re saying is this…
“I want to go from a life of financial struggle and stress to a life filled with financial security and peace of mind.”
Did I get it right? Do I understand that this is truly want you want?
You’re sure? Absolutely sure?
OK, then let’s do it. Put on your sneakers and do a little stretching right now because we’re about to take off down an exciting new path and I have to say it may get a little bumpy, feel a little overwhelming, or out of control at times. But think of it as the greatest Disney ride on earth and someone (that would be you!) just gave you a once in a life-time chance to hop on and go for it.
Step #1: STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE!
Step #1 is in all caps for a reason. Have you ever noticed that things don’t change until you accept them the way they are? You can’t change things from the standpoint of hating them. It doesn’t work for some reason. Beside, people who complain all of the time are miserable to be around.
Complaining isn’t helpful. Complaining doesn’t move anyone forward. Complaining certainly isn’t positive in any way and the whole time you’re complaining you COULD have been learning something, fixing a situation, helping someone or in some other way being a positive contribution to life.
So, stop complaining already!
Did you notice the world just got better all of a sudden?
Step #2: Make A Commitment To Do What It Takes
Have you ever stood in line for a ride or a buffet and for whatever reason, stepped out of line? Unless you talked someone into ‘holding your place’ (which generally annoys people around you because those people STAYED in line), where do you have to go to get back into the line? Exactly…you have to go back to the end of the line and start over.
Now this isn’t to say that sometimes you find yourself in the WRONG line. Then it’s a matter of seeing it early on and changing lines. This is perfectly acceptable.
I’m talking about getting OUT of line or CHANGING lines over and over again because the line gets too hard to STAY in. All you end up doing is standing in line for the rest of your life. And the metaphor here is painful, at best. People who stand in line are generally people who are dependent on others for their well-being.
The payoff? When you’re in the RIGHT line for the RIGHT amount of time doing the RIGHT thing, what you finally get to experience is pure, unadulterated, amazing personal satisfaction that you DID IT YOURSELF. Finally, YOU are in charge. YOU have what you want. YOU get to live the life YOU designed.
And why is this finally happening? Because you did what it takes and stuck it out…no matter what. (OK, I hear you trying to complain or make up excuses. Back to Step #1 if this is you.)
Step #3: Start Noticing What Interests You
As you can tell, I don’t need to yell anymore. I have your attention and you’ve gotten through checkpoints #1 and #2 safely and surely. Good job!
Now that we’re ready to get the ball rolling, I want you to pay attention to what interests you in life. What are you doing when you forget to eat or drink or put off going to the restroom for hours. Whatever ‘this’ is, is the thing that you can do for the rest of your life (or at least a long while) and not refer to it as something you ‘have’ to do.
Most people have several activities or areas of interest that affect them this way. Some people don’t have any. The former have an easier road to travel but rest easy…if you’re in the later group, once you get past # 1 and #2, you’ll feel a shift inside and have a sense of peace about how you maneaver down the path to financial security and peace of mind.
Once you’ve discovered the interest that you want to focus on, become an EXPERT at it. Practice it, read everything you can on the subject, get a mentor, etc. Once you’re the expert, doors you had no idea that existed begin to open for you.
Ask Better Questions
Step #4: Ask A Simple Question
“Why is it so easy to turn _______________ (inset interest here) into a lucrative, enjoyable business that does good in the world?”
This is called an AFFORMATION. And no, it’s not affIRMation spelled incorrectly. AfFORMations are afFIRMations turned into questions. You see, my friend, Noah St. John, created Afformations when he realized years ago that one of the most important reasons people don’t get what they want is that they are asking the wrong questions.
Imagine asking yourself, “Why am I such a looser?” or “Why am I so clumsy?” or “Why am I always broke?” The Universe answers, “Well, because…….” And so it goes.
But with an Afformation, you learn to change those unsupportive questions into powerful supportive questions that, coupled with the right action, bring untold resources into your life.
Now go back to the question above and notice what you try to answer yourself. Take detailed notes and before long, you may be surprised to find you’re looking at the beginnings of a brand new business that will bring you rich rewards.
“Why am I so happy and my life is filled with peace and security?” Now THAT’s a great question!
Step #5: Get Excited About Everything You’re About To Learn
Let’s face it, sometimes we know what we should be doing but just aren’t doing it…yet. And sometimes you don’t know what you should be doing because either, 1) no one taught you, or 2) you didn’t realize you needed to know it yet.
Money is one of the topics most people don’t learn in school, and often don’t learn from their parents. Business is also a topic this isn’t mainstay in our school systems, yet, but it should be!
Since most of the energy in this county is focused on getting people employed, i.e., getting a J.O.B., most kids don’t leave school with a sense of what they can create outside of the job construct. But in actuality, this IS where wealth is normally created.
How do you learn what you need to learn to be successful? Oh, that’s easy and it doesn’t require going back to get yet another degree. Here are the simple, easy steps…
1) Go to the library and check out a bunch of books on money, investing and how to start and run businesses.
2) Take them home and start devouring them. Don’t just read them. Get a journal. Take copious notes. Think deeply on what you’re reading. Pause often and ask yourself how you can use this information to turn your interest into a profitable venture.
3) Take those books back to the library and repeat the process.
4) Keep your eyes pealed for workshops, seminars, meetings, networking events, adult education classes specific to your topic, etc. Attend the ones you can afford, offer to volunteer at the ones you can’t, ask for scholarships to the ones you really want to go to. You never know unless you ask!
Again, take copious notes and continue to ask questions and apply the information to your area of interest.
5) Research your topic on the internet. These days there is no reason or excuse to be ignorant on any topic. The internet contains more information than any of us every imagined would ever be available to us in our lifetime. At the click of your mouse, you can have before you, everything you need to know to finally be the CEO of your own life!
Step #6: Now Get Out There And Do Something
This is the most important step; well, this and knowing you CAN actually create the life you want. We’ve talked about mindset and belief systems a great deal so we’re not going to in this blog. If you still struggle with your financial self-esteem, please give yourself the gift of reading T. Harv Eker’s book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, and then attend his Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar. I promise doing these two things will set you on a path of unparalleled rewards.
(Warning to all you perfectionists out there. STOP thinking you have to have things perfect before you do them, sell them, launch them, teach them. You don’t…there’s no such thing as perfect, anyway. ‘Perfect’ is a distraction, an excuse, a reason for you not to have to change. Get over it.)
There really is only one thing standing between where you are and where you want to be, and that’s ACTION. You can visualize and afformationize and affirmationize and use the laws of attraction until you’re blue in the face and nothing will happen until you actually take some action toward what you want in life.
Step #7: Enjoy The Journey…No Matter What
As far as any of us really knows, we’re on this planet for one go ’round and none of us know how long that go ’round is going to be. So, you might as well enjoy the journey.
And if you decide you don’t want to enjoy it? Please do yourself, and the rest of us, a favor and at least get through Step #1.
Just something else to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | Jun 21, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
My father passed away when I was 26. My son, his only grandson at the time, was just a year old when nature took it’s course with a man who had never taken care of himself physically, nor had the tools to find an underlying source of happiness during his short 53 year old life.
During those 53 years however, he learned a lot of things that he attempted to pass on to me, and the rest of my three siblings, in our years together.
There were the things we learned that were useful…like how to fix stuff, put stuff together, take stuff apart.
There was the ever valuable ‘think that through’ skill that he and our mother constantly invited us to nurture and develop while we were young…in their differeing ways, of course.
There are ways of being, as well as ways of NOT being, that I learned from my father as well. All of it has turned out to be valuable during my life so far, and I’m sure it will continue to be valuable until the day I decide to leave the planet.
Since yesterday was Father’s Day here on Planet Earth, June 20, 2010, I thought I’d say Happy Father’s Day, Dad and give him a little of the tribute he earned.
What my father taught me…
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Skill: How to find small pieces of things in the world.
You see, my father was an HO Gauge Train fanatic…OK, he probably wasn’t a true fanatic, but to my Mom and the rest of us, he sure liked to put those silly little trains together. He took a room outside of his huge workshop in Michigan when I was young and turned it into a veritable train memorial. There were engines (my favorite because they were heavy) and cars and cabooses and little green fake trees and conductors and houses and fake grass. He’d get so excited when he’d have the chance to take someone new into his train den.
My skill to see the small things in life, and recognize them as important, was honed because my father insisted on putting his little model trains together at his office desk…he was an architect…which had, are you ready? SHAG CARPET on the floor.
I have vivid memories throughout my childhood of here, “TWIT, (that was my nickname and hang on because I’ll get to that in a moment also), come here and help me find a …..” More often than not, he had dropped one of those little springs that went into the wheels of the train and you know, without those springs, the whole train just won’t work!
During the school year, he’d wait the entire day for me to get home from school to find one of those silly little springs, or whatever it was. I’d walk in the door and my mom would say, “Your father needs you to find something he dropped.”
The Lesson: To this day I see little things everywhere and appreciate their significance in the world.
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Skill: How to build things that lasted
Being an architect led my father to being a contractor which led to being a builder of all things. Now I didn’t say a completer of all things…I said a builder of all things.
He constantly had ideas of how to change the house, build new fireplaces, replace the counters in the kitchen, change the barn, etc. Now the problem was that though he loved to create and start things, he had terrible timing. My mom still rants on when we’re all together about the time my father decided to redo the fireplace in our kitchen/eating area right before Christmas. She was pissed at him for years over that! It took him forEVER to finish that fireplace so you can only imagine what our kitchen area looked like during Christmas while she was cooking and making the candy and cookies and holiday goodies that somehow seemed to just show up every December!
The First Lesson: What I witnessed, time and time again, was the joy he got from creating and how much he loved the process of building and changing things. I’m not sure if he was unhappy with the way things were (which is what I suspect) or just liked the process of creating. Either way, it sparked a creative process in me when I was about 25 and hasn’t stopped since.
The Second Lesson: What I didn’t learn, necessarily, was how to finish things. I have this joy of creating and doing but finishing has never been important to me…until now. As I have gotten deeper in the business world and am having to depend on MY ideas and MY processes and MY skills, I have realized that finishing projects so that you can affect change with those project and actually support yourself, is the piece I missed and have had to teach myself.
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The Skill: Thinking Through Stuff
We were raised on about 15 acres. Those acres contained a sweet herd of Quarter Horses, a couple of Saint Bernards, a few farm cats, a HUGE garden, a riding circle that doubled as a skating rink in the winter, a big old pond at the bottom of a very long hill in Michigan and a big old pond at the base of a three story deck in Oregon, lots of wild critters, a barn full of equipment and a whole lot more.
If you grew up on a farm, or have ever spent time on one, you know there is an unending opportunity on farm to hurt yourself. We rarely did.
You see, as we grew up, my mom and my dad constantly were teaching us to simply think through stuff before we did it. Now that in itself was a splendid gift but there’s an added bonus. They taught us to think through stuff WITHOUT being afraid of it at the same time. There wasn’t much we weren’t allowed to do, shown to do or made to do while we grew up…and this is probably why people tell me they can’t understand how I know how to do some many things. It’s not ME, it’s that I was taught HOW to do things and empowered with the belief that I COULD do anything.
The Lesson: I grew up knowing that most anyone can do anything they want if they just think through it, learn how to do it and then…and here’s the biggest piece…practice doing it!
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The Skill: Speaking What Is
My father was a big man…6 foot 6 inches to be exact. Even as a fairly tall teenage girl, he was still big to me and when he spoke, well, you can just imagine, we ‘usually’ listened.
While I was growing up, I used to tag along with my dad to meetings and occasionally on a shopping trip or just plain ole’ visiting with the neighbors. What I started to notice early on was that he had a propensity to embellish. I could say just flat out lie, but it was different than that.
If something was a mile, he said it was 5. If something took 10 minutes, he’d say it took an hour. You get the idea.
A few times when I was little, and didn’t know any better, I corrected him in front of the person he was talking to. Boy, was THAT not a good idea! Many of you may know exactly what I mean. It didn’t take me long to log internally not to make things appear something they weren’t.
I realized in my 20’s that he did this for attention, but still, I drove me nuts. To this day I say exactly what is and have a difficult time when people tell a story one way when I know for dang sure it wasn’t that way at all.
The Lesson: When you tell a story or explain something, repeat exactly what happened to the best of your ability. This way you never have to remember what you said and no one will ever correct you.
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There were plenty of other lessons of course but these were just a few of the most powerful ones that shaped who I am as person. There were lessons in the garden, lessons fixing things, plenty of horse lessons about patience and bonding and relaxing and a whole lot more.
For now, I’ll just say, “Happy Father’s Day” to my dad and everyone else’s. I hope your day was great and you had a chance to reflect on the lessons your father gave you.
P.S. No, I don’t have a picture of him handy.
by Elisabeth Donati | May 27, 2010 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Uncategorized
Financial Education: Fact or Fiction
In 2001, a young woman started questioning her lack of financial education as she looked around and saw so many WITH money but even more WITHOUT.
She didn’t understand how she’d gotten mostly A’s in high school and college, knew how to grow freezers and pantries full of food, take care of horses, build houses and come up with practical, logical solutions to almost anything but didn’t understand how to have more than enough money than she needed to live on each month.
She started asking, Why? She started looking around at the world, wondering what she had missed. And then, upon the pages of a book that was given to her by a friend, she found the answer…and the answer was simple. She didn’t understand money because no one had ever taught her about money.
Now, truth be told, she still doesn’t ‘understand’ money any more than the next guy because money is one of the most nebulous substances in the galaxy, but she has learned how to make it, save it, invest it so that it multiples, create passive income streams and more. But the best part of this story is that in the process of teaching herself what she never learned as a kid, she created a way to teach kids and adults about money in the most amazingly sticky, effective, relevant way…with a game bearing the name of the nebulous stuff itself…The Money Game.
Right or Privilege
Financial Education: Right or Privilege
If a child decides he or she wants to learn how to swim, or play the flute or become the best pitcher around, that child’s parent, if they have the financial resources to do so, goes in search of a coach or teacher for the child. This coach or teacher generally charges a fee for providing his or her expertise and the parent agrees to pay the fee in exchange for the coach or teacher to impart their knowledge and skill upon said child.
Now let’s change the topic of consideration to money. When it comes to teaching our children about money, helping them gain the skills necessary to be good at handling their financial affairs as an adult, many parents, and most of America, thinks this should be provided free.
Again, this woman (not so young anymore) asks, Why? Why is it perfectly acceptable to expect to pay for flute or swimming lessons but not money lessons? Why is it OK that for-profit companies make millions of dollars a year by selling textbooks and curriculums to school on math and science and reading but when it comes to getting the highest quality financial literacy curriculum into the schools, a for-profit company is looked down upon because it’s not a nonprofit organization?
What the heck is wrong with this situation? Why on earth is it not OK for a for-profit company to teach financial education but OK for a for-profit company to provide math or reading or science programs?
The reasons behind this go deeper than you’d ever care to consider and deeper than I am able to communicate and put into words at this point. It’s along the same lines as the spam filters who have been trained to mark emails and subject lines containing the terms money and f.ree (like THAT works to get past them…NOT:-) as spam and make it undeliverable.
Is there a plot? Maybe. I, being the women in the story above, have always questioned whether the government REALLY wants us educated in financial matters. It’s so much easier to slide things by us, make things seem like they make sense financially, keep society as a whole making decisions from a context of greed, need, deprivation or desire instead of financial security, common sense and genuine desire if we just don’t understand money.
Here’s an interesting quote by Emma Goldman: The most violent element in society is ignorance.
I couldn’t agree more. And ergo my question about whether financial education is a human being’s right or if it’s only a privilege to those who’s parents are aware enough to make sure they learn about money or eventually grow up and teach themself.
If you thought I’d have an answer to this dilemma, I’m afraid at present I don’t. But I did want you to think on it and share those thought with me for further discussion…and I believe it warrants a lot more discussion.
Just something else to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | May 20, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
I am reading the most wondrous of relationship books called Undefended Love. In it, there are many areas where the word ‘money’ could be substituted for the word ‘relationship’ or ‘love’ and lately I find myself considering a particularly powerful aspect of the book ~ something the authors refer to as Exits.
Introducing Financial Vulnerabilities
A financial “vulnerability” arises when we’re attacked or confronted by something that taps into our insecurity, fear, or panic. We all have them AND we all know when one has surfaced and is asking for our attention.
These times are often scary and miserable because, quite honestly, few of us were taught how to manage our emotions around money, let alone how to manage the money itself.
These vulnerabilities can occur when you least expect them and they can occur often; but chances are they do occur regularly in one form or another. An example might be when a bill shows up for an expense you hadn’t remembered, like the car insurance that shows up for me in July of each year. I ‘know’ it’s coming but sometimes I simply forget to plan for it. Or the credit card bill that comes in the mail that you don’t open because you don’t know how to actually PAY for the shoes you bought two weeks ago on a whim…just because you liked them.
Think about the last time you were feeling vulnerable around YOUR financial situation. What caused it? Was it a lack of awareness on your part, a lack of planning, or a simple lack of information or understanding?
I’m referring to the ‘deer in the headlights’ type of situation that’s immediately followed by an emotion (or six…) and then, because we don’t know what to do with the emotion, or situation, we quickly go searching for our nearest exit, so to speak. We want a way out, and the quicker the better.
Financial Exit...Don't Do It!
Exit Stage Left…Financial Exit, that is.
Financial exits can take many forms. Here I tie them to Undefended Love book’s list of exits because financial exits are exactly the same as relationship/love exits.
- You choose to LEAVE the situation PHYSICALLY by walking out, or you get sick, have an accident, clean the house, go out for a walk, etc. Anything NOT to have to handle the situation in the moment.
- You LEAVE EMOTIONALLY by feeling confused, shutting down, getting angry, talking incessantly, experiencing self-doubt or becoming ambivalent to what’s going on in the moment.
- You LEAVE MENTALLY by forgetting about the situation, changing the subject, making mental or physical lists, trying to intellectualize or analyze or rationalize yourself out of the situation and even go blank.
- You DEFEND the situation by lying, becoming indignant or self-righteous, justifying ’til you’re blue in the face, feel criticized and resent the heck out of your life or the situation.
- And more often than anything else, you choose to INDULGE yourself in your addiction of choice. You shop, often making the matter worse, eat, watch TV, use drugs or alcohol, act out sexually (which is a form of seeking approval, that you are OK and acceptable regardless of your financial situation), act compulsively in some manner, work nonstop, gamble, or even engage in fantasy so as not to have to think about the situation.
The Way Out vs The Way In
Unfortunately, the ‘way out’ is not the way to fix or handle the situation. You can only fix the situation by looking for a ‘way in’ and that means (as is usually the case when changing our lives), it’s an inside job. We must be willing to sit with the vulnerability, experience the emotion…regardless of how tumultuous it feels at the time…and ride this wave until the solution unveils itself to us. It always will, IF we’re willing to sit with it long enough.
I like going back to yoga as a metaphor for our personal financial situations. Yoga, again, is the practice of being with what is. Just as many people practice yoga with the intent of getting the perfect body or “mastering the pose”, many use their money to buy status or self-esteem. Problem is, it just doesn’t work in the long run.
The true practice of yoga will help you learn to sit with what is and accept it unconditionally. And this is often the quickest way in.
Being WITH Your Financial Vulnerabilities
It’s not a matter of IF you’ll ever have financial vulnerabilities in your life, it’s a matter of WHEN and HOW OFTEN you have them. The question for most of us is…
“What do I do when I feel this way about my money situation?”
And that’s a great question!
Quick answer…How about you do nothing? How about you sit down and breathe and stop trying to fix the situation by DOING yet another thing. How about trying something new…NOTHING.
As bizarre as it seems, solutions come in our stillness. Answers almost always come to us in quiet and contemplation.
So just for now, I invite you to sit with your next financially vulnerability long enough to neutralize it; long enough to make it NOT a thing. Allow yourself the time to create the space to let the natural solutions manifest themselves.
The room you’re in has all the answers. You just have to stay in there long enough to see them.
Just something to think about!
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