Mixed Money Messages

• barrieabalard
• March 11th, 2010

This week’s post holds no secrets regarding getting free help or stuff. Nor does it tell you how to make more money or cut your budget. Instead, it concerns thinking about your spending habits, but not in a, “I’m so bad with money” way. Do not beat yourself up. Instead, think about the sorts of money messages you absorbed early in life.

Some people grow up very well-off, but still have money troubles. Why? Maybe they received mixed messages along the lines of, “Yes, we have plenty, but money is evil. The best thing you can do with it is give it away or spend it. Get it off your hands.” Is it any wonder that someone who sees his parents endorse such ideas feels shame, and becomes a spendthrift?

Some people grow up poor while seeing and hearing their parents’ constant envy of others’ possessions. Perhaps their parents also said that being poor means you’re a member of the working class and not the “selfish” upper classes, adding to the confusion. Perhaps they did whatever they could to accumulate more for themselves in ways illegal and/or immoral, and the child heard them brag to each other how they took advantage of a customer. Is it any wonder such a child would grow up with issues surrounding money?

I read once that money means different things to different people: survival, security/safety, pleasure, freedom, love, and so on. And what money means to you often comes from whatever money messages you received as a child. If you are having trouble modifying your spending habits, or keeping a budget, ask yourself the following questions and listen to the answers that bubble up from inside you:

• Did your parents fight over money or use it to control each other?

• Did your parents use money to show you love instead of showing real love (meaning, spending time doing things with you or talking with you)? I think most parents have done this at one time or another, but if it was a regular occurrence in your childhood, it probably affects your thinking about money.

• Do you feel grateful for the money you have earned/inherited, or resentful that you make or have “so little”? Or guilty over having so much?

• Do thoughts about money and your childhood bring up memories of abuse, or cause you significant anxiety?

• Do you have trouble donating money to charity? Or trouble giving too much away/”buying friendship”?

• What do you feel when you think about money’s role in your life?

Here’s how the process of thinking about money messages can go. Suppose your parents fought constantly over whatever was spent, no matter how small. The father might have berated the mother for spending “too much” on food, clothing, or other necessities. This situation might have caused the mother to buy things secretly, needed or not, while warning her children not to tell the father. If the father learned of the mother’s spending, he might have retaliated by conspicuously wasting money to “teach her a lesson”.

There’s a reason I chose this example—it mirrors how I grew up, and distorted my views on money for years. For some reason, shoes were often a bone of contention with my father, and I’m sure that’s where my shoe obsession comes from, though I don’t go crazy over shoes any more the way I used to.

My initial feelings about money when I became an adult were that money meant I could have all the pleasures I longed for (plenty of shoes and good times on the town) and prove that I was an adult (freedom, i.e., no one else controlled my spending). In my childhood, who controlled the money was central to the person’s freedom, so to this day I have trouble entering into any financial agreements or accounts with another person, including my spouse. For many years we kept separate bank accounts because I had a horror of fighting over money. (The horror is still there, but we do own a few things jointly now.)

Both seeing money as meaning pleasure and freedom kept me from spending wisely for many years. Who wants to keep a budget when it means too much control imposed, and not enough freedom? Who wants to limit their spending on things that make you feel good? No one, when money means pleasure.

A person’s money meanings can change over the years depending on your circumstances, and how well you’ve dealt with those mixed money messages from childhood. While to me, money still means pleasure and “no one can control me”, these days it also contains a large dollop of fears over security. That makes sense when you’re near retirement and neither of you has the fallback of a regular paycheck. These days, at times it feels as if we’ll never have enough.

And such feelings--"we'll never have enough"--can trigger hoarding behaviors which can be just as much a problem as spending too much, if it becomes hoarding for the sake of hoarding. This, too, can come from childhood, and can be dealt with. My father’s father was, from all accounts, a true miser, not even providing healthy food for his sons because of his need to hoard.

If you’ve had trouble restricting your spending, or with spending on things you truly needed (food, shelter, medical care, etc.), or if you’ve ever hidden anything you bought, or if you “can’t stick to a budget,” if you can’t save because “emergencies” keep cropping up, then you might have mixed money messages playing in your head. Reflect a little, identify as many messages as you can, and remind yourself when your spending (or non-spending) goes off-kilter that they are just messages in your head, and you don’t have to obey them. I think it’s important not to assign blame, but simply to admit that you’ve gone against your plans, and work on doing better the next time.

If your spouse attaches different meanings to money than you do (and it seems that “savers” always marry “spenders”), you’ll both have to work on your money messages in a spirit of compromise so that you can achieve your goals. In that way, both of you can spend and save money for the right reasons, and not because of messages playing on a loop inside your heads.

Tickers: feelings about money, financial health, money messages, psychology of money

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