Money and Spending Oh My!
I'm reading a great book by Geneen Roth called "Lost and Found". It's all about money and shopping and spending and our relationships with those issues. I bought the book a few years ago and it's been sitting on the bookshelf ever since. What can I say? I guess we don't get enlightenment until we're actually ready to receive it.
I'm loving the book and I feel like I might be getting closer to my own truths about money and spending. But, like the dream you can't quite remember or the thing you can only see out of the corner of your eye, I'm not quite there yet. So, I'm committing to spending some time observing myself, trying to figure out what my stories about money are. Are they true? What's really happening when I shop? I know I have issues. Everybody has issues. I'm only just now willing to start to look at them.
This is what I've found out so far.
Let's start with Friday night. I had a stressful conversation with my mortgage company. Even though, yes, I've paid the three trial payments for my loan modification, I (gasp) paid them too early which means the system is not smart enough to generate the paperwork to make the modification permanent and I may have to make up to two more payments in order to get it sorted out. Not only was I not planning on making a mortgage payment out of this paycheck, the customer service rep informed me, that despite the fact that my modification will kick in (at some point) I will continue to receive automatically generated letters which insist that I am thousands of dollars behind and foreclosure is imminent. Because why would different parts of the mortgage company actually communicate with one another? (But that's a whole different blog post.)
Saturday morning, my mother was nice enough to loan me a little money for groceries (since I wasn't actually intending to spend my entire paycheck on the mortgage). A very kind "Easter Bunny" also brought me a food basket. I was incredibly grateful for the generosity.
Yet, two hours later I found myself at the thrift store. By now, I had already decided that I would begin observing my attitudes and reactions about money and shopping, so I told myself it was for research. I even picked up a pair of pink, sparkly high top sneakers. But as I walked around, I thought, "Really? What is wrong with me? I just borrowed money for groceries. What the hell am I doing here?" Shoes were re-shelved and I walked away. I felt virtuous but also simultaneously deprived.
Why do I want to go shopping when I don't have any money? I'm a responsible adult. I have never let my kids go hungry or become homeless. And granted, the $5.00 I had in my wallet ($2.99 of which I was thinking of spending on sparkly high tops) wasn't going to buy groceries. A gallon of milk maybe but not groceries for the week. So, it's not as if I took the mortgage money and booked a trip to Aruba. But still. Why even put myself in that situation in the first place?
My insight here is that possibly, I want to go shopping when things feel out of control. But really? The thing here that was making me feel out of control was no money, so I don't really think that shopping is my best remedy for that situation.
Sigh. This self-discovery thing is complicated and sometimes discouraging. Perhaps that's why some people just go shopping instead. More insights to follow, my friends.
I'm loving the book and I feel like I might be getting closer to my own truths about money and spending. But, like the dream you can't quite remember or the thing you can only see out of the corner of your eye, I'm not quite there yet. So, I'm committing to spending some time observing myself, trying to figure out what my stories about money are. Are they true? What's really happening when I shop? I know I have issues. Everybody has issues. I'm only just now willing to start to look at them.
This is what I've found out so far.
Let's start with Friday night. I had a stressful conversation with my mortgage company. Even though, yes, I've paid the three trial payments for my loan modification, I (gasp) paid them too early which means the system is not smart enough to generate the paperwork to make the modification permanent and I may have to make up to two more payments in order to get it sorted out. Not only was I not planning on making a mortgage payment out of this paycheck, the customer service rep informed me, that despite the fact that my modification will kick in (at some point) I will continue to receive automatically generated letters which insist that I am thousands of dollars behind and foreclosure is imminent. Because why would different parts of the mortgage company actually communicate with one another? (But that's a whole different blog post.)
Saturday morning, my mother was nice enough to loan me a little money for groceries (since I wasn't actually intending to spend my entire paycheck on the mortgage). A very kind "Easter Bunny" also brought me a food basket. I was incredibly grateful for the generosity.
Yet, two hours later I found myself at the thrift store. By now, I had already decided that I would begin observing my attitudes and reactions about money and shopping, so I told myself it was for research. I even picked up a pair of pink, sparkly high top sneakers. But as I walked around, I thought, "Really? What is wrong with me? I just borrowed money for groceries. What the hell am I doing here?" Shoes were re-shelved and I walked away. I felt virtuous but also simultaneously deprived.
Why do I want to go shopping when I don't have any money? I'm a responsible adult. I have never let my kids go hungry or become homeless. And granted, the $5.00 I had in my wallet ($2.99 of which I was thinking of spending on sparkly high tops) wasn't going to buy groceries. A gallon of milk maybe but not groceries for the week. So, it's not as if I took the mortgage money and booked a trip to Aruba. But still. Why even put myself in that situation in the first place?
My insight here is that possibly, I want to go shopping when things feel out of control. But really? The thing here that was making me feel out of control was no money, so I don't really think that shopping is my best remedy for that situation.
Sigh. This self-discovery thing is complicated and sometimes discouraging. Perhaps that's why some people just go shopping instead. More insights to follow, my friends.
Comments
Post a Comment