Maybe the fact that it feels a bit like one reflects how off-course our collective thinking has become. Sometimes we need to, nearly literally, re-wire our neural pathways. This is what Byron Katie helps folks do.

The rewiring ought to result in greater peace, energy and mental clarity – surely something we’d all do benefit from regarding our approach to our money!
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So here’s the pitch.

We can and should challenge each of our distressing thoughts about money (or anything else, for that matter) by asking the following 4 Questions:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

4. Who would you be without that thought?

and the last challenge is to invert that thought and corroborate that inverted thought with examples.
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For example:

Thought: I might die a bag lady.

1. Is it true?
Well, of course, it might not happen. But it could. And that scares the hell out of me.

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
Uhhh… no.

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
I panic inside. I feel discouraged, hopeless and don’t even want to think about money

4. Who would you be without that thought?
Hmmm. I would feel a lot more serene. I would be more confident and optimistic about my finances, and feel better about paying attention to them. I would no longer engage in self-destructive financial habits. I might even learn to invest and start to build myself a nice little nest egg!

And the turnaround inverts and corroborates the thought:

I am not going to die a bag lady.
Corroboration: I have a job and I actually could live a bit more simply and start building a nest egg. | I have relatives who will leave me an inheritance. It isn’t much, but that will supplement my Old Age Security, and it could supplement my own savings quite nicely. | I am addiction-free and mental-illness free and generally healthy. That does not fit the profile of bag ladies!

The last bit, the turnaround, is designed to open our mind to new ways of thinking which align just as fully as our original thought. It may feel unreal, or unlikely, because we are so accustomed to one way of thinking that these new ones are hard to believe. But over time, our neural pathways should rewire and open up in ways that reduce our anxiety and enable us to relax more about money.

Katie’s site gives tons of free resources. Go play with your brain for a while!

Over the next few days I’ll be posting various ideas and possible techniques to break free so that you have the mental and emotional energy you need to deal more effectively with your money.

Here’s one not-the-usual option. It’s called EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. It’s a distant cousin of its more mainstream (and generally accepted by professional psychologists) technique called EMDR .

I recently tried it out on a non-money-related matter to good effect. Did it resolve everything? No way. But it certainly helped calm my anxiety and furthermore created some new possible ways of thinking about the issues.

I’ve embedded a video below that will lead you through the technique. You can find more details on this website here or via a google search. I also recommend a FB friend of mine, Sue Burness. I did a session with her resulting in a couple remarkable insights. You may also be happy to hear she has a pay-as-you-can policy.

Dear Moneycoach:

Wow, what can I say… First of all, Happy New Year!

Speaking of the new year, I can tell this is going to be a year of growth for me in many aspects, including of course, the financial. Wow Nancy, going through modules 1 and 2 of your program, I have felt a whole set of emotions, going from excitement, to fear, to shock, depression, shame and now hope and possibility.

As I wrote to you before, I began with excitement, knowing that I will finally have tools in my hands to be able to be free from financial anxieties. I went through module 1 and that was fast. I noticed I had three credit cards and I took one out, so my wallet currently has two credit cards, the ones with the least credit limit. I had little problem with that.

Module 2, now that’s a different story. First, I unconsciously and consciously avoided going through it. But you know what they say, it is precisely those things we tend to avoid, that when finally undertake them, we experience the most growth. I think I avoided going through it because I felt fear of what I might find out.

Once I got a hand of my bank statements and started adding things up in your spreadsheet, I was shown a clear picture of why I have been stressing lately. I was shocked! I was shocked to see that if I tried to pay more then the minimum of the credit card balances, I wouldn’t have much cash left for me for the whole month. From there I went to feeling quite depressed and ashamed after realizing how careless I have been. I clearly had not been loving myself. But I do now, and once I have the big picture, I have realized that with a little effort, I can have a better grasp of where my money goes, and make decisions. I actually feel quite encouraged now, I know that this is the year I turn it around.

Thank you for devising this program and I can’t wait to get on with module 3. If I were to make a suggestion, I would make the meditation around money available throughout all the modules. When I was feeling all depressed, I felt I was needing something like that to help me reassure me that I’ll be fine.

FInancially, hopefully, yours,

James

A g i t a t e d.

And my bottom line, which I’ll get to, is: It’s really, really, really important that we, as part of our definition of being self-possessed women, have our collective financial acts together.

What happened was this.

For lack of an iPad or magazines, I watched Dr. Phil on the flight down to Vancouver and my stomach has been quietly churning ever since. It featured a young woman, now 23, who had videotaped her father, a Judge, whipping her with a belt under the guise of “discipline” when she had been 16.

This was in 2004.
Not 1955, 1765 or 1800.
2004.
2004.

It was a barbaric, violent act against a woman to begin with, but two further aspects have me nearly choking down vomit.

1. The first was the mom, who later was clearly remorseful, but at the time, do you know what she said to her daughter? What she said was: Lie on your stomach and take it like a grown woman.

WTF?

WTF?

WTF TAKE IT LIKE A GROWN WOMAN? What’s that supposed to mean? What?

2. The second thing that sent me over the edge is that a sizeable portion of the online commenters not only thought it was ok, “kids these days need discipline”, but thought she was in the wrong for posting this and shaming her father. I know, I know, I know that online commenters tend to be the oddballs of society with time on their hands — or so we should hope, anyway, judging by the quality of most online comments. But still!

So in 2004 we have judges who think it’s ok to whip their teenage girls and mothers who think women should lie on their stomachs and take it, and a whole lot of folks who think that it’s justified to use height, weight, strength, belts against 16 year old girls. In North America.

I’m obviously not ok with it, and I’m hoping to hell you’re not ok with it either. Not at all ok with it. I hope society steps up, and with due process, seriously sanctions the father, the judge. I hope society overwhelmingly condemns this act.

But I doubt it will.

I doubt it will, because women are still not equal, or perceived as equal, or perceived as powerful. If we were, would a man dare to treat a woman like that?

Which brings us back to us women and money.

Being organized with your money isn’t about that great holiday. It’s not about feeling good about yourself. It’s sure not about buying Fluevogs (which is not to say I don’t!)

BEING ORGANIZED WITH MONEY IS ABOUT POWER, AND DON’T ANY OF US FORGET IT.

Our place in the world – such as it is, and after engaging in this episode I’m wondering if we’ve come that far after all – has been, and will be, hard-won. It’s been won by women courageously facing scorn and criticism and derision (not unlike that heaped on #occupy folks) who persevered in insisting women should vote, even at the cost of being brutalized in jail. It’s been won by women who wore themselves out being both moms and career women. It’s been won by women who endured harassment and quietly continued to do good work despite a hostile environment.

We’ve come this far. Let’s not fuck it up by complacency! And since money is power (witness who drives public policy), all I can say is that we women need to get very serious about our money, get serious about being savvy, and get serious about using our money to shape our society. Until we do, it will still be ok to whip young, vulnerable girls with impunity.

Forgive me in advance for how uncharacteristically direct I’m about to be below. Here goes:

1. If you’re not spending time to effectively manage your day-to-day money, your priorities are out of whack, and you’ll soon be out of the game if you’re not already.

2. If you think money is not important, or something you are too good for, you are kidding yourself. Money is a powerful energy and if you’re not in control of it, it’s probably in control of you.

3. If you think managing your money is about “creating the life you want”, your vision is too small.

Last, a confession. I’ve grown complacent myself. Over the past couple years, having significantly more than enough for my needs, I’ve been lax on my active management. Oh, I’ve set up auto-donations to causes, I seek out fair-trade/organic, a blend of truly worthy and feel-good, but I’ve lost sight of the Mammon aspect – that money is power. And I can wield it. And I’d damn well better.

And I will. Over the coming weeks, I’ll post (amongst others) what I am personally doing to make my own finances even more robust and, God willing, effect social change.

Photo Credit: European Parliament

*****

The question was so loaded it was life-threatening and Jesus knew it.

“What do you say, Rabbi?”
“Is it lawful to pay this tax to Caesar?”

The offence of the tribute tax went deeper than just having to cough up money when you were already the oppressed. The currency in which the tax had to be paid inherently served as imperial propaganda before the age of advertising: Its imagery of Caesar made devastatingly clear who had the power and who was the vanquished. It was scorchingly and humiliatingly personal too, an item you held right in the very palm of your hand.

You have the coins and it means you are colluding and integrating with the Empire and the cult of emperor worship. You don’t have coins and you are outside the economic system and you probably don’t survive.

To be asked by the religious leaders “Is it lawful [by God as the Hebrews understood him] to pay the tribute tax?” is damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Answer “yes” and as a Jewish Rabbi you are now colluding with the Romans against God’s people. Answer “no” and the politicos in the crowd who helped frame up the question would legitimize killing you.

You know how Jesus answered the question. He first asked them to produce a coin (think of the implications of that), then asked the counter-question, “Whose image is on this coin?”. If you don’t know the rest of the story, it’s here.

What does this story say to us, two thousand years and a few cultures later?

Our coins, of course, are different. “In God we Trust,” some even read. Nonetheless coins, currency, money, are a construct of the empire (or world, if you prefer) in which we live. This empire does not crucify people or crush dissidents by leaving corpses rotting in our streets as a message to our families and communities or fund circus-spectacles featuring grotesque slaughters of men and beasts. But it is other. It is a construct. Unlike water, air, grain, milk, items all freely given to us as the necessities of life, money is a medium we humans created.

For some time now money hasn’t even been coin per se, nor even a representation of coin, but rather electronic blips and bytes representing ideas so complex and convoluted and separate from pretty much everything we know and understand that, frankly, we’ve pretty much lost track of it. It represents empire.

I argue this then. A healthy (holy?) stance towards money involves an internal distancing from it. I don’t mean negligence. I don’t mean rogue attempts to bypass currency with bits of silver or gold. Like it or not, we are as integrated with our empire as the Jews were in the Roman Empire. But let’s understand that money is no less a thing of “Caesar” now than back then.

Questions.

Are we consorting with the empire?

Photo Credit: HowardLake

My melancholy’s showing.

Everything wrong threatens permanence: We’ll never get better, our global inequities, and neither will I have a fully funded pension and more than 3 weeks vacation when I can mentally let go of my business responsibilities. ever.

Everything right seems of no consequence: My earning power is at its peak but the world is teetering on economic collapse, if climate change and peak oil doesn’t shatter us, every last one of us, first.

Snow sadly drifts.

Why would any thinking person make a bed, clean the dishes, cozily simmer soup in such conditions?

Why would anyone download their business receivables from Paypal and tally up their net revenue and press Send Money to the psychologist who contributed a module to the program,and also press Send Money to the firm that created the site?

Why would anyone respond graciously to an email query laced with tone?

Why would anyone continue saving $50/paycheque for that 6-months-in-Detroit (yes, Detroit) for an unorthodox 50th experience? It’ll never happen.

Snow sadly drifts.

But quietly I root into resources, inner and outer, that pacify. For me:

• last of a dying breed (see?  even here my melancholy’s showing), a mainstream-religion-member and believer, I content myself in trusting that Another has much more at stake than I do in the wellbeing of planets and poverty-crushed souls
• and the psychologist and the firm, for them I give calm thanks:  they were good to me.  they were good to me.  So I will gather my energy, enough energy to press Send Money.
• and the savings, all my little stratagems to realize my desires, created in better moments, these carry on with or without me (thank you, auto savings plans) and they may not reach their goal, or they may.

The snow drifts.   The bed gets made.  The dishes can wait til tomorrow.  I watch a video about Detroit.

Photo Credit:  Opaline Fracture

I believe our culture has gone wildly astray in our relentless pursuit of More Stuff, I believe that our planet and our we ourselves are increasingly damaged by it, and I believe it does not have to be this way if we learn to take a pause, collect ourselves, and re-imagine money and meaning.

My ultimate hope for my clients is that as they get a handle on their finances, and grow in confidence about their money, they will use the power of their dollars to make change in the world, possibly in a way that even governments and politicians won’t.

Posts in June on Wednesdays and weekends will hone in on this. Some posts will be how-to’s, while others will be more theoretical. My hope is that you will join me, and also teach me in your comments, in learning to re-imagine money and meaning.

photo credit: CyboRoZ

Using self-discipline to change your money habits will not work as well as another approach.

There is growing evidence that playing to our strengths leads to greater success and happiness than trying to compensate for our weaknesses.

You may recall that last weekend’s post underscored the need for the rational part of our brain and our instinctual side to work well together, if we want to achieve long term success in changing our money habits. Another way of saying it is: don’t over-rely on your rational side (“I can’t afford this”) to constantly whip your instinctual side (“but I want it”) into submission. Why? Because sooner or later your instinctual side will rebel and your rational side will fatigue and out will come your credit card.

The strategy of using will power is also weakness-based. It focusses attention on the undesirable behaviour. An unintended consequence can also be a hit on our self esteem: I’m someone who can’t resist a sale or I am someone who can’t say no to anyone.

Are you ready to get hardcore with me?

Here’s an alternative approach. Clearly define your strengths (with the help of others – more on that shortly), root yourself deeply into a composite of your strengths, and bring them to play vis a vis your money habits.

On Saturday, I’ll provide an exercise to help you do just that.

I remember when I didn’t hope for much at all, financially. I’d read about folks who put $500/month or more away into their RRSPs and they seemed so very far away from me. Who were these people, I wondered, who had $500 a month to spare?

For several years during and after University (grad ’93), I experienced frustration: I was bright, educated and capable, yet somehow the life that included $500/month RRSP contributions (and the sophisticated condo and the great wardrobe and the espresso machine) seemed as far away as the moon. Looking back, I now realize we early Gen-Xers genuinely did have a rough go of it – the baby-boomers really had crowded us out as we tried to find our first McJobs; we graduated with particularly steep credit card and student debts; and on top of that Vancouver’s real estate went nuts so it was really hard to even start on that core asset.

I didn’t even know how to hope for much.

And then through a set of events most readers know, I had a turnaround. It wasn’t high drama, but it was a determination to shift things. And they did over the past 1.5 decades. They did.

Here’s one goal I’m still working on: financial independence. I have a figure in mind that I need and it’s a figure that at one point felt impossible. It no longer feels impossible – this money coach is a chunk of the way there!

All I’m saying is this, to those of you who feel stretched, who struggle to make ends meet or who are fatigued of trying: don’t give up. Give yourself permission to hope – and keep hoping. We need to live our lives, day by day, with an underpinning hope. I’m not talking magical thinking here, I’m talking hope.

It’s the first week of Advent, the week of Hope. Religious or not, I encourage us each to lift up our hearts, strengthen our spirits and live out of hope.

In September of 2009, I stood up in front of my friends and family and promised to take another person “for better or for worse”. He took me too, but as it turns out, where he wanted to take me was to the cleaners.

My husband, let’s just call him JerkFace (JF for short), and I met in February of 2003. We started dating in April of the same year, moved in together pretty quickly after that and then went through all the motions you’d expect: We went from renting to owning an apartment, we got a dog, we got engaged and then we got married. We shared everything. We were the lucky ones, I thought, we can easily share everything and it’s not an issue. We never haggle over who pays for what, we don’t fight over who spends more, and we shared everything. We put all our money together, we paid our bills together, and we shared everything. It was to the point where we had to be very sneaky about getting each other gifts because we didn’t have our own accounts, our own cards… who needs it when we have each other?! We shared everything, remember?

From 2005-2008, I worked for a credit union and learned an incredible amount of money and financing and also what sort of trouble those things can get you into. I froze accounts for separating couples, tried to console weeping spouses whose husbands or wives had emptied out the account on their way home to ask for a divorce. I went to a presentation about women and money and the presenter gave a piece of advice that I kick myself now for not listening to: “A woman,” she said, “should always have the means to leave if she has to.” She stressed how important it is to have some money that is just yours, tucked away in a savings account or accessible investment for the rainiest of days. I took this advice and I passed it along, talking to women in bad situations and encouraging them to make sure they had the funds to be able to stand on their own two feet if they had to. The poor women who weren’t at all like me, who weren’t one of the lucky ones like I was, the ones who had relationships that they needed protection from or a backup plan from.

Not me, though. I continued to put every last penny into a joint account and emptied out both my RRSPs and my savings for the down payment on our condo and for our wedding. Even as he advanced at his career and we put him through school when only one of us could afford to go, I didn’t bat an eyelash at pouring my hard-earned money into the life we shared. Now he earned two and a half times what I did, so it was worth it, right? “We” had more money coming in. I didn’t mind that he didn’t have any savings to put towards the wedding, he got paid more so put more towards our bills, right? And once he’s gotten ahead, I’ll go back to school and we’ll pay for me to go. We shared everything, so what was there to worry about?

On October 22nd, 2010 (my 28th birthday), I found text messages in JF’s phone with plans that he was moving out. I was the last to know, he was trying to be considerate by not doing it before my birthday (he’s all heart). So just over a year after we said our “I Dos”, he said, “I Don’t Anymore” and the next morning he left.

He then did things that I never thought he would do, he spent all the money in our account on going out and partying, he refused to speak to me or see me and tried to fully extricate himself from my life. Once all the confusion and the upset began to fade a little bit, I could hear the presenter’s words in my mind as I realized that I didn’t have enough money to stand on my own two feet. If we weren’t sharing everything anymore, what did that mean for me?

In JF’s eyes, it meant I had my salary and he had his and we’d sign a few sheets of paper and that would be it. He figured he’d have to give me some cash to buy me out of the condo (which he was planning on keeping and kicking me out of) but had no intention of paying me any sort of support or paying me back for all the money I had so willingly dumped into our relationship. Alimony? Doesn’t exist, he decided. That was only for if you had kids and the very mention of it was taken by him as a threat and further deteriorated the bits of communication we did have.

So, I found myself staring at a spreadsheet I’d done up at 3 o’clock in the morning, the red digits of my negative expendable income glaring on the screen. Forget being a homeowner anymore, I didn’t know how I’d afford to pay rent. We had so much debt between us that he wanted to split 50/50, all my income would be going towards debt repayment. Forget going to school, I’d have to get a second job just to handle my living expenses. My car, which I’d been thinking of trading in to get a newer car since it was getting old and less reliable, was suddenly an expense that I didn’t even know if I could keep. To say I was overwhelmed would be a massive understatement.

Here is what I did:
• I went to talk to a lawyer. My husband acted as if my seeking out legal advice was an aggressive and unnecessarily hostile move, but it wasn’t. Seeing a lawyer and finding out what I was actually entitled to, regardless of what my JerkFace of a husband thought, was the first step towards me feeling like I had some control over a seemingly impossible situation.
• Did some research and got out my calculator. I crunched a lot of numbers and worked out that JF and I would be sharing the debt 2/3 to him and only 1/3 to me, based on our incomes. I found some tools online to help me calculate how much I would be legally entitled to ask for in spousal support (based on our income differential, the number of years we had lived together as spouses and my age). I printed out bank statements, college transcripts and HomeBuyer’s Plan receipts. I also found instructions on how to put together your own Separation Agreement to take to a lawyer so you don’t have to have them draw everything up (and charge you for it).
• Wrote everything down. And I mean EVERYTHING. Every penny I put on our down payment, every monthly expense we had as a couple, every debt, every asset… I even listed out all our shared property down to tea towels and DVDs.
• Used everything I found to draft up an Agreement and gave it to JerkFace. Was he mad? Yeah, he was really mad. And it was a really hard thing to do. I had to get over this stigma in my mind of a woman “going after” her ex-husband for everything he’s worth as some sort of revenge and realize that I am entitled to be able to go on living my life, even if my marriage is over. He accused me of trying to “financially cripple” him, even though it was right there on paper that even with paying me support and fairly dividing our debt, his expendable income was more than three times what mine would be. I realized that to him, “fair” would be him getting everything and being able to walk away without losing anything or even inconveniencing himself.
• Fought the urge to just give in and give up. Breaking up is exhausting and emotionally draining. At the end of a day where you are working hard just to feel like a normal person in public, the last thing you want to do is fight over money and furniture. There were times when I wanted to say, “Fine, just take whatever you want and get out of my life.” Because it was too much to take on. I had to just keep remembering how mad I would be at myself three months from now, when I have no furniture or can’t pay my bills on time. Just keep pushing through it, and it will be worth it in the long run.
• Leaned on my support system. Taking on a battle that you know could end up in court or worse and go on for years is a really scary thing. I don’t think I have ever been through something that so clearly showed me who my real support system is. The people that sat up with me until the early hours of the morning or let me sleep on their couch when being alone was too hard or brought me care packages wouldn’t let me just lie down and die, even when that’s all I wanted to do. They also wouldn’t let me end up homeless or bankrupt or all the other “worse case scenarios” that were running through my mind. I was lucky enough to have an aunt who offered to help with me legal fees, if it came to that, and friends and a sister who would have let me live with them indefinitely if I needed a place to stay.
• Tried to look at it like it was business and not personal. Stepping back from the hurt and rollercoaster of emotions I was going through and just looking at the numbers, the facts and the figures really helped me feel like I could get through it. The laws are there to protect our rights, even when we feel like we can’t protect ourselves.
Going through this Separation has by far been the most difficult thing I have ever faced. Aside from the emotional beating you take, fear of an unknown future and figuring out how to make it on your own seem unconquerable.

But if I could give advice to anyone out there in a similar situation: Stand up for yourself, even when it’s the hardest thing to do. Don’t let someone else control your future because they think you won’t fight for what’s yours. Get support, get advice and make yourself an expert in all things divorce. This is the first step you are taking in a new life, make it a stride forward towards being a confident and “no nonsense” woman.

I hate to be the type of person who looks back on things with regret, so I try be forgiving with myself about the choices I made through my relationship. I made them with the best of intentions and because I really loved and trusted someone and those are all good things. So, if I could go back and do it over again differently, would I? No. Will I ever make those same mistakes again? Absolutely not.