The snow’s sad drift.
A bed unmade.
Doleful dishes strewn.

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

If there’s one passion fueling me in my work as a money coach, it’s this:

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.

This is a very raw, real story of someone in my life who I know not super-well, but well enough to cry when I read this. I knew her before, during, and now after, her marriage. The story caught me as off-guard as anyone; I would not have predicted this, having seen them together… and the beautiful photos of her wedding on facebook. The writer is grounded, thoughtful and kind. And clearly someone who knows how to respect herself and request what she deserves in the midst of a very rough ride. Her action are more eloquent than any money coaching I could provide.
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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.