The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (4 page)

Most of us leave a cluttered paper trail marking where our money went behind us, but Suzanne was unlike any other client I’d ever had. She had no debt. She rented a furnished house: no mortgage. She leased her car. She had no savings, no investments. Divorced, with one son, she had come to see me about putting aside money for his education. I saw a woman alone with no money for emergencies, or tomorrow. I could have said to her, “Now, Suzanne, see here, you are forty-three years old and you really must start investing for the future.” But clearly she knew that, and clearly knowing it made no difference at all to her, at least on the level that inspires us to take action. Suzanne was still living as if she might have to move the next day—no commitments, no ties, no furniture, no complications to undo if she suddenly had to pull up stakes. She had turned her childhood message around and had come to believe instead that to keep away from pain, you keep away from money.

If you’ve lost it all, how can you think you have the power to keep money safe, let alone make it grow?

When he and his wife, Leslie, came to see me, Andy said, “I was so overwhelmed by that loss, I think I never wanted to be in control of my money after that.” Leslie had never heard his story before, and even Andy had forgotten about it until we did this exercise together. But after Andy told the story, everything started to make more sense for both of them. They had come to me to talk about investing for the future, but the two of them could never agree on the kinds of investments they should make. Most of these disagreements ended up with one or the other of them storming out of the room, to the point where they decided they needed professional help. Leslie wanted to invest aggressively; in their early forties they were young enough, she felt, to take some risks. Andy, on the other hand, was adamant about putting the money into a bank account, where, he said, “it’ll be safe.” He never understood why investing scared him to death until he made this connection to his past.

When I met her, Catherine was still living her life as if she did not deserve to have anything she wanted. More than anything else, she wanted to buy a house in the town where she was a teacher in a fine private school; she wanted to start a garden. She even had a particular house in mind, she had the money saved for the down payment, but she couldn’t bring herself to make an offer. It was as if she felt afraid to take up any space in the
world. She didn’t know why she felt so paralyzed, until together we went back to her first money memory. For Catherine, the bike episode popped up right away, although she hadn’t thought about it in years. She began to see that the seven-year-old she had been had every right in the world to ask for a bike, and that the pain of her broken arm wasn’t punishment for her desire.

Messages about money are passed down from generation to generation, worn and chipped like the family dishes. Your own memories about money will tell you a lot, if you take that step back and see what those memories taught you about who you were—and whether those memories are still telling you who you are today.

For me, the first message I remember came when I was eight or nine. In the hot Chicago summers, all of us in the neighborhood would go to the Thunderbird Motel to go swimming. It was heaven, jumping into the cold water of that crowded pool, everyone screaming. It cost a dollar to get in. One Saturday, as usual, I said to my mom, “Can I have a dollar to go swimming?” And she said, “Suze, I’m sorry, we don’t have it.” I said, “But Mom, I need a dollar to go swimming with everyone else,” and she said, “Sweetheart, this is very hard for me to say, and we don’t want anyone else to know, but I just don’t have a dollar to give you.”

I could tell that saying this to me made my mom want to cry. I also knew I was not to tell anyone. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. What was I going to tell my friends? I don’t remember what I told them, but I do remember this: I suddenly felt I was different from my friends, that I had less than they did, and therefore they wouldn’t like me anymore.

I’m not proud of what happened next. Every night when my dad came home from work, he would place his pants over a chair in the dining room right outside their bedroom. He kept his money in the pocket of his pants. At night, after my mom and dad went to sleep, I would sneak into the dining room and take some bills out of his pants pockets. I took this money not to spend on myself or to save, but to buy gifts for my friends. I really thought that if I could show them that I did have money, they would continue to like me.

Interesting, isn’t it, that the happy memories of the dozens of times I did go swimming at the Thunderbird Motel pale against the agonizing memory of the one time I couldn’t?

Without my knowing it, this memory played itself out well into my adult life. For years, even though I was becoming more and more successful, I felt “less than.” Until I could connect the dots—that who I am today is not the same little girl with no money to go swimming at the Thunderbird Motel—this memory defined how I felt about myself.

A few years ago I asked my mom if she remembered that Saturday, and she did; she still remembers the look on my face when she said she didn’t have a dollar to give me. Ever since then her biggest fear in life when it comes to me is that I don’t have enough money to get what I want and that I am suffering. It doesn’t matter how successful I become, she still calls me and asks, “Suze, are you okay? Now, if you need anything, you’d ask, wouldn’t you?” It’s as if she is still trying to make up for that Saturday.

Now it’s your turn to look back.

As it was for Suzanne, Andy, Catherine, and me, this is a connect-the-dots exercise, revisiting the past and tracing the memories to
where and how they affect your life today, and they do affect your life today.

In childhood we live full force, and when you delve into childhood memories, they are vivid, alive with all the five senses—you can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear them. The smell of cotton candy from the local amusement park, the feel of the wind against your face when you leaned out the car window, the mud squishing through your toes as you ran barefoot in and out of mud puddles, the cold on your face when temperatures dropped below zero, the way your house smelled when your mother was cooking your favorite meal. I am asking you to look back into your childhood and remember everything you can about money, the wonderful things it did and the ways in which it might have scared you.

Remember back to when you were three, twelve, or seventeen, and see what comes up for you. When one money memory feels true, important, and keeps coming back, that’s the one we want. Here are some questions to help you remember: