A Money💲tory: Part Two
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This a four-part newsletter series I'm releasing about Money...
If you missed the Part One, you can read it here.
No matter which economic bracket you grew up in, if scarcity is cultivated, you will always feel deprived. So then spending feels like the reward for all of that deprivation.
I know there were toys and gizmos I wanted as a kid. A letter to Santa was usually answered and on Christmas morning, the Baby Alive, Sears portable record player, or whatever reasonable thing I'd asked for was usually waiting for me under the tree. But the first material longing, the one hinged on obsession, I still remember so acutely that the sensation still feels embodied almost 40 years later. It was the summer before 9th grade, my first year of high school. I'd had a few odd jobs but nothing that could contribute significantly to a savings and I was still too young for a worker's permit that I'd need to drive myself to a JOB job. I became rabidly obsessed with a pair of Jordache. They weren't just any pair of Jordache though. The denim was dark on the outside, but the other side of the fabric and the stitching were dark purple and the purple you could see when you cuffed them slightly at the bottom. This is what made them special. This is what also made them unavailable at a thrift store or on a sales rack, the places my Mother preferred to shop. But it didn't stop there, the obsession had a twin and the other piece that absolutely without question had to accompany the purple Jordache were a pair of purple Nikes. They were made of a perfect pastel purple nylon, the swoosh and the sole were pristine white. I had to have the set before school started or I was pretty sure I was going to die.
I know I drove my Mother to the edge of insanity until she surrendered and drove me to Foley's. I remember the jeans and shoes were around $70 each and I'm sure she was going into some sort of debt to purchase them for me. I remember grabbing the last pair of Nikes in my size. I remember pulling the Jordache off the rack and in doing so, I somehow talked her into an additional pair that had pleats in the front, were pinstriped and instead of purple on the flip-side, they were pink, the pink bleeding through the pinstripes to the front. I distinctly remember looking at the items on the counter and feeling like my life was going to be utterly and entirely different going forward. When we got in the car, Mom said I couldn't mention one word to Dad about how much she spent. The feelings of euphoria mixed with shame are still so visceral I can taste them in the back of my throat as I'm writing this.
I can't tell you why my Mom went into debt to buy me those things but the story I wrote was this: we live life deprived of luxury, spending is a reward for living most of the year deprived therefore spending is occasionally justified, even if you don't have the money to spend, even if you'll feel shame in doing it...it will be worth it.
And just like my first money memory I wrote about in Part One, this is the spending pattern I've repeated over and over my entire life. I've had opportunities to disrupt the pattern many times, there are occasions that I've been successful but I've always seemed to slip back into the old and tired grooves. Very slowly, I've been able to edit this story after I quit drinking in 2014 but as they say, the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Part Three will be about that hour.
Since we're talking about money, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the 25% discount I'm offering to newsletter subscribers to work with me one-on-one through Change Your Story. In Part Four, I'm going to tell you about all of the stories I've changed, not just those around money. If you're tired of doing the same thing and expecting to get different results, I can help you with that. Invest in yourself now, and we can start when you're ready. Offer is good only until the end of the month. Just enter STORY2020 for 25% off at checkout. See you there.