In Part 1, I talked about the belief system I grew up with. It seemed that there was never enough and there was never going to be enough and that’s how I went into young adulthood.
In my 20s, I worked hard. I got my college degrees and worked and yet I always felt like that saying ” when you have too much month at the end of your money”. I would scrape by, even looking for change in the seat cushions to buy gas.
In my 30s, the bills kept piling up and I learned how to juggle credit cards and make things, like clothes and appliances, last beyond their lifetimes.
You get the picture, right? I believed that this was the way my life would always be.
After my divorce, I wanted to save money and see if I could get a handle on my finances as a single person, so I decided to share an apartment with a friend. It was not a good idea mostly because the place was a little too small but more than that, I needed to be on my own. There was so much conflict within me about whether to share space or be alone and I valued this friendship so it was decided that they would move out, leaving me with the apartment but also a massive amount of fear.
What if I couldn’t pay the rent? What if I get evicted and have to find another place? I wasn’t making a lot of money and was afraid that no one else would rent to me.
Then I made a decision. I decided I was going to change the way I thought about money. Another friend mentioned a book called Creating Money. It was the start of a new belief system. This lead to other books like Busting Loose from the Money Game. It was interesting to read about energy in terms of money and I got to work on letting go of thinking there was not enough.
The first month of rent that I paid on my own was really scary. The second month was even worse because I had to take money out of my mutual fund. But with the work I will share with you in Part 3, I never had a problem paying rent again and that was 16 years ago this month.
What have you noticed throughout your life in terms of making money, saving money and paying bills? What thoughts and emotions come up around the many aspects of money, including paying taxes?
PRACTICE: When doing anything that requires handling money, notice your thoughts and emotions. Notice triggers and patterns when it comes to spending money on different things, like a car repair versus a dinner out with friends, for example.
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