Emotion and money
The Oxford Dictionary defines Emotion as “A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationship with others”.
Well I certainly experienced these “strong feelings” over the past few days! My first husband and I still 
share one financial commitment and for the past few months he has reneged on his part of the bargain, leaving me in a pretty sticky situation. Now this shouldn’t have come as a surprise – after all, his total irresponsibility when it came to money was a contributing factor to our divorce – but I was still quite taken aback by the strength of my response to it.
Once I’d stopped throwing stuff it got me thinking about the link between money and emotion and wondering how much this affects both our day to day and our longer term money management.
Money is as much an emotional mindset as it is a physical act of having coins in our hand. We all have a different concept of how money and financial success can and will affect our lives based on what we learn as children, and our experiences with money as we grow up. Money simply gives us choice – the choice to buy food, a business, go on holiday or stick it in the bank for a rainy day.
It doesn’t have control over us – the control comes from the person who owns the money. Fear, shame and anger are the 3 most common emotions surrounding money – and I have certainly been feeling anger and some fear in bucketloads over the past few days! I felt plenty of the same when I was getting divorced too and it’s a well-known statistic that financial issues are one of the leading causes of divorce and relationship breakdowns.
So what does money mean to you? What emotions does it stir up? I’ve mentioned before that money has been tight in our household recently so the subject has been endlessly discussed in terms of budgeting and managing. Curiously this has given me a sense of clear headedness and control over the situation because we’ve known exactly what we’re doing and how we intended to manage the situation.
The spanner in the works from my ex husband threw me off beam, not only because it buggered up The Plan completely, but also because it forced me to revisit the old emotions I felt years ago and that was not a comfortable experience. I’d attached those feelings to money in this instance and it was a shocker.
Conversely, I’ve never felt comfortable with significantly more money sloshing around either – it seems to stir up the “Do I deserve this?” nonsense that we like to put ourselves down with! I was brought up by very prudent parents who still barely spend anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. I married a man who lived life according to whims and desires. Both of these attitudes are extreme – my parents governed by fear, my first husband by hope and a burning desire for possessions to fill a gap in his life.
I work with people and their money every day and it fascinates me to see how varied our attitudes are towards it. For some it really is simply a commodity, a means to an end and the way to pay the bills. For many, however, it seems to be bound up with our identity and I can’t help wondering just how much of our financial behaviour reflects how we feel about ourselves?
What do you think?
Kate
Kate Shaw is a is an independent financial advisor for women, men and people who plain just want their money to work for them. You can find her on twitter @KateShaw
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Thought provoking piece as ever Kate, holding the purse strings influences how a whole family behaves and sometimes not for the better.
If I could just detach myself from getting emotional about money and food, life would be better
Mmmmmm food…..!
Money and religion – two of the most emotive things on the planet. T’was always thus….
great blog. i am not sure if i can open up completley about my emotions when it comes to moeny. but now, separated from my husband and responsible for the household on my own, for the first time in my life ever Money is on top of my list. for the first time ever in my entire life when i pray i pray for money and for the first time in my life i am looking for a job that pays more regardless of the compnay, people, locaotin etc… where in the past money came on the bottom of the list all the way through………….
however, money doesnt mean for me status or value, it means security and comfort only. i dont love moeny i love what money can get me. i also pray if i become very rich i will stay the kind modest person i am .
Ah yes, money. People do have such a complex relationship with it, don’t they?
For the last 20 years, I have generally been financially fortunate. My late husband had a well paying job, as did I, before I had children. The very fact that I could afford to give up a 30k a year job to stay home says everything about both our income and our careful attitude to the finances.
Five years ago, my husband died, and I found myself with a pension income for life and a pension income for both boys until they are 18 (though don’t tell them it is theirs, because I have told them it is “family money” and the poor boys never see a penny of it
).
As it happens, I am a very relaxed, zenlike person when it comes to finances. Even when there are problems, my response tends to be “let’s put this into perspective – no-one has died.” Unlike my boyfriend who is the most stressed person I know, because he can’t give up the worrying, even when it is something he can’t do anything about.
In the last year or so, though, everything has gone wrong in my financial world. I owned two businesses, one of which I had had for 10 years and was delegated to my manager, whom I trust above everyone. She finally confessed that she had been putting money into the business to keep it afloat over the last 18 months, even though she had told me everything was fine – the full extent of the problem was 28k, shared between her and another employee!
The gym, which I had started two years ago (in order to earn income to pay for my boys to stay at prep school), has had nothing but problems. It had never broken even, and I no longer had the money to subsidise it. In the end, I had to sell it for a tiny amount to one of my employees, though at least it got me out of the 10 year lease.
And if that weren’t enough, two separate land investments I had made went to pieces because the (different) companies which were involved both went bust. I still don’t know how recoverable that situation is – it seems to be a case of more money needed, but I’m loathe to do it because I don’t have any more and it may be a case of throwing good money after bad. On the other hand, if even one of them can be recovered, it will more than make up for the extra cost.
Do I find it difficult to sleep at night because of all this? Actually, no. Though my partner would answer somewhat differently. I leave him to shoulder the emotional burden of my financial woes, on the basis that he’s going to be awake fretting at 2am anyway, so he might as well do my fretting at the same time for me!
The oncologist told me she believed I had had a benign brain tumour for a number of years, which had suddenly turned malignant and fast growing in recent times. My guess is that even if my mind doesn’t pay attention to stress, it’s my body that carries the can.
I’ve been thinking about this myself lately. I often have an overwhelming feeling of guilt every time I buy something and wonder how liberating it must be to afford to be slightly more frivolous. I’ve had to be extremely thrifty lately and get headaches from the indecision. However, I’ve realised I have some highly -ve attitudes towards money e.g. that you have to suffer to acquire it, that I am undeserving, “money is the root of all evil” etc.
So I’m working to alter these thoughts and it seems to be having a +ve effect. Well, it’s either that or my housemate Jo’s Chinese ‘money cat’ ornaments. She superstitiously has one by each entrance to the house. I thought they were knocking as in ‘opportunity knocks’ but it’s an oriental gesture for “Give me money!” but with the palm down instead of up. I guess it’s like ‘yoink!’ *snatches tenner. Money for me also represents security, comfort and above all freedom.