Coping with no spending money or being broke

It has been said in a number of different ways that money is power. Money talks and Bull---t walks, right? One more—the new golden rule . . . He who has the gold makes the rules. (I have met people who practice this last one.)

When we do not have money, we tend to have lower self-esteem. We do not want to be without money. When we do not have it we vulnerable and insecure. We can worry about the worst possible things that can happen to our cars, houses, and our health.

Many people go to town in false confidence with credit cards as a money-substitute. But like the saccharin-based sugar substitutes, high interest rates and aggressive collection departments give a bad aftertaste. People can go bankrupt being unable to make the minimum payments on several maxed-out credit cards. You still need money if you have credit because the bills will come every month.

In the times of recession, people have less money. They tend to find themselves having to spread the money more and more thinly. They have to stretch their money farther and farther. The money runs out and you will not have any money sooner than later and they are broke!

Yes, we need money for necessary things and services, but there are many times when the necessities go up in price or we have just enough money for the bills and basic groceries. After that, the checking account has just a few dollars and there is no extra money for 10 to 13 to 25 days until the next paycheck.

Many people are in pain because they do not have the spending money they used to have, or feel they should have, or that other people feel that they should have. Well, the reality is that they do not have the money. They can either cope or fall apart.

I have decided that there are four concepts of personal growth that come into play here. The first is that one is going to have to grieve the reality that they do not have the spending money they want to have or feel that they should have. Second, they are going to have practice contentment and I do mean practice. Third, you are going to survive through the discovery of the character of other people and whether or not you will continue to have relationships with them. Lastly, you can thrive and use your creativity.

GRIEF AND LOSS

Yes, I think that people who are wanting to cope in healthy ways without money have to go through the grief process. Kubler-Ross (1969) identified the stages of the grief process as:

1.) being in shock or denial,
2.) being mad,
3.) trying to bargain within themselves,
4.) being depressed and feeling stuck, and then
5.) acceptance of the situation or reality.

It is easy to discuss this grief process. But when you are going through it, it is painful, disorienting, and just plain miserable. It is like your private dungeon, experience of being lost in the desert or wilderness after your plane has crashed. You have lost something that is of meaning to you when you do not have the money you think you should. Your pride is tremendously hurt and you do not know where you are at or whether you will survive. You may have based your identity on having money in your pocket to spend it whenever you wanted to and you are now embarassed.

You can feel like you are living on the edge of dying. It feels like all you can see is your lack of money. It is all you can think about.

My feeling is that you are reading this because you are reading it for you—you are likely grieving. You may or may not be experiencing this grief or loss exactly the way I am describing it.

Shock/Denial

Shock or denial can be a number of things. Someone in denial may continue to get things on credit cards even though they do not even begin to have the money to pay the bill (nor will they have the money to pay even the minimum). But it is probably more like the statement: “I cannot believe I have the money I want to have” rolling over and over in your mind.
Being mad is another stage of grief. I think that in this stage, there is anger towards oneself over not saving money or getting into such bad debt problems, not saving money, or buying large ticket items (this also means feeling guilty). There can be anger at oneself for getting fired or laid off (and thus even more guilt). There can be anger towards the former employer for not keeping things afloat. There can be anger at incumbent politicians for the way the economy is. There can be anger at spouses or significant others for the way they spent money or wanted to spend money. There can be anger at children who dare ask you for money to buy something frivolous. There can be anger at family members or friends who borrowed money when they needed it and who did not pay you back and still cannot or won't pay you back. People can be just irritable and miserable and guilty-feeling during this stage.

Bargaining

Bargaining is trying to make deals to get back to the old situation. It is a way of trying to re-establish control over the situation. I think that people will search over all their accounts for mistakes in numbers—looking for money. They might call their former employer back begging for the job back. They might try to keep hitting their debtors (people they lent or gave money to) again and again for the money.

Depression

Depression hits when someone is done bargaining. It is the reality that you are stuck, you cannot regain control of the situation, and you cannot go back, and the bargaining is over. It too is a miserable stage. People may fall like they are going to fall off the earth. You have always looked or played some part you thought you needed to, and now you can no longer do it. Some people can become clinically depressed. (If you are feeling clinically depressed and feeling like you want to die—GET SOME HELP—please call your local mental health agency, your police authority or go to your nearest hospital—the problem of not having money is a temporary problem that can be solved.)

Acceptance

The feeling of acceptance tends to creep in during the depression stage. Acceptance usually means that one begins to see that it is possible to move on and heal. In this case I imagine that one sees that other people cope without extra money, so you can do it too. A person also might begin to see (really see) that there is a difference between wants and needs, and that life is not all about money. Lastly, I think that acceptance means being able to see this time as a chapter in one's life that will end and a more prosperous chapter will begin.
Not everyone will experience grief over not having spending money in their pocket in the same way. Some will take it harder than others. More will be said about this.

PRACTICE CONTENTMENT.

Out of the acceptance stage I think people begin to practice contentment. I think for the purposes of this blog, contentment means being in a state of relative tranquility or peace about a situation in order to show self-control and self-restraint.
I use the term practice strongly here because contentment is generally something that does not just happen to someone. Contentment is a state one chooses to create and maintain.
I think that it is different from self-control and self-restraint. To maintain self-control and self-restraint, you need some level of contentment.

As children, we did not have contentment. We wanted stuff. We wanted what we wanted. We threw tantrums in stores when we did not get what we wanted or get our way. We learned to cope with not getting what we wanted in a round-about way. We got conditioned to the idea that we were not going to get the candy or toy in the store through consequences or through the hard reality of crying and recovering from the tears. Little by little we became content in a child-like way.

I think that well-adjusted adults gained a basic sense of contentment through the human development process. Those adults that never developed contentment are likely to have issues of addiction (food, spending, gambling, substances, work, control/codependency, etc). John

Bradshaw has defined an addiction as a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience that has life damaging consequences (Bradshaw, 1986 Shame and Addiction Video). I suggest though, that there is a basic building block in every adult for contentment. You are just going to have to find a new way to apply it now. (I will discuss contentment in another blog soon.)

We begin to practice contentment in three ways: changing our negative self-talk to healthy self-talk, we do the self-talk everyday, and we change our behavior and habits.

We practice it by talking to ourselves in affirmations or slogans. We tell ourselves things like:

• I have what I need today.
  Nobody gets everything they want.
  It is okay if I do not have everything I want.
  I will make it.
  It will be okay.
  We all live life one day at a time.
  I will be okay.
  The world will not end because I do not have any extra money in my pocket.
  I am a good person making it in this world and some days are going to be harder than others.
  This too shall pass.
  I am going to be a stronger person for getting through this.
  Money is not everything.
  I am thankful for what I have today.

Yes, we talk to ourselves. Some people hold conversations with themselves out loud, and some keep in their heads, but we all talk to ourselves. We are either going to tear ourselves down or build ourselves up with the talk in our heads. We originally learned to talk to ourselves from our families and we continue to talk to ourselves as our parents and grandparents did. For many of us adults, personal growth means taking charge of the talk inside our heads.

Next, we practice contentment daily. It is hard work and one must use these affirmations frequently to be content. Advertisers count on consumers not being content. Advertisers try to create the appearance of needs, and so our self-esteem is going to be under attack. It takes critical thinking when looking at advertising to maintain contentment. We must constantly ask ourselves if we honestly need that stuff?

Third, we practice contentment behaviorally by our choices. We avoid those places that lead to us to think “Gee, I wish I had that.” We choose contentment by making budgets. We choose contentment by taking up the practice of bargaining shopping and making a hobby out of how much can we squeeze our money, so we can save what little money we do have. (My original penny jar was a creation of my squeezing as much value as I could out of my money.)

CHARACTER

In a sense I find myself writing something that sounds like a recovery piece for someone recovering from addiction. A slogan in the different recovery programs or groups includes that you must change your playground. I think that in our reality of not having money in our pocket, we will find people who will continue to have money and who will not empathize with our plight and will make fun of us—or even shun us.

Yes, there are immature and cruel people in this world, and we discover them everyday. We always run the risk of discovering the immaturity and cruelty in our family and friends each and everyday we breathe. As one of my colleagues put it well: if you get to know me long enough, you will see me get stupid.

Well, the people who make fun of others in this plight are stupid and I have taken the attitude of “don't let the door hit you in the buttocks on the way out.” (I am trying to keep it clean here—so you can fill in the A-word). There may be another reason for grief and loss here over some friends who are no longer part of your life, but your life will move on. Tomorrow will come with or without them.

I have decided that people of good character are mindful or insightful that it could happen to them too. They also have respect for people in general. They have taste and manners. In other words, they are mature.

Some people are not as mature. As a social worker I have ran into them quite frequently. They never developed the insight as to the human plight so as to be sensitive to the suffering of others. They do not have the room in their hearts and minds to be respectful. They may actually be selfish and have their own private, childish agenda—believing that you are going to ask them for money—which is THEIR'S THEIRS THEIR'S and not YOURS YOURS YOURS. They would probably not be able to get through the grieving process themselves to the point of healthy coping and wind up in a psychiatric facility or institution.

So, when someone insults or belittles you for not having money in your pocket to go somewhere or do something—look at the other side of things and the character of people. Good people are mature people and sympathetic people in this case.

THRIVING

Thriving without money in your pocket I think means being able to be happy regardless of whether or not you have money in your pocket. Yes, it may feel like surviving at first, but in many cases, the difference between surviving and thriving is your perspective and attitude. In thriving, you are looking more at what you can do today, in surviving, you are more mindful of what you cannot do today because you do not have money.

Thriving and surviving become lifestyles. People build their lives around one or the other. I have decided that the people who are “survivors” from trauma usually build their lives around the idea of surviving. Everything they do . . . and most of what they think has to do with living in their pain and surviving the pain. Survivors become victims of themselves and tend to alienate others because of the survivor's whining. To start thriving means to start choosing to be happy and doing things to make you happy.

I suppose that this is a time where someone can start improving themselves by reading or learning new things. I think that the act of bettering yourself is a great way of thriving. My recommendation is to go down the video aisle of your nearby public library and start noting things that you have wanted to learn about. Make a list. Throwing yourself into a new pursuit that you can focus your energies on is a beginning start.

This is also a great time to start reading books. Reading is a great way to spend your time without spending money. Whether you are about fiction, non-fiction, or biographies, learning distracts you from unnecessarily dwelling on your pain.

Lastly, if you do not feel like reading, volunteer someplace. Make a difference in this world in some little way. Thinking about the help you are giving is a lot better than dwelling on not having any money.

CONCLUSION (FOR NOW OF COURSE):

I make the disclaimer that even though you can do everything I am recommending, the pain of not having the spending money you would like to have is never totally going away. We have to practice contentment everyday in some way and some days will require more work than others.

I have not discussed the matter of faith in this blog, but faith is a resource that helps people through these times. The Bible has much about contentment and material things, and human character. The Bible also has much about peace and being able to rest inside while the rest of the world seems to be in turmoil. It is a good book. If you comment on this blog, I will be more than happy to discuss what I mean and tell you where in the Bible that material can be found.

I close by emphasizing that getting the point of contentment is not going to be easy—whether you are a religious or non-religious person. I think if you are in enough pain about it and want to do something about it—you will follow the strategies I am recommending. They will work if you give it some time and keep doing them.