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.

Vacation or No Vacation?

Memphis--
I am writing from a moderate-priced hotel in the east end of the city. It was a small but tough decision as to whether or not on vacation given the economic environment and gas prices.
When the air conditioning broke and it cost almost $180 to fix, again, it was a tough decision whether or not to go on vacation? But we decided to go since a friend who lives five hours in another direction is going to meet us here tonight.

It is now on the backside of the short vacation. We went to Graceland and took the medium price tour—which means we saw his grave, got to go into his plane and see his cars. I saw some of the weirdest things to be branded with Elvis's image and name. We went to Beale Street and ate at B.B. King's restaurant (strawberry preserves on Fried Green Tomatoes was quite interesting). We went to the Sun Records Studio. We had some BBQ (barbecue/barbeque) at Corky's. We head home tomorrow.

We got a picture of all of us in front of Graceland. We got a picture of the kids by Elvis's music note on Beale Street. (Hollywood has stars—Beale Street has musical notes in the pavement.)
While this is not meant to be a commercial for Memphis, the point is we did stuff as a family. My wife and I took our kids to see things that we value and wanted to see.

We made memories in a worthy place for memories. At the end of the day it was cool to have a conversation with my five-year-old son about our favorite parts of the Graceland tour.

Well, like many people's vacation, this was one where we are putting balances on credit cards. I have a plan for paying them off. The assumptions of the plan are: 1.) my job is secure, 2.) the central air conditioning continues to work, 3. nothing else major breaks down and 4.) the cars don't break down.

Number four is looking shaky. The 8-year-old car that we have is quite dependable but the computer said to check tire pressures. Well I did this morning and took them all up to 41 PPS again this afternoon the same light came on as we headed back to hotel. I checked them again and they are back down to 35 PPS

I will check tire pressures again tomorrow and add air—worst case scenario means new tires—something I am not thrilled about. But if you own a car, you will need to maintain it.

Am I glad we have taken this mini vacation. Yes. There is a time where one must take risks.

There are some moments in times that will not come back. My kids are only going to be young once. While I would like to take them exotic places and have the best accommodations, I am like most people—I work for a living and we can afford what we can afford.

I think that at the end of this, life is a balance between risk and no risk. The miserly side of me said that this was a foolish thing, but then the other side of me said to seize the day. The conversation with my five-year-old last night about Graceland was worth it even in the midst of unsure economic times and high gas prices.

Vacation or no vacation? It was tough for me. It may be tough for you. It is okay if your better side says to do a "stay-cation." If you stay, just make some memories.

Thinking about Christmas in July

Today is July 4, 2008. My wife is watching some Christmas movie on a cable channel known for having women as its prime audience. The channel has some gimmick going about playing Christmas movies this weekend.

My kids are watching a Christmas DVD. They had to get into the act. They started to talk about what they wanted for Christmas.

Okay. I will bite. I actually did not want to even think of Christmas until the end of September, but our western economies have exploited something that is to be the birth of grace and salvation for all into a time of expected profit-taking and meeting inflated sales goals.

I think in the recessions, people get distressed about Christmas. If you are reading this in July, or whenever, I hope I have something that can work for you. Hopefully, if you are reading this, you will get some kind of comfort today from it and it won't be boring.

The holidays are a time of the year where there tends to be the most suicides. I think that the shortened days causing “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (a form of depression) have something to do with it, but many people feel empty, depressed, hopeless, and abandoned at Christmas.

Well, since people are expecting a recession this year, the stress of Christmas likely becomes an increasingly severe stressor. Christmas is supposed to take a lot of money. You are supposed to spend a lot of money on your kids and others.

You are supposed to show how much you care by what you give. On the other hand, others are supposed to show how much they care about you by giving you stuff that hopefully shows they were thoughtful.

There are many ways I can take this. But lets assume that you are worried about what you will do for Christmas in five months if you are facing a short supply of money and that it will be a struggle to get through Christmas. Another stressor is: what will they think of you if you do not give them presents.? The main question is: how do we cope?

The following is a recipe. I cannot guarantee that it is perfect for you. Nor can I guarantee that it will work perfectly for you. Also, just reading it will not do. This stuff below needs to become a lifestyle if not a philosophy that guides what you do!

First, you will tell yourself that you will do the best that you can . . . whatever that will be. I think when we are looking far ahead we tend to get all black and white in our thinking, and we get the magnifier effect—very small things look larger than they actually are.

What is far more helpful is to begin to trust in yourself and your ability to solve problems. When it gets here, you will be able to come up with solutions when the time comes.

You and I have no way of predicting the future. It is stressful if downright painful to let your imagination run wild about all the different, possible, negative options.

It is also far more helpful to ask yourself repeatedly: do you think you are blowing this out of proportion?

A question that you may be thinking is: does this guy really know how I do not think I can do anything? Can he see what a joke (or other profanity-up) I think I am?

Well, know I don't. I don't know you or your unique problems. It is just like you do not know me or my unique problems.

What I do know is that people with low self-esteem do not believe in their ability to solve problems in general. People with low self-esteem carry on the messages from childhood abuse and neglect into the present.

• Today it is a choice whether or not you are going to continue to believe those messages from childhood.
• I made a choice to stop idealizing my mother—just because she is mom does not make her right about everything. (dads, brothers, grandparents, sisters, uncles and aunts all fit in this spot.)
• I made a choice to stop believing that everyone was staring at me, and that strangers giving me dirty looks for no logical reason were being stupid or having trauma flashbacks from something in their way-back past.
• I made a choice to stop worrying whether people were mad at me?
• I made a choice to make others responsible for telling me if they were mad at me?
• I made a choice to decide whether they were mad about something valid?
• I made a choice to see that I was not the only one in the world who saw their own faults.
• I made a choice to decide that I was in charge of my feelings.
• I made a choice to write the book of my life with whatever ink is available at the time that I liked.
• I made a choice to start seeing that I was not the cause of everybody else's anger.
• I made a choice to pursue happiness.
• I made a choice to believe that there are some good people in this world I can become friends with who are also looking for good friends.

I do not regret any of those choices—they were good choices.
But the most applicable for this blog entry . . .

I made a choice that I can do things as well as the average human being, and therefore since other people solve and resolve problems as the come . . . I WILL TOO!

A third thought that can be helpful is that if it is indeed a recession this year, other people will be economizing too. Other people will be cutting back. Other people will be relying on their creativity to express their thoughtfulness.

A fourth thought is that this is your opportunity to start shopping now and practice thriftiness.

1. Make a list of the people on your list and start going to the overstock stores—you know those stores that have either seconds or things that the other stores could not sell on the first try.
2. Do not buy anything just yet—but look through the stores at things that the people on your list might like and match things up on your list.
3. Buy at most for one or two people per paycheck between now and before the time you are to be giving gifts. Et voila—you have done your shopping.
   

Again, these ideas may or may not work for you today. If they are not your cup of tea, I hope that they have stimulated your good creativity and faith in yourself to solve your own problems.

Yes, Christmas is coming again. I predict that the nightly news will run lots of stories about the winter of discontent and about the poor retail chains who were hoping that their cash registers would ring loudly at Christmas. I will visit this subject again between now and then.