The Memory of Money: Three Tips to Using Personal History to Unlock Your Financial Freedom

#1 Take A Money Snapshot To understand your financial picture today, take a money snapshot of what you witnessed as a child. Do you remember watching how your parents spent money? Did you receive an allowance? If so, how much was it? What did you spend it on? Did your family forego an allowance for lack of income? How did any or all of these things make you feel? Recognizing your “money template” is a great way to understand what money means to you now. Though we think of our financial issues as current, very often we can map them right back to the ways we watched our parents spend, or the way we ourselves felt when earning and spending our childhood allowance. What was your first job? Did you save your paycheck for something special? Contribute to the family expenses? To distinguish between your childhood beliefs about money and your adult practices, try the exercise of answering the questions in this article. Write them out with your answers, and use feeling words to describe them. How did you feel about the way your parents interacted with money? How did you feel when you interacted with it? Did your feelings or theirs affect your spending? Your saving? Your wishing for more? Did you feel like you had enough? Now ask family members and parents, if they are available to you, how they remember your habits around money. Do they remember what you got for allowance, or what you earned at your first job? Did they think you always asked for more, or believe that you were satiated with what you had? Compare your memories, and notice the common themes between your past and your present financial beliefs. There is no action necessary just yet. Just sit with this awareness for a few days. Then, whenever you spend, spend from that awareness. Watch for any shifts in your beliefs during this practice. Once you become aware of the seeds of your financial growth, you can replant or weed out limiting practices as necessary. Gift Yourself -- Recycle Positive Money Memories and Create New OnesrnIn recalling all those memories, do you have a favorite money memory that made you feel excited with possibilities? Do you remember how good it felt to have that first paycheck or birthday envelope with your name on it? My childhood allowance each month made me feel decadent and liberated. From that feeling in your own memory, put into practice a couple of current day habits that will recreate that joy around money: #2 Start a Fun-Money Account No matter how small the amount you pay into it each month, set up a fun-money account, and use it for the things you love to do for yourself. Money from this account feels like a gift. Sure, it’s a mind trick. After all, the cash did not come from Aunt Jane on the occasion of your graduation. But it may as well have. I found that for myself and for most people who practice this habit, if you gift yourself, you spend more wisely than if you were writing a check out of a joint account, or out of the utility/expense account. The fun-money feels like special money, and as such, it gets treated with special care. Of course, the goal is that this practice is habit-forming, and that all of your money comes to be used with this same special awareness. #3 Practice Financial Gratitude If you can’t recall a memory of when you felt satiated around money, try for one day to say thank you every time you spend. Write, “Thank You!” on all of your checks. When you pay with cash, say to the purveyor, “Thank you for your time,” or say thanks for the coffee, for the services provided to you, whatever it is when you are handing the money over, say thank you for it. Money is freedom. It is freedom to access lights and power for your house, freedom to get your brows waxed or pay your gym fee, or to park in the city lot. Thank your employer that you have a job. Thank your bank for the loan. Thank your postal person for your mail. If your positive money memories are scarce, it’s not too late to jumpstart a whole new way of being around money. Say thank you at every opportunity that you spend, and see how it changes what you feel.