Money Talks

“Money never made me, those broke days did.” – Tupac

I know that the recent stock market corrections and the crypto crashes and inflation has everyone feeling a little jittery. I understand. As I have stated before, my family and I were “the poster kids” for the last Great Recession. We checked every box – layoff, totally drained savings, high debt, overvalued house, etc. etc. It was one of the most scary, trying times of my life and yet it was also one of the most freeing, defining moments of my life, all at the same time. I would say, that the particular moments right around the time when I was about to turn 40, were the moments when I finally got really pure and clear and real and aware of myself, and my wants, my needs and what really mattered to me and to the future of our family. It was a time in my life when I noticed just how much I had lived my adult life with invisible chains of following other people’s expectations, without knowing too much about my own desires, and wants and needs. I know that it is a cliché, but I say this earnestly and honestly, those trying, painful moments ended up being some of the best, awakening moments to pivot our family’s life into what WE really wanted to experience going forward, in the shaping of our of family’s legacy. And this last decade of my life has been one of my absolute favorites of all of my 51 years (not always the easiest, but easily the most honest and fulfilling and interesting and exciting). My family has had so much quality time together, and amazing adventures, and a feeling of comfort and security and realness, like we never had before. We live uniquely and authentically and I pray that this trend continues. It is the only way to live fully and intentionally, in my humble opinion.

Many years ago, when we were just starting out with our family, we had a babysitter who would watch our eldest son (our only child at the time) on occasions when we would go out, just as a couple. She was the only babysitter we employed at the time, being a lovely, sweet, reliable teenager from a working class family. During this time, her family ended up winning millions in the lottery. (She still babysat for us after that time, but she did order in a lot of good dinners while she would babysit.) I remember distinctly running into our babysitter’s father in the grocery store a few months after they had won the lottery, and I remember him saying that the best part of winning the money, wasn’t retiring early, or going on frequent trips to Disney World, or the new giant home that they now lived in, but more so, the best part of winning the lottery for him, was the feeling of security that he had, which he had never had experienced before in his lifetime. About a decade ago, our sweet little babysitter was now all grown up, and she befriended me on Facebook. She was married with kids and we filled each other in on the news of our families. Sadly, it turned out that her parents had ended up divorcing, and later, her father and her brother had been killed in a four-wheeling accident. Security, my friends, is a relative thing. If you can make peace with the fact that “total security” is pretty much an illusion, and you can move past the fears that this thought brings up for you, you can live in pure freedom and in awe-filled awareness of every single, precious, breathing moment left in your lifetime.

I’m going to end today’s blog post with some of the best money advice which I have ever heard. I’ve made my four children watch this particular scene, more than once. It is crass with a capital “C”, so if you can’t stand the F-word, don’t watch it (the f-bomb is used liberally in this scene). This is a scene from an otherwise mediocre film called The Gambler:

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.