The Love of Money

Many people have family karmas that they spend their lives working through.  Some have a history of abuse that plagues them throughout their lives.  Others have good karma like excellent business acumen.  My family karma has to do with its relationship to money.

My whole life, I've heard stories about my grandmothers (on both sides) struggling mightily to survive financially.  Both had been abandoned by their respective husbands with children to feed.  In her quest to find another breadwinner, my maternal grandmother fell indiscriminately into the arms of other men.  One of my aunts tells the story of being about 13 years old and having one of her putative stepfathers try to rape her.  My paternal grandmother, who fancied herself still in love with the bastard who left her, relied on the kindness of relatives to put food on her table.  In both of my parents' cases, they had to leave school while still at the elementary level in order to go to work.  Those early years left an indelible imprint on my parents' financial psyche.

There are two things I remember most about my own childhood:  (1) being encouraged to excel educationally so that I would never have to rely on a man financially; and (2) my parents having money, but refusing to spend it (sometimes, even on basic necessities). 

I know that my parents had money:  

• They both worked and they prided themselves on the amount of money they each had in the bank (in separate accounts).  
  
• Whenever a relative needed a visa to come from Honduras, the family looked to my parents to provide the Affidavit of Support and proof of money in the bank.  
  
• Every once in a while, my dad would take some of his cash and spend it on some electronic gadget.  We were the first family I knew who had a remote control television.  We were also the first to get a VCR and a large screen t.v.  
  
• My mother preferred to spend her days off shopping.  She hit all the bargain basements (back then Spring Street, in what is now known as SoHo, was a hot spot, as were 14th and 34th Streets).  For groceries, we would go to Washington Heights, where all the ethnic foods we ate were sold for cheap.  
• The four of us went to catholic school, whereas most of the kids in our neighborhood went to public school (that gave my parents bragging rights). 
• Every weekend, some relative or friend was over asking to borrow money.

Despite all this "abundance," my starkest memories arise out of what I can only describe as my parents' cheapness.  I remember walking for blocks in bitter cold without gloves and without a proper winter coat; the walking because my mother did not want to pay bus fare for all of us and the cold because she didn't think it a priority to provide us with gloves or thermal underwear or even sweatshirts.  We each had one pair of shoes that took us from Summer through Winter.  She did not believe in buying sneakers and rarely did we have Winter boots (unless she found them on sale).  I remember walking to school in the heart of Winter in a short jacket and my uniform jumper, my legs bumpy and ashy from the cold because I didn't have a single pair of tights.  The nuns, thinking that we couldn't afford to buy more appropriate clothing, would sometimes give us clothes that had been donated to charity.  My father gave/gives gifts only at Christmas -- birthdays come and go without so much as a token.  I also remember being short $1,000 for my last year's tuition at college and, with trembling knees and downcast eyes, asking my father for a loan.  ... And having him say "no" with a smug expression on his face and walking away from me.  Then giving the same $1,000 to my uncle so he could go on vacation to Honduras.  I recall my mother stuffing her wide feet into shoes many sizes too small and definitely too narrow, because that is what she said she could afford.  That effected me so much that the first thing I did upon collecting my first paycheck as a lawyer was to take her to Bloomingdales and buy her a pair of shoes that fit.  In my mind's eye, I can still see my father's station wagon, so old and worn that there were areas by the back seat where there was no floor.  You could never take a nap for fear that you would accidentally fall into the hole.

Yet, whenever we went someplace where any of my parents' family or friends would see us, they took care to dress us to the nines.  We had matching outfits for just such occasions; we looked like members of a musical group.  

Over the years, I have struggled with the dichotomy of my family karma.  I love money and loathe it all at the same time.  I work hard to be financially successful, but do not want my family to base my "worth" as a person on my net worth.  I love my mother, but I hate it when she gives me kisses after I've handed her a wad of cash, where she doesn't bestow kisses for any other reason.  It bothers me that every outing with my family is marred by discussions about how much money they gave this relative or that relative to assist in some financial crisis; or more likely, it is usually how much such relative needed or asked for and my family refused to give.  It annoys me when our family gets together and the only thing my relatives can talk about is how much I make or that sibling makes -- the implication being that we, as "professionals," are somehow better than those who may not command our salaries.  I am but a lawyer, not Donald Trump.  I still have bills to pay and a family to support.

So I keep reading books.  I keep meditating and praying.  And I keep hoping, hoping, hoping that one day I will break free -- once and for all -- of the financial drama, the scarcity mentality, and the family karma that has shadowed me until now.