Activate Your Money

CHAPTER 2Your Relationship with Money: Invest with Your Heart and Mind

Everyone has personal beliefs about money. Developed in our formative years and throughout our lives, these stories guide our financial decisions for better or worse. By understanding our money stories, we can discard self-destructive behaviors and adapt new positive practices. While there is little you can do about the past, you can rewrite your stories from this day forward.

For years, my financial habits were dictated by the trauma my Depression-era parents experienced around money. They both suffered through poverty in their youth, with my dad often saying he had grown up “dirt poor.” My earliest money memory was the recognition that we did not have enough. We clipped coupons, saved pennies, and wore used clothing. So it's not surprising that as I became an adult, I believed I would always have to do without. I was a saver from the get-go, because I didn't want to end up as an impoverished 80-year-old woman living under a bridge eating cat food. Even as I became a better earner, owned my own home, and had excess money, I still clung to my fear that I would never have enough to avoid future poverty and hunger. That disempowering belief stayed with me through my fifties! It's only when I took control of my own money and began investing in the things I cared about that I was finally able to dispel my fears and embrace something more empowering.

The way you choose to reimagine your relationship with your ...