The Debt Mindset

Has anyone else had a tempestuous relationship with Mr. Cash? Please say yes. I've isolated myself into believing that I am completely alone, weak, bereft and incompetent. That I’m the only one who can't handle him.

You may question why I personify the pound, the wonga, plastic, moula, the dollar; whatever you refer to money as. Up until today I pretty much called money the same names as you. But, as a result of an awakening I have come to realise that I treat money and I am treated by money the same way I am in my intimate relationships. Coincidence? Psychological pattern? Belief system?

Perhaps.

My attitude towards money has always been imbalanced, largely shaped by my parent’s attitudes, with some psychosocial factors thrown into the mix. There was little education on how to communicate with money, how to value him, respect him, assert and nourish him. My attitude was influenced by long held working class beliefs that life is struggle, money is spent, evil, scarce and only rewards you after he's taken you to hell and back and you're banging on the final gates pleading to show how much you've fought for him.

Only then and almost dead, will you be rewarded.

I always worked as a teenager. At school I was the kid that had money in her back pocket. My mum ran a public house, the customers needed a babysitter. I babysat, oftentimes every night of the week. Not to 'earn cash' and save but to escape the lack at home, buy cigarettes and get wasted with my friends on weekends. Growing up wasn't about investing in my future, it was escaping the now as much as I could, filling the void with more of what I was already conditioned to believe; money substitutes love.

Don't be fooled into thinking that I lacked in the material things. My mum was an astute business woman, but she didn't lavish me with the spirit of love, guidance and support, all of which would have paid dividends to my adult self. What I lacked in parenting was replaced by material things. By 12 I had learned that I could bargain with my mum as long as the return she made on her investment was that I was out of her way 90 percent of the time. I can vividly remember knowing what angle to use to get the new Sega Mega Drive.

'Buy me it mum and I promise I won't bother you. I'll be so consumed by it, I’ll be out of your hair.'

As a kid, I thought I'd won. It's taken me till the age of 36 to realise just how much I’ve lost out.

I suppose this was the onset of my early teenage conditioning that not only is life a struggle and money a bastard, but my sense of security was dependent on possessions. I began to learn that much like love, as easily as things were given, they could as easily be taken away so it was best to detach myself from the offset. This lack of self and poor attachment meant that I never felt worthy enough for Mr. Money and so the cycle of our toxic relationship began.

I can pinpoint an early problem. Against many odds I managed to get to college and do my A 'Levels. I got a part time job in a gym working on reception. This was mainly evening work, so as and when I could I would work. I thrived off the social life that college and the gym offered, but I was never thinking about saving for the impending days of university like most of my friends. I wasn't planning on saving for my car and driving lessons since I was now 18 and a world of adult opportunity lay ahead of me. I was again investing in the void of low self-esteem and worthlessness. On the surface, I was New Labour’s perfect advert. I’d plucked myself from the working class conveyor belt of mediocrity and was embracing the opportunistic buzz of social mobility, stereotypically cut with the indie funk hair and out there dress sense. Everyone noticed and my fragile ego devoured their validation. But this was more a reflection of the chokehold of capitalism rather than fist pumps of class liberation.

My wages went on new out fits. I had to have one every weekend because I was going out every weekend and I didn't 'feel' good in 'old' clothes, old being I’d worn them once before. I had to keep up this appearance. I had to have my hair done every 8 weeks. Coming from where I'm from, this earns you respect. Boys made comments that I 'looked loaded'.

“I am”. I’d say flirtily, but I was spiritually skint.

I remember one particular day going to Mr. Cash Point having splurged my hard work on a five minute supermarket sweep in Topshop and seeing a minus sign by 'money' available. Mr. Money refused to give out, I’d pushed him beyond his limit. I frantically called my extremely level headed and younger friend Jo, who bailed me out even though she couldn't refrain from passing judgement as I stood there in tears with six bags full of new clothes.

'I'll pay you back.' I promise Jo'.

And then there was university.

I was with one of the major banks. Typically my bank was the more flexible home of Mr. Money. This meant less rules, liberal attitudes, big over drafts and I could share his bed without having to resort to the park bench. Coupled with my easy naivety and eager need to please he rewarded me with my first ever credit card.

“I don't get why my bank has sent me two cards”. Flashing the card from my purse to a friend in one of my first lectures.

'It's a Credit Card.'

'Oh, what's that?'

'It's money.'

And you should have seen my face when I bought my new sound system and witnessed how quickly the payment went through. It was like heroin hitting virgin veins. The problem is, like any addict will tell you, I didn't understand why Mr. Money allowed me to share his bed because I had absolutely nothing to repay him with. But he just kept on giving. So I kept on taking, working extremely hard to mask a feeling of vast emptiness. But, just like all the men I have had relationships with, once Mr. Money saw just how hollow I was, he started demanding more from me but I was a stuffed doll. I had no clue of who I was because I’d been buying myself better since the days of Sonic the Hedgehog and just like the boys who said I looked loaded, people saw the cracked veneer once they got closer.

I maxed Mr. Credit Card within a fortnight and had absolutely no means of paying him back. It was a frosty separation, on and off for 18 months until I owed him nothing more of myself and had nothing left to give. At this point I was in a relationship with a man who had the same neurosis as me. Highly insecure about his image, irreparably jealous and emotionally abusive, but he filled the void with things, alcohol and weed. He spent thousands on me at Christmas and of course because he spoke the same language of love we embarked on an intense, highly toxic 2 year relationship. Anyone from the outset would have seen the perfect Champagne love, but once the cork had popped we were yesterday’s best buy lemonade.

We returned from a failed trip around Europe. I think we managed 1 month out of 12. Spending time cramped in a tent with someone without the protective nucleus of alcohol, weed and money took its toll. Every night we were arguing strangers, dumbfounded by the realisation that without all the shit we didn’t fucking like each other. We fell into the hung over trap of wild make up sex and unhinged arguments on the river Seine, so far removed from the bohemian daydreams of our escape to Paris.

We came back to a mountain of credit card debts and bounced cheques. We sat in the back garden of reality. I was incredibly unhappy and stressed, to the point of becoming so ill I got Bell’s palsy. My face dropped and my heart sank and I began suffering from panic attacks. No amount of binge sex and passionate drinking was going to pull me out from the depths of my depression.

The bank cleverly gave me a card I couldn’t even use at an ATM. I spent a year working in a daze, determined to get back to my ‘old self’. I wanted to move back to the city, do my teacher training and sort my life out. We drizzled on until the summer. I gave back my fraudulent engagement ring, packed my bags and headed to the city. This time with savings and of course I’d reconciled with Mr. Money and again, he’d rewarded me with a credit card.

I moved into a house with four other girls, who all had full time professional jobs, having graduated two years before me. I was the ‘mature’ student, re-entering education and embarking on graduate life. I’d arrived with a suitcase of ideals and second hand mantras about doing things right but the allure of living for the city, drug fuelled false friendships and lost weekends was far too intoxicating to refuse. It didn’t help that whilst studying, I also got a job at a trendy bar, the social life dripping with every pint pull. To add a further pill to the concoction, my youngest sister moved to the city to start her undergraduate studies. I have to admit it was a year of cocaine, ecstasy, immortal parties and wide eyed conversations that merged into lost days.

The pressure to ‘look’ a certain way was all the more emphasised as I was thrust into a different side of the city. Famous musicians with erratic egos, loose sex and pseudo bohemia ate away at Mr. Money. Within six months I was borrowing from friends, paying rent in dribs and drabs and pleading poverty to the finance department at the Art College. As soon as I got a leaver up out of the shit I somersaulted back down the pit. But this was still a time of social growth and mobility, the education system opened up pathways for me despite my erratic relationship with Sir Cash and before I knew it I was doing my Master’s degree and back round to a point of dissatisfaction with life and reflecting on ‘change’.

My best friend Sara moved to Australia to work on the rigs. The partying subsided and I tried to focus on recovering from the heydays but I could never seem to imitate the same pace or momentum in life as my other friends. They had this liberation that illuminated against my stagnation. I had to pass on festivals, meals out, theatre trips, holidays. It was achingly obvious that their freedom was bought from having an equal, respectful relationship with Mr. Money. As much as I was confident, articulate, the intellect of the group, I was fucking stupid and inarticulate when it came to Sir Cash. I abused him because I abused myself. I couldn’t lead him because I had never led myself and I couldn’t control him because I had never taken control of my own life. Viewing Mr. Money from a place of lack, need and victimisation meant that I always got what I believed I deserved.

During this period of ‘self-help book change’ and working towards my MA, I met the father of my daughter. Maybe its text book that I would enter a financially and emotionally abusive relationship. I suppose, as the great Buddha teaches us, a lesson will repeat itself until it is learned.

Whenever I retrace the path of all my relationships it always leads me back to my noxious bond with Mr. Money because it meant that I always started relationships feeling I had nothing to offer. From the offset I jumped into this relationship with the view that I was underserving, of no value and a complete fuck up. It didn’t take long for the arguments to become violent and abusive, my partner witnessing my lack of responsibility with money opened a gateway for him to reinforce my own beliefs and abuse the power that I had so readily offered him. I am in no way condoning his behaviour towards me, but I have to admit to myself, that however unconscious my belief was at the time, part of my attraction to him was his ability to manage money, his togetherness, his skill at being in control. Surely there is a distorted symbiosis here, the fuck up wants to be fixed, the control freak knows she needs fixing. And my lack of financial freedom meant that I was always dependent on him. It is a cycle of abuse that still continues today.

I have begun to look directly at my life and realise that where I am now is a manifestation of second hand beliefs and self-made limitations. For the past ten years I have come from a place of resigned acceptance. It wouldn’t be unusual to hear me refer to money as evil, my political stance also created the same restricting ripples ‘Capitalism is cruel, designed to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer’. ‘I’ll never get on the property ladder, I can’t afford it’. But I have begun to hear an arcane whisper in the deep pools of my DNA that I deserve more and poverty thinking is no longer serving me.

Four months ago my daughter and I were walking home from school when I said ‘Come on, let’s go and investigate Boo, I keep seeing that for sale sign’. I have always wanted to own my own property, but my long held beliefs and Mr. Money made me believe it impossible. I didn’t expect that a house would be the catalyst to such growth and change.

When I first saw the house it was a renovated barn conversion and I felt an instant affinity. Maybe the universe is finally aligning because when I saw it there was a deep knowing, as if I was meant to find it. And for the first time in my adult life I heard a loud voice from the pit of my stomach saying with total conviction ‘One day.’

That very day I contacted a debt agency that collected data on all the debt that I owed. I was on a mission to not just hold Mr. Money by the horns but to kick him in the balls. I was ready to change, reclaim my future and scream ‘I deserve more you fucker, so how about if I start taking the lead you show me the respect by showing up more’!? What I have come to realise, is the debt I am in is manageable, that I can have it sorted within a year if I put my mind to it. So all the years of feeling trapped by poverty, held captive by Mr. Money is just a waifer thin wall of outworn attitudes and long held beliefs. I am slowly but surely hammering my way through it.

I am four months into my mission towards financial freedom. I have committed to a strict ban on nights out, new clothes and trips to the hairdressers. A picture of the three bed barn reminds me to believe in myself and what I truly deserve. This is a huge leap from the debt riddled, breadcrumb lifestyle that had previously lay before me. I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for all of those suffering from the asphyxiation of debt but it is solvable and there is a solution. I know just how hard it is, to want to give up, to feel overwhelmed and defeated by the weight of Mr. Money. I get it. Debt has caused me to waste a decade of my life but it’s not going to win anymore. It’s caused me anxiety, panic attacks, resentment, hate, fatigue, depression and lost love. It took me away like an exorcised demon, but I’m slowly building me back up, affirmation by affirmation, action by action. Yes. I am in debt, but it doesn’t define all of me and it certainly doesn’t reduce my ability to love or to be loved for that matter. There are so many supportive agencies that are dedicated to tackling the effects of the debt mind-set. I urge you to seek the support, don’t let it win.

I no longer feel below Mr. Money. I’ve atoned for all my past behaviours and frivolous mistakes. I feel an abundance and a freedom that I have never experienced before. I believe it’s called possibility, rooted in the self-belief that I have the power to turn things around.

I love my self. I love where I have been and how I’ve been shaped. I am not the young girl bargaining with her life for a short term fix anymore. And money, is just money. An aspect of life, no gender, unspecified, fathomable, understood.

One day, in the not so distant future I will own that three bed barn, but for now it just feels amazing to be wealthy in health and spiritually savvy. I feel rich beyond measure just by living. I am a fully rounded strong woman and I know who I am. I am fearless, I am worthy. I am Mother. I am powerful and I’m pretty stoked about daring to dream and for the first time in my life, owning me.