inspired
to journal
|
|
|
Money Matters With the passing of my father, I have to rethink my old age. Not because he was old, but because his estate is relatively small. He was heavily invested in the stock market, and in the crash after 9/11, he lost most of his assets. There's not much left, and my mother's lavish lifestyle will eat up much of what's there. After being led to believe that we'd be comfortable after my parents passed away, my brother and I are faced with a very different reality. My first thoughts were to ask my dad how to handle this. Hmmmm... he's not here. Besides, he wouldn't give me that kind of information anyway, because I'm 'just a girl.' Money is not a feminine subject. It's not something little girls of my generation were taught. We were expected to marry doctors or lawyers and be taken care of - like my mother was. Life is very different for us modern women, though. And as independent as I am, I am floundering with this issue. I need answers to questions, like How do I mortgage my house to work on it? Or should I sell it and move to something smaller and closer to town? Or should I mortgage it and buy some income or investment property? How do I do that? I just want to scream, "Help me, daddy!" But I should probably be screaming, "Why did you not prepare me for this, daddy?" In my search for answers, I bought a book by Suze Orman. She writes a column in O Magazine, and I always like what she says about money. She takes a spiritual viewpoint about it. She looks at how we deal with money based on childhood memories. Now isn't life, growth and journaling like that? What happened in our childhoods shaped who we are, but we do have the power to change that shape. That's the approach in this book, too. Look at what makes you respect or disrespect money from an historical point of view. Then you'll be free to change your patterns and achieve what Suze calls 'financial freedom.' This book did not give me the answers I was looking for, but it was very enlightening. There are writing exercises to discover our childhood memories of and current thoughts about money. Suze also goes into wills and trusts, life insurance and the stock market - a bunch of stuff I knew little about. Here are some questions from the book. Use them as journal prompts.
One last thought: "Thoughts of poverty are bonds of poverty... Mental chains may be invisible, but they imprison you nevertheless."
* |
|
|
E
mail Privacy
Policy |
