Chapter One
The Courage
to Look Within
Over the many years I've worked with people and their money, I have tried to answer what to me is the most puzzling financial question of all: Why is it that some people have money while others do not? It's almost mystical, really. Day after day I see people who have grown up in similar circumstances, had basically the same opportunities, and earn more or less the same salaries, yet how very differently their bottom-line numbers can read. I'm sure you've seen this yourself. Haven't you known really good, hardworking people who end up with very little? Haven't you met people who should have had less but have more? Or people who, time after time, almost seem to make it and then, boom, something happens and they have to start all over again?
Is it that some higher being looks down on all of us and chooses who among us is going to win life's financial lottery? I doubt it. Is it simply that those who have all the money they could ever need wanted it more than others? Not from what I've seen.
In my nineteen years as a financial planner, never once have I come across a client who didn't have the desire to have more, or the intelligence and the ability to achieve the desire. Not once. So what was stopping them? The same thing that no doubt is stopping you: financial obstacles.
And what are those financial obstacles? Some of the obstacles that are placed in front of us are external and easy to recognize—lack of cash or opportunity, the family we are born into, lack of financial knowledge, or maybe just laziness. Legitimate obstacles, some of these, but after all these years working with people richer and, yes, poorer than you are today, I've seen people overcome each of them countless times. These are the easy obstacles, for what you can pinpoint you can overcome.
Harder to recognize, and much harder to overcome, are the internal obstacles, the emotional obstacles, that keep us from having what we want and enjoying what we have.
I have come to believe that the way each of us thinks and feels about our money is the key factor in determining how much we ultimately have. The main underlying reason that some of us don't have money is that our thoughts and feelings about money have become internal obstacles that prevent us from having or keeping what we want. In the same vein, the reason that others do have money is that, with their thoughts and feelings, they have created the means to achieve and hold on to what they desire. In other words, our thoughts and feelings about money are, to me, fundamental factors in determining how much money each of us will, in this lifetime, be able to create and keep.
Lessons My Clients Taught Me
Years into my practice, once I began to understand the powerful hold our thoughts and emotions have on our money, I started to ask my clients different kinds of questions—questions about "how" and "why" rather than simply questions about "how much." I began trying to get to the heart of their financial emotions: "Why have you let all this money just sit in a bank account for ten years earning two percent interest?" I'd ask. Or "How did you begin to get into all this debt?" Or "What are the money issues you and your spouse fight over?" Or "Why, when you have so much more money than most people, do you feel so poor?"
The answers were remarkably similar, regardless of how much money was actually at stake: "I'm afraid to invest. I feel safe leaving my money alone." "Suze, I'm so ashamed of my debt, I can't even tell my husband." "I'm just so angry at the way he spends our money." "I am afraid. What if I lose it all?"
I listened carefully to the words that my clients were using, over and over, to answer my questions or simply to talk about their financial situations. I noticed that whenever people had financial difficulties, whether they were in debt, had nothing to show for their years of work, had no idea where the next dollar was going to come from, or felt like they never had enough, they seemed to have one thing in common. They all used the same words to answer my questions. Regardless of their particular financial dilemma, their answers all contained at least one of the following words: Shame. Fear. Anger.
Let's say a client came in to see me because she found herself in terrible debt and needed help to find her way out. If I asked her, "How do you feel about having so much debt?" her answer would likely reflect one or more of three emotional variations: "I'm so ashamed; I don't want anyone to know about my debt." "I'm so afraid; I have no idea how I will ever get out of debt." "I'm so angry at myself for allowing myself to get into this situation." Shame. Fear. Anger. The emotional obstacles to wealth.
Perhaps it's easy to see how staggering debt could incite these emotions, but it's less apparent in situations where there seems to be enough money, or at least no immediate threat to one's security. And yet I can cite countless examples of clients whose deep-seated emotions kept them from achieving greater wealth—be it in the form of emotional or financial security. Fear, loss, shame about the past: Anger at the circumstances over which you have to prevail.
Unlocking the Emotions
You may be thinking, How is this possible? Just because I'm afraid, how does that relate to the fact that I have no money? Isn't it the other way around? Isn't it that I'm afraid because I don't have any money?
That's the way most people think. Especially people who do not have money—or the courage to be rich. It's easy to blame your emotional state of affairs on your financial state. But from what I've learned, the opposite is true. Your emotional state ultimately determines your financial state.
I have found that when negative emotions control the purse strings, money will not flow purely and evenly. When it comes to money, emotions can speak louder than reason or necessity. Your emotions, expressed through your financial actions, have gotten you to where you are now and will continue to shape your financial future if you let them. If shame, fear, or anger is at the wheel, then I can promise you, you are not on a course toward richness. By having the courage to face and overcome your inner obstacles, however, you will change the outer trappings of your financial life forever.
Your Exercise, Part One
I want you to take a few minutes to consider how you feel about your financial situation today. Don't think in terms of numbers, the bills, how much you owe, or how much you've saved. Think instead about how you truly feel about your finances. Is money—the money you've spent, the money you have, the money you need—a constant worry for you? Do you feel that you're not good enough to get what you want or that you don't deserve what you have? Are you embarrassed by how much you have? Envious of what others have, angry that you don't have such things? I want you to address your emotions honestly and commit your thoughts and feelings to paper. If you don't have the money to pay your bills, write down how it feels not to have enough money. If you're in debt, write down how that feels. If you have more money than your friends, write down how that feels as well. On the other hand, if you think you remain emotionally unattached to your money, I still want you to try to complete this exercise, because you might surprise yourself by uncovering emotions that have been long buried, I want you to close your eyes and look deep within yourself until all that exists in your consciousness is a clear sense of yourself and your feelings about your financial life.
After you have spent some time contemplating your situation, please write a few more sentences describing how you feel about it as precisely as you can.
A sample paragraph might read:
"It's terrifying how much debt we've managed to build up in just five years of marriage, with having the children and everything else. I'd be so embarrassed if my parents knew. I'm worried about how we'll make it until the children go to college, let alone college itself."
Now take a good look at the words you have written and see them not as words but as your current truths—statements that not only describe your state of mind but also have the power and veracity to determine your outlook and, subsequently, your actions. Underline or highlight any words that have to do with an emotion. In the case above, for example, the writer would highlight terrifying, a word describing fear; embarrassed, a word describing shame; and worried, another word describing fear.
Without having seen what you wrote, I can guarantee that you've used words describing shame, fear, or anger. This is not a financial planner's party trick; rather, it demonstrates the universality of our impoverished feelings about money.
Money, Power, Respect
Strange as it may sound to you, money is attracted to people who are strong and powerful, respectful of it, and open to receiving it. I want you to think about this—it is something I firmly believe and have said time and again: Money behaves and responds just like a person—nurture it, treat it well, and it will grow and flourish; treat it carelessly, or with disrespect, and it will dwindle away to nothing. Quite simply, if you respect money and give it the attention it needs, it will respect you back.
Conversely, the emotions of shame, fear, and anger cloud your financial judgment, take away your power over your money. When these emotions determine your spending patterns or force you to deny or defy the truth about your money, they not only wreak havoc on your finances, they actually repel money from you. This is not to say that there aren't people with a lot of money who feel shame, fear, or anger—there are plenty of such people. Although they may have a good amount of money, they're not rich in the sense of living a full, expansive, and contented life. And often such people are unable to hold on to their money. How frequently do we read in the tabloids of wealthy people whose fortunes are destroyed by drugs, ugly divorces, unscrupulous business practices, or similar disgraceful causes? Why do you think this happens? I believe it happens because their underlying emotional states are powerful enough, and corrosive enough, to repel even vast fortunes. No matter how much money you have, power and respect—for yourself, for others, for your money—attract riches, and powerlessness and disrespect repel them.
The roots of these emotions take hold in childhood. So strong are they that they grow even if we try to ignore them, gaining the power to control our thoughts, words, actions, and fortunes. If we let them. We've all felt shame, fear, and anger—the emotions of poverty. And we all have the power to confront them and expel them—from our emotional lives, and from our financial lives as well. I have seen so many people change their financial lives after facing down these treacherous feelings. You can, too. For the sake of your dreams, I urge you to have the courage to do so now.
FINANCIAL SHAME
What does financial shame look like? Its posture is head down, eyes down. It's contained and hidden, but the effects of its presence are apparent even so. It's the most deeply rooted emotion of all, because it cuts to the core of who you are—telling you you're not good enough, not deserving of what you have, less than others, no matter how much you have. Experience the sensation of shame just once, and you're not likely to forget it.
MARK'S STORY
I must have been about nine or ten, and we were having this Sunday school outing. Everyone in my class was going hiking on the nature trail in the morning and then out for lunch afterward. Our minister was taking us, and we all liked him, so this was a pretty big deal I can't remember anything about the nature trail, but I will never forget that lunch. There were about ten of us, and we got a big table at a soda fountain. Cokes for everybody, in a big glass with a straw. I had a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries, and we all had ice cream for dessert. Then, when the bill came, all the kids put five dollars on the table, and I just froze. I didn't have five dollars. I didn't have any money, my parents hadn't given me money. Not a cent. Ricky, who was sometimes my friend and sometimes my enemy, noticed and said, "Hey, why aren't you paying up?" I was mortified. Everyone was looking at me, real quiet. I remember getting hot, and I remember starting to cry in front of everybody, which made it worse. They all were staring. I felt so ashamed. I'll never forget it.
Powerful memory. And Mark has been paying to make up for it ever since. To this day, he's the one who always treats, the first to pick up the check, a big tipper and a big spender. His shame that day made such a powerful impact on him that he sees to it that everyone knows he has money to spend. What they don't know, however, is that he spends it all, leaving himself with nothing, ultimately as penniless and ashamed today as he was all those years ago at his Sunday school lunch.
Maybe you were ashamed growing up because your family had less than the other families you knew. Maybe you didn't have the right clothes or car or belong to the country club, or your mother was the only mother who worked, as mine was, which was a source of shame to me. Maybe you didn't have the money to attend or finish college, the way your friends did. In some cases, the shame is "Why me?" shame, because you might have had more than everyone else and didn't feel you deserved it. Your shame might have come from a specific incident, as Mark's did, or from a cluster of incidents you never forgot. In any case, shame has real staying power and can destroy your pride, self-respect, self-worth—and ultimately, net worth.
How does shame come into play in grown-up financial life? If you feel "less than," you'll spend more—possibly even more than you have—in order to feel like more. If you feel you don't deserve what you have, you'll neglect it, it will fail to grow, and eventually it will stagnate. If you feel undeserving, you will never take real pleasure in the money you have and what it can do. If you believe that you truly don't deserve the things you really want, then they'll never be yours. Defeat won't be a problem for you. But success will.
FINANCIAL FEAR
What does financial fear look like? Watch, sometime, when you see a line of people handing over money or a credit card to a clerk in a store. If there's fear, you'll be able to see it. Watch the way the other customers clutch their money too tightly, take just a second longer than they should to relinquish it, hold out their hand before the clerk is ready to give them the change, hold their breath until the credit card clears. Perhaps instead you might see them distance themselves from their money, hand it over too quickly, toss it, or push it. When it comes to money, fear is constantly constricting and debilitating, like a companion or a voice in your head, reminding you of all the bills you have to pay, intruding on times that should be pleasurable, keeping you up at night. It can express itself in one of two ways. Fear can prevent you from doing what you should with your money, or it can cause you to do what you shouldn't with your money.
PAM'S STORY
My mother wore her money dress my whole childhood. It was a royal blue shirtwaist, and the print was dark golden coins, coins scattered all over it. White collar. The belt was red patent leather, and the belt buckle and the buttons were coins, too. She wore it to church with gloves, and she worn it to take us to the first day of school, to the PTA, every time she wanted to look nice, I guess. We called it the money dress, and we knew that when she was wearing it, it was an occasion. I was always proud of her in the money dress. You could just feel how great she felt in it, and it was as if her pride was contagious. Then one day, when I was about eleven, we were going to my grandmother's house, because my cousins were coming to visit. We all were instructed to wear our best clothes, and after I got dressed, I went into my parents' room. There was my mother, sitting on the bed in her white slip, holding the money dress and crying. I had never seen her cry. It was then that I saw that the patent leather belt was cracked, and the "gold" was peeling off the coin buttons. Then my father came in and screamed at her that he couldn't afford to get her a new dress, just put the dress on and get ready. She cried harder, and he kept screaming. Then I understood. This wasn't about the money dress. It was about money, and we didn't have any I was so afraid, I ran outside. But I could still hear the crying and the screaming.
The fear is still with Pam today. She and her husband both work, and they make more than enough, but they are anything but rich. Pam overspends, pure and simple, and her credit card debt is keeping pace with her salary. She has a closet overflowing with real money dresses, and her children have the absolute best of everything, at a cost far greater than Pam and her husband can afford. They live in the best neighborhood, drive showy cars, and live in terror, waiting for the moment when their financial lives are going to come crashing down on them.
If your parents quarreled about money when you were young, if you grew up feeling there wasn't enough, you almost certainly harbor some fear about money today. Fear has nothing to do, necessarily, with the financial facts of your life; you can certainly have money and still be afraid. Yet you cannot be rich, truly rich, if you're living with fear. Whether or not you have enough today, if you fear you don't, then one way or another you'll make sure that you don't. Or you may go the other way and become a miser, holding on to your money as desperately as you hold on to the fear, unable to take pleasure in spending a penny and unable to be generous, which will render you poor in every way.
FINANCIAL ANGER
What does financial anger look like? It looks clenched. Clenched fists, clenched mouth, creased forehead. It makes you look closed and unyielding. It is anything but welcoming, and it turns away money as readily as it turns away other people. Maybe you feel anger at yourself for what you've done or what you haven't done with your money, for a raise you didn't get, at your parents for the ways in which you still feel they let you down, at friends who have more than you, at a spouse who left you powerless and penniless, or simply at the unfairness of life—and the unfairness of money. If you do, this anger may be extremely well concealed but can still translate into debt and dishonesty with yourself about what you are doing (and aren't doing) with your money.
STEPHEN'S STORY
My family emigrated from Europe to the United States when I was eleven years old, and it was a really traumatic time for us all. For my mother, especially, because she had to leave her mother, who was ill, and her twin brother. There was this sad sense that we might never see them again. I remember we had to sell all our property before we left. For the most part, our furniture wasn't new or nice, so the neighbors just kind of came and paid what they could for everything—the beds, the kitchen table and chairs, the dishes. But about six months before we had known we were leaving, my mother had bought two comfortable cushioned armchairs. I can still see them. She was so proud of these chairs, and she hated to have to part with them, but when she knew she had to sell them, she at least wanted to get a good price. Nearly everything else was gone by then, so there were just these two flowered chairs in the little living room. A man came, some kind of a dealer, I guess, and he paid her only about half of what she expected to get. She tried to negotiate with him—plead with him is more like it—but he was very contemptuous. When he left with the chairs, she cried and cried for hours in the empty house. I was so angry at him—how dare he take such advantage of my mother? I remember thinking that when you have something valuable, people will always try to take it from you.
Stephen is still angry, angry at the unfairness of the world, so angry that to this day he really believes that he has to protect himself and every single penny he has, or else someone will take advantage of him. In effect, he's still buying high and selling low. He's left two jobs, thinking he might be fired. He thinks everyone, from the corner grocer to the people who tabulate his phone bill, is probably out to get him. He hoards his money. His anger has so convinced him that the world is a financial minefield that he's virtually retreated from it.
An adult's anger is the same as a child's—anger at not getting what you want. But as adults, we're in control (at least we're supposed to be); we're the ones with the power to say yes or no. If you want something badly, something you can't afford, you're going to be angry if you say yes to yourself and angry, too, if you say no. In this no-win situation, there's nowhere for the anger to go, and it can stay with you, causing a good deal of damage, throughout your life. If you're angry at being deprived, you might keep up the deprivation in order to sustain the anger—or maybe you'll lash out at the anger with reckless spending. Perhaps you will feel suspicious that others are trying to shortchange you, and if you feel it, others will sense it. If anger is a recurring theme in your life, your actions around money will be grudging and pinched, to the point where the flow of your money will become constricted, dwindling, in some cases, to a trickle.
When your outward appearance and way of living suggest to others that you have more money than you do, you're angry. When you've invested more money in today than tomorrow, you're probably angry as well. And no matter where you cast the blame for your anger, in the end the person you'll be the most angry with is yourself.
When emotional reflexes steer our financial actions, we are not acting in our best financial interests—anything but. As you can see from these stories, you are not going to get rich by feeling ashamed, afraid, or angry, but by purging these emotions from your financial life so that they no longer taint your actions, by making different choices, by expanding your financial worldview beyond today and into tomorrow.
If you've made mistakes, so what? We all make mistakes. If you trusted someone you shouldn't have trusted, you can learn to trust yourself. If you are in debt, you can get out of debt—millions of us have. If you face your finances truthfully, just the way they are now, you can begin to change them, a little today, perhaps a little more tomorrow.
But first you have to render those emotions of fear, shame, or anger powerless over you and your money.
Your Exercise, Part Two
You can try saying to yourself, Okay, no more anger, but it won't get you very far. Because emotions have lives of their own, it is hard to pin them down, look them directly in the eye, and send them away. First you have to identify their source, then evaluate them with the adult perspective—and compassion—you have now. This begins the process of defusing their power.
I'm asking you to go somewhere quiet, taking with you a pen and the piece of paper on which you described how you feel about your money today. Look closely at the paragraph you wrote at the beginning of this chapter and ask yourself this question about the emotions you identified: Where do you think that feeling came from?
In essence I am asking you to go back in time. Go back to your childhood to find, if you can, the financial memory that planted the shame, the fear, the anger. Use the word that most prominently and accurately describes your present-day feelings toward your finances as a sort of password, a key to unlock painful episodes that still resonate, even subconsciously, in your life today. Was it that your neighbors once offered you hand-me-downs because they thought you were too poor to buy things of your own? Did that make you ashamed? Was it that your mom once took you grocery shopping, filled the whole cart, then discovered that she had forgotten her wallet and had no way to pay? Did that make you afraid? Was it that all your friends went to Europe one summer, while you had to take a part-time job? Did that make you angry? Was there enough, too much, or never enough? Was money a source of happiness or of despair?
For instance, let's say that you're so ashamed of the amount of debt you've incurred that you're keeping it a secret from those closest to you. Shame and secrecy are your passwords. Search your memory and see what those words call to mind. Perhaps they remind you of feelings of shame you had as a teenager, when you felt you weren't good enough and had to pretend to be something other than yourself to gain acceptance with the "in" crowd. But don't stop at the first recollection that suggests itself. If you go deeper, farther back, you might recall where you learned that lesson—maybe your mother told you as a child to keep the family's money problems a secret from your friends, because if they knew you were poor, they might not like you anymore.
Bingo. When you finally get to the heart of the matter, it will be as clear to you as if a flashbulb had gone off. I urge you not to give up, not to turn away until you've reached that moment of clarity. Incidentally, the process I took you through in the previous paragraph was the very one I myself went through to connect to the source of my shameful feelings about my debt. Those memories, those secrets were my own.
When you've reached that moment of understanding, please write your memory down on the same piece of paper you used in the first part of the exercise.
Now let's go deeper. What are you doing today, as an adult, to keep that feeling alive, to allow it to control your financial life? For example, if you don't believe you deserve what you have or can achieve what you want, your feelings of unworthiness likely stem from the shame you've been harboring since your youth. If you believe that you could lose everything you have or will never feel financially secure, your present-day fear is fueling that childhood emotion. If it seems to you that everyone else has more and you'll never have enough, your feelings of inadequacy and hostility are nurturing youthful versions of those feelings into adulthood.
Add to the piece of paper what you are doing today in your actions, thoughts, or feelings about money to keep the emotions of shame, anger, or fear alive and in control of you and your money.
In Mark's case, for example, his flamboyant spending today is an attempt to make up for the shame of yesterday, but in fact it is keeping that emotion alive. With the weight of Pam's debt, she is trying, today, to dispel the pain of yesterday's poverty, but her actions leave her even more afraid of not having enough money to pay the bills. Stephen's financial demeanor, suspicious and tightfisted, is keeping his anger alive—and keeping the world at bay. Each is paying an emotional toll today, and a financial one as well.
Now it's time to cut off the power of the emotions holding you back, just as you would apply a tourniquet to an open wound. Think about these memories, the misguided actions you're taking today, and how they might be connected to your past. Think of the child you were when the memory was formed, and why you felt the way you did in the context of who you were then. You were powerless. You were a child and had a right to feel the way you did. Think of who you are now and the power you can summon to change.
You must release yourself from the hold these memories have over you. You can no longer afford to live in the past; make the present your point of reckoning. Today and tomorrow are all that matter. Take responsibility for your life, and for your money, from this moment on.
Always Forgive
The only way to get beyond the emotional obstacles standing between you and more money is to let them go, to forgive. Forgive the people who helped to etch those memories on your young soul. Forgive yourself for the way those emotions have played out in your financial life up until now. Forgive the past and present, in order to make the future a blank slate on which you can engrave different goals and different numbers.
We all know how hard it actually is to forgive—but we all know, too, the healing powers of forgiveness. For me, the shame, fear, and anger I felt from growing up, at least in my own mind, as poor little Suze Orman from the South Side of Chicago, daughter of a chicken plucker, defined me well into adulthood. No matter how well I did or how much money I made, I never felt good enough, smart enough, attractive enough. These feelings were all that my entire being could bear; there wasn't room for any other, more generous emotions. I didn't feel entitled to anything—love, friendship, and especially money. For the longest time, I can honestly say, these thoughts and feelings kept me from being rich.
I didn't realize the extent to which these emotions defined me, even as I grew unhappier, lonelier, and angrier over those years. One day, I was getting ready for work, utterly miserable and about to get into the shower. In the way we all invoke God when we're at rock bottom, I silently screamed out to Him: Why can't I have what everybody else in this world has? Is this all there is for me? I remember it so clearly—my distress and then a feeling of calm as my plea was answered with a prayer that I had learned as a child and which suddenly came back to me. I repeated it over and over as if it were my salvation, as perhaps it was. It went like this: I ask to be forgiven and released by all those whom I have hurt and harmed, and I ask to forgive and release all those who bare hurt and harmed me.
Forgiveness, for me, was a process, one that took a long time to complete—to forgive my parents who had, after all, done the best they could, and to forgive myself enough to believe that I was fine just as I was, and entitled to whatever I could create and achieve. With my prayer, over time, I released myself from the bondage of those terribly destructive emotions and finally made room for more.
Your Exercise, Part Three
Read what you've written from the earlier exercises again. Add to it if you feel the need—if you can recall more vivid details, if there's something you wish to express to another. You may think of this document as a letter to a higher power, a direct line of communication. Purge yourself of all aspects of the memory in the process of capturing it on paper. Read what you've written one last time.
Now I'd like you to take this paper and burn it. Watch it as it is transformed from paper to ashes. Think of the fire as representative of the fire of love that is burning in your heart; see the ashes as all that remains of your past hurts as your writings go up in smoke; release the hurt and pain; let the past go.
It's time to start over. It's time to forgive. To forgive Mom, Dad, the world, and, above all, yourself. Use my prayer or create one of your own. Find the words of forgiveness that bring you release. Articulate your feelings in some form—trust a friend with your story of forgiveness or contemplate forgiveness in a place of worship.
Do it now. Now is the time to forgive the child you were, the child who was ashamed, angry, or afraid. You were just a child. Forgive the shame. You reacted as any child would, and today you can see that whatever you were ashamed of then would pass, and ultimately it wouldn't matter. Forgive the fear. Where did the fear come from? Your parents, who were doing their best to make everything okay? They tried to shield you. They did the best they could. Forgive them. Let your anger go. Today you're no longer angry at whatever made you angry yesterday. Release it with forgiveness. You have what you have. This is your starting point.
Every day things happen that may put more obstacles in your path to wealth, that could create overwhelming hardships, that could leave terrible scars. Forgiveness is a never-ending process. It is not enough simply to forgive what happened in the past. You can learn from the setbacks that happen today, release them, and move on. Over time, with forgiveness, you will stop blaming your past for your present, and you will learn to take responsibility for your actions, financial and otherwise, today and forever. Take your financial destiny into your own hands and your own heart. See it as the act of courage it is.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Courage to Be Rich by Suze Orman Copyright © 2002 by Suze Orman. Excerpted by permission.
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