BlogHer - Rich Woman, Poor Woman, Shopper or Bag Lady? - Comments

I'm more a work in progress...

sassymonkey — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 14:49:36 -0600

I'm still in the baby stages. I have a heck of a lot of student loan debt and I still have balances on my credit cards (they are shrinking).

My issues stem from the fact that I was never taught what to do with money because no one in my family ever really had money. I was taught how to live on little money when that's all that you have (very useful when you are a starving university student) but I was never taught what to do when I actually started earning a decent wage. The world of saving and investing was completely foreign to me and totally scary. I'm slowly getting more familiar with it.

I think there were two big things for me. One is that that I was tired of the month to month struggle. I had money so I'd spend it and then I'd have none and panic. A familiar pattern for me but not healthy. The second is that I really started to allow myself to think about what I wanted for myself. And I decided what I was doing wasn't it. It's a hard adjustment.

sassymonkey you are a role model

Elisa Camahort — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 12:06:34 -0600

I struggle with the fact that my S.O. and I have different attitudes towards money. He makes a ton of it, so he just doesn't seem to take it seriously.

I've made a ton of it in my life, but I always kept saving and being careful, so I could do exactly what I did: quit my high paying misery-making job and forge a different path.

I don't need him and his money to get by (although it certainly helps pay the blls we share.) But nor do I want to hit retirement age and find he needs me to get by!

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Oddly enough...

sassymonkey — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 10:51:30 -0600

It was a relationship that made me start to face my issues with money. The man that I was dating was *horrid* with money. His bank account was constantly in overdraft and he still kept buying crap. He was basically hemorrhaging financially. But he was somehow convinced that he was better with money than I was because he had a savings bond and I didn't have any savings. Within six months of our breakup I seriously started thinking about money (partly because I suddenly had more since I didn't have to pay his way all the time). I started reading about financial planning. I took courses to round out my work experience so that I would be more employable. A year and a half after we broke up I picked up and moved to a new city where I would have better employment opportunties. Things were a bit rough while I was job hunting but I did eventually find a job in a new field within 5 months. Because of the combination of my work experience and the courses I took I was able to start in a new field at an intermediate level. My take home pay is twice was it was before. I'm able to make my student loan payments live on my own, pay down credit card debt, and have a savings account that is growing every month! All things that weren't completely possible in my past life. And I still am able to go out and do stuff. I'm not hiding in my apartment all the time.

It's so great to see BlogHers taking control of their financial lives. It could be argued that I could be doing a lot more and maybe what I'm doing isn't enough for other people. But it's working for me and it's a start. And I know that I never have to rely on anyone other than myself for financial security.

Awesome Chantel!

Maria Niles — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 13:02:59 -0600

So glad to hear that you are empowering yourself! There are lots of great resources in this post, plus on the BlogHer Business and Career blogroll. I'd encourage you to also check out pfblogs.org which is a fantastic aggregator of personal finance blogs. Nina's blog (see the previous comment) Sitting Pretty is one of my favorites, as well.

Money is a tough subject to deal with but I know I've learned the hard way that ignoring it doesn't make things better and even though I doubt anyone ever really has it all figured out, we are all better off the more we empower ourselves with knowledge.

Relationships Gone Bad

Chantel Williams — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 12:21:29 -0600

I identify with a bad relationship with money. I fear money and i usually cringe when I get my paycheck because there usually just isn't enough even though I have fairly low debt.

I really like this topic and I will check out all of your resources here to help myself establish a better relationship.

Chantel Williams
BlogHer Contributing Editor - Personal Blogs
http://lifeandtimesofchantel.blogspot.com

Bag Lady

Nina Smith — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:27:13 -0600

Your post has a lot of punch. There's much to be said on the "stop spending" topic. One of my favorite lines from Sex and the City: "If I don't stop shopping, I'll end up a bag lady; a Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady" - Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw

Nina Smith at Sitting Pretty
Newport Beach, CA

Rich Woman, Poor Woman, Shopper or Bag Lady?

Maria Niles — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 01:14:52 -0600

Is obsessively gazing at our financial navels, feeling poor (even when we are not by world standards), feeling ashamed of the money we make, the money we don't make, the money we spend, the money we save, the crap we buy, the crap we can't buy... just an American thing? Just a female thing?

It seems like these questions have been on the collective minds of many a writer lately. Allow me to point you towards some provocative articles and BlogHers that have something to say on the subject.

Alternet (a bloggy and politically liberal news site) offers us an examination of poverty, environmentalism and consumerism in Really Simple Starvation, written by Elizabeth Chin who is an associate professor in the department of critical theory and social justice at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Professor Chin notes that "living simply" is a luxury of the wealthy (how else would one suffer from the "stresses of overabundance?") whom she defines as "nearly every citizen of every wealthy nation." She does note that there are people living in poverty in the U.S. and that, ironically,

The limited nature of their consumer environment means that everyday tasks take much longer, and usually end up costing more.

In The New York Times, (usual disclaimers - go now, if you get there too late, search the title - the link - to see if it has been syndicated) Anna Bernasek notes that we use a poverty line that's out of date and out of favor. Bernasek asks "why not insist on an official yardstick that works — especially when obvious improvements can readily be made?" and then points out that "Rebecca M. Blank, dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a professor of economics, says she thinks that such a yardstick is possible." Also, the article points out that if these recommended alternative measures were in use,

the poverty rate would have risen about two percentage points above the official rate of 12.5 percent. That's not a big adjustment in percentage terms, but it would add more than five million people to the current poverty count

So now that you feel either embarrassingly wealthy or potentially impoverished if you are American - consider this - in some parts of the world, being a multi-millionaire still won't pull you up out of poverty (hat tip to Frugal for Life for the link). Sigh.

So what's a belly examining gal supposed to do? Well, for one, screw appearances and risk looking rich by living simply in the vein of author Judith Levine who wrote Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. At least think about it because as Marjorie Kehe notes in The Christian Science Monitor,

By thinking harder about how it would feel to consume less we might just make ourselves - and our planet - a lot better.

While pondering this concept, check out the savvy saver's month of not spending and NYC Money's thoughts on what exactly is a necessity, prompted by reading Levine's book. And on a related note, Jane Genova gives an updated on her vow of poverty - 28 months later. Why did she take a vow of poverty? Because, she says,

I wanted to become a writer -- and a less frightened human being.

And if figuring out our relative poverty or wealth wasn't angsty enough, women tend to fear money according to Liz Perle, author of Money: A Memoir. As Perle points out in an interview with Kristen Gerencher of MarketWatch,

Separating material desires and emotional needs from the business of making a living proves difficult for many, she said. "Money and love are very commingled for women, and money, and fear and money, and scarcity — the bag-lady fear."

But burying our heads, ostrich-like, is a mistake because as Perle also points out "women may not realize it, but their reluctance to face up to their conflicted feelings about money may cost them dearly." A few BlogHers are not afraid. Read:

Women fearing money? by Debt Hater

I used to have a bulimic relationship with money. Like a self-righteous anorexic I would hold on to every penny, but I didn't invest it and make it work for me, because I didn't know how. I prided myself on denial -- denying myself that new jacket, the new shoes, the trip to wherever, the dinner out, the expensive brand of orange juice. I held on to the money with an iron death grip.

A review from Mapgirl

In Women and money at Seeking Serendipity, NewsGirly confesses that "the lower my salary, the prouder I was that I could live on it."

And, while examining her life, the Budgeting Babe Nicole realizes that "I'm worth way more than they pay me [and] sometimes I secretly smile about just how great my life is." Nicole - for that you are more fierce than Tyra!

Postscript: For some snarky inspiration on what crap to buy, check out The Impulsive Buy (a favorite of BlogHer CE Mir) or on how not to buy crap, check out Stop Buying Crap and if you fail at not buying crap, console yourself in Cap's series, Woops, Bought Crap.