Everyone has a money story and a bias toward wealth. For instance, you may feel that providing your children with braces is a justifiable cost but that putting in a swimming pool would be frivolous. Or it may be o.k. for you to have a swimming pool but not o.k. to give your 16 year old a brand new car.
“Now that’s where I draw the line.”
Your line in the “money sand” is an arbitrary limit you have set based on your background, your upbringing, your parents’ status and income level, your perception of those with more or less money than you, and your judgment of their morality and integrity based on their level of wealth.
As children, we heard messages about other people and formed opinions about them based on the messages we were taught. Those messages (biases) could have been subtle or overt. And those biases included our parents/guardians’ judgments about money, about people who had very little of it and about people who had a lot of it.
As adults, we justify our expenses based on our money “story.”
And we define our earning potential by it as well!
Your line in the money sand is one you have drawn, knowingly or unknowingly. Because you’ve drawn it, you can also change it.
It requires a hard look at what level of wealth you find morally “acceptable” based on what you were taught. You won’t earn more than the line you draw.
- First, determine whose perspective you have adopted as your own.
- Define the messages you got from them about money.
- Determine what you actually believe about wealthy people.
- Lastly, draw a new line in the sand that feels right for you.
And don’t worry about what your parents will say. They drew their lines based on the messages they got as children. It’s sort of “hereditary.” You’re not going to set your wealth level based on what was “acceptable” to your great-great-great-grandparents, are you?
Be unreasonable!
Ann Vertel
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thank you for these encouraging stories.