I did an interview with the money management app company Cleo.
They wanted to talk to me about how money impacts our mental health and what we can do about the ways in which it often seems to undermine us emotionally.
The link to the interview comes through while I am looking at ceramic barbecues and telling myself that they’re too expensive, that I don’t need one, and that it’s shameful I should even consider spending so much money on what is basically a fire when we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
I’ve always had an odd relationship with money.
I don’t exactly worry about it but I do feel a lot of guilt and shame about spending it on myself, especially when other people can see that I have done so, which is why I have bought a lot of valuable guitars and then hidden them under the beds.
Growing up money was either a source of shame or conflict and neither did much to help me feel comfortable around it.
My embarrassing habit of taking money from my mother’s purse, and sometimes from my older brother’s pocket when he was in the bath, and then spaffing it with abandon at the amusement arcade was, I can see now, a cry for attention, but it still makes me cringe when I think about it.
“We can’t afford it” became a trope for an unhappy household where it was often hard to pin down exactly what my parents were unhappy with each other about.
So I grew up with a scarcity mindset.
Beyond my teens, I never got into any debt, always paid my credit cards off in full every month, and never lived beyond my means. Whatever constituted a happy and balanced existence definitely included having some money when you needed it.
We invented money to make our lives easier but we find ourselves now enslaved to it.
Where once, presumably, we valued emotional wealth above all else we now place greater emphasis on financial wealth and it seems to have made us more miserable.
I often feel I have the balance right when it comes to prioritising emotion over money but it does manifest in questionable ways.
I will buy steak for my dogs but balk at the price for myself in a rather pathetic hope that they will appreciate my generosity.
I watch as they wolf down their dinner waiting for a smile and a “thank you” that never comes.
When we are going out and leaving the (adult) children to take care of the dogs I say,
“I’ll buy you a takeaway so you don’t have to cook,” which is unnecessary generosity triggered by guilt at having an evening out for the first time in about 18 months.
In the end, I realise that this is a foolish and unnecessary expense and buy them pizzas from the supermarket. I consider Aldi but go for M&S so as not to appear a cheapskate, although I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to be called a food snob because that feels as shameful as spending money on myself.
Out for an evening with my friend Adam we discuss our shared difficulty in treating ourselves.
“I’ve always told myself that it’s better to save in case I need the money one day, but now I’ve started to realise that I’m running out of days,” I tell him.
Walking home afterward on an unseasonably cold spring evening I think about how lucky I am to have all that I’ve got and how taking care of other people and dogs with my money might not be such a bad way of using it.
Maybe it’s best I leave it to the children to decide whether to buy a barbecue.
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