I go to the party first, I play with my kids. I have Mark and Liza over for a party, we do the Easter egg hunt. I practice the piano, I'll paint a room, I'll trim the roses, I'll play with the dog, and then if there's nothing left to do, I'll even do the laundry. And when there's no laundry left, I'll take out the paper work, OK?
I know people who say they can't cook, and they live mostly on take-out food. I know a woman who prepares dinner no more than six times a year; fortunately for her she married a man who enjoys cooking. A lot of people operate their financial affairs with the same desire to distance themselves from the experience, usually because money intimidates them. They are "take-out" junkies. Their finances are, figuratively speaking, packed in styrofoam and are planned daily.
If you think that your financial situation is unmanageable, you might choose the common alternative of letting things seek their own level. People in this frame of mind ask themselves, "Gee, I wonder how this month will turn out?" Some people develop a lottery mentality, a hope that an unplanned windfall will erase all of life's financial problems in one glorious moment. That is not planning, that is wishing. Wishing is desire without action. We avoid actions that we think are too difficult for us. Fortunately, the action of managing money is easier when we are properly informed.
A feeling of incompetence with regard to money can derive from many sources. Women are often taught that money is beyond their understanding. Sons and daughters of rich parents may be intimidated by pressures, real or imagined, to compete with a performance they feel is beyond them.
I also see people avoid making money plans because they want to maintain a jaunty air of recklessness about them. There is a certain frontier bravado that these people like. There is no limit to the imaginative ideas that can be substituted for a sound financial plan. This book is for that time in your life when you are done with such substitutes.
While I speak in this book of a rational approach to money, I also acknowledge that few of us are rational about money. Thomas Moore says in Care of the Soul that money resists rational approaches. We must accept this paradox and work through it. Money is mysterious in much the same way that sex is mysterious. Money has aspects that are shadowy and confusing and often hypnotic in their appeal. We must face mystery if we are to enjoy life. The mysteries of life are the best parts! My advice is to approach the mystery of money with a blend of caution, curiosity, and a desire to be entertained. All the while it is important to preserve the awareness that this is an experience, so that you do not merge your sense of personal identity with money itself. People who look at their financial affairs and think they are seeing the reflection of their inner worth are supremely unhappy in their confusion. To think that increasing wealth simultaneously increases personal fulfillment leads to disappointment. If, however, we remain aware that money is a mystery to be experienced rather than something to own and dominate, we will have a largely positive encounter with it.
The word appreciate has largely been mistaken to mean grateful. The real meaning of appreciate is to be aware of the unique identity and value of something. To appreciate a painting means to recognize the effort and talent that was necessary to create it, and to have empathy with the artist in his or her struggle to access the vision needed to conceive of the image in the first place. Appreciating something means we know what makes it special. We are discerning observers when we appreciate what we see.
We can achieve harmony with money by appreciating it. This means that we learn from our experiences with it. If we are short of money, we learn that the condition is a result of isolation and separation from the community of people. This isolation is something we experience as unemployment or underemployment. We tend to take this condition personally. It is little comfort to know that Amadeus Mozart died poor and without many friends. Being without money may also mark a metaphorical winter in our lives, a time of barren fields and stillness and cold. It is possible to know our own winter even in the midst of friends who are busy harvesting the fields they have tended all summer.
When we have abundant money, we can learn to enjoy it without confusing that abundance with our own ego and its notions about itself. Appreciation is not fashionable in our times. We live in a time of polarization, a time of "either/or" thinking that discourages genuine appreciation. In order to become appreciative we must be willing to step aside from the crowd. Appreciation consists of noting differences without being judgmental and rejoicing in the uniqueness of things.
I recommend enjoying money itself apart from the amount of it that is accumulated.
If you are already comfortable with money management, and you are interested in expanding your knowledge of specific techniques and financial instruments, there are ample resources available to you. Wholistic Taxes does not attempt to add to your knowledge in that regard. Visit any book store or magazine stand, and you will see an abundance of advice in print. A constant stream of this material is necessary since the financial world is in a state of continuous change.
What is not so easy to find is the path through our fears and misconceptions to a clearing where we can recognize good advice and apply it. This is my reason for devoting a large portion of this book to counseling, and a lesser portion to discussions of specific techniques. To a person who has messy finances, a well-ordered, disciplined life often seems like the result of luck or special privilege. I like the definition of luck as "preparation meeting opportunity." If we are unprepared, luck is largely wasted on us anyway and we miss the opportunities. This book is intended to prepare you to be lucky.
Some people avoid planning a money strategy because they think money is bad, some kind of necessary evil. They endeavor to minimize the time they spend on this awful subject. I agree that money is mysterious. I agree that it is easy to become involved in compelling fantasies and delusions that center on money. It is tempting to use money to measure ourselves and our accomplishments, and to mistake its power as our own. All of these pitfalls are aspects of the mysteriousness of money. I do not think money is bad. I know that many people will not mention money in their prayers, including those prayers that include requests for other objects and experiences. For many people, money is tainted and not an appropriate subject for prayers. We may exclude it from conversation with friendly mortals too, and for the same reasons.
Generally a person will sidestep an encounter with a potentially embarrassing question or situation. Since this strategy does not indicate courage or maturity, most of us will go the next step and cover up the evasion. We pretend that we stayed our original course and any perceived change was either coincidental or proper or both. As a final safeguard, we make a policy of not discussing such things. We evade, cover up the evasion, and forbid conversation about evasions and cover-ups in general lest the conversation turn our way and the light be directed at us. That combination of tactics usually produces a pretty airtight defense against embarrassment.
Having said that, most people are embarrassed about money. This puts my job of planning and filing taxes on a par with dentistry in terms of its appeal to some of my clients. People are reluctant to talk to one another about money, and they are reluctant to make plans where money is concerned. Let me say that even a sketchy plan is better than no plan at all. Any plan provides a reference point for change and improvement. Having no plan is the equivalent of empty space, or blank pages. It provides zero guidance. You have no way of knowing which action produced which result.
Experts who study organizational change have observed that inefficient companies consistently lack information about themselves. They are vague about work flow, routing of information and authority, job descriptions, and the organizational chart usually looks like a plate of spaghetti. Efficient companies, in contrast, have a large amount of information about themselves and their environment. Information is a root cause of change, and the warmer the welcome extended to information, the more easily change is implemented. This is true for companies and for individuals. The more you know about your finances, the more likely it is that you are at peace with money. Death and taxes are certainties in our life; the main difference is we know when taxes are due. It is well to face death with our house in order. The same is true for taxes. With proper planning, you can avoid unpleasant surprises at tax time. I am such a strong advocate of tax planning that I apply the client's entire fee for initial tax planning to the charges for doing that year's tax return. This is to get the client thinking about the importance of tax planning.
Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist and philosopher, said, "Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life's possibilities." He went on to say, "Money experienced as life energy is indeed a meditation..."11 Thomas Moore writes in Care of the Soul that money is "so filled with fantasy and emotion and resistant to rational guidance, that although it has much to offer, it can easily swamp the soul and carry consciousness off into compulsion and obsession." Accountants seldom use such language, but they are discussing the same topic. Accountants miss the dramatic themes that permeate the subject of money. They teach us details about housekeeping, but not the real meaning money represents. The wholistic approach to money recognizes the validity of both perspectives.
It is useful to identify what money "feels like." Does money, in the abstract sense, feel like sand to a kid in a sandbox? Throw it in the air to see if the wind will carry it? Does money feel precise and specific, a thing to be placed carefully and then watched? Until we know how money "feels" we do not understand our relationship with it and our expectations of it.
Those who are viewed as stingy often find comfort only when they are extremely orderly in their spending habits. It is the orderliness that they feel is mandated, so no matter how much money they have, they continue to handle it in an orderly way. Greed is not the same as extreme thrift. Greed is a reaction to something we want to avoid. The feverish pursuit of money is usually driven by a fear of poverty. Those who appreciate money are not driven to hoard it. The starting point for self-discovery is to identify the metaphor that describes the experiences you have when you handle money. Take a piece of paper and write, "When I have money come to me it feels like …" Finish the sentence several times. Usually the first responses will be polite and practiced and quite dull. The revealing responses come only after several attempts.
When I was a teenager, one of my friends, Danny, never had money for small things, sodas, gum, candy, and so forth, but he was always the first one to get a new surfboard or bicycle. He was willing to be thought of as "cheap" on small items because larger items were his priorities.
For Dave, a devout Mormon, none of the reigning economic systems make sense. "I think they are all wrong," he says. "The only economic system I really believe in is the one God would have, and yet the world never really has." He believes the ideal system replaces the notion of ownership with stewardship. His system, he believes, eliminates extremes of poverty and wealth because the rich have no inclination to keep more than they need. Dave has eight children. His biggest personal extravagance is the occasional purchase of a book. He buys his clothes at the church thrift shop, and does so only when something falls apart and must be replaced.
Dave thinks society has become overly dependent on mass-produced goods and that self-sufficiency has fallen to a dangerously low level. He fears that the portion of the population that knows how to make useful things has grown perilously small while the number of sandwich makers and data entry clerks has mushroomed. He thinks this shift changes a stable societal pyramid into a column.
Dave's primary goal is "to not lose sight of that society, and whenever I can, to bring it about. I don't have any really hard ideas about how I am going to do that, but just to be ready, and this is a religious thing. The leaders will make us aware of the need to make ourselves self-sufficient as a people."
One wonderful lady I served died in 1985 at the age of 80. For the last decade of her life she supported herself entirely from her Social Security check, which was about $600 each month. The odd thing about this woman was that she had a monthly income of more than $10,000 and an estate valued in excess of $3,000,000. She had lived through the depression and came out of it with an overwhelming compulsion to save money. When she passed away, her heirs immediately went about enjoying her money. They had no memory of the depression and thought their relative's way of life was unusually stringent.
Our point of view about money shapes our experiences with it. It is informative to identify the metaphors that describe our experience of money and the physical sensations that we associate with money. These steps help in that discovery. My prescription involves two treatments:
q Recognize that money is more than record keeping and decision making. It is an emotionally-charged and mysterious aspect of life.
q If money management is a problem for you, the solution is to examine your belief system about money, and abandon or change the parts of it that don't produce the life you want for yourself.
For many people this includes the way they handle credit card debt, which may create a nagging feeling of being fiscally irresponsible. When you identify habits that hold you back from going in the direction that appeals to you, you can't rest until you get your freedom.
If you find yourself experiencing great discomfort over the way you handle money, one of two things is happening. You are trying to live in step with someone else's value system and it conflicts with your own in painful ways, or you are operating with too little information and getting too little a return on your efforts and time. The latter problem is the equivalent of stubbing your toes in a dark room. The remedy is more knowledge, and that is what this book provides.
If you are compulsive about spending, your problem may not be money focused at all. Money management is more likely a symptom of a broader concern. I recommend exploring your views in a comprehensive way using Bradshaw and Chopra for clues to guide you to an understanding of what moves you. See the bibliography for specific suggestions.
For many of us, the murkiness of money as an issue in our lives
is complicated by a concern that we might be greedy and that being
greedy is bad. Webster's Dictionary defines greed as
"excessive desire for acquiring or having; desire for more than one
needs or deserves." This definition of greed works better for me: Greed is
the compulsive pursuit of the opposite of what you want to avoid.
You can make savings seem more urgent by reminding yourself that the car will need repairs. Someone you love will invite you to attend their wedding 2,000 miles away. And countless other things will happen that will cost money. These are bills in the same compelling sense of the word as the bills sitting on your desk waiting for you to write a check. You might as well set money aside to pay them now because their arrival is a certainty.
The amount of savings I recommend is ten percent of your take home pay. When your income is large, it makes sense to expand this amount because your basic needs are met with much less than 90 percent of your income. If you cannot, or think you cannot manage ten percent, set any amount you want. The point is to establish a consistent habit of saving something, and increase it when you can.
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