When my grandmother was a little girl her dad was paid at the end of each day. He came home with a pocket full of coins. Those coins were sorted into old tea cups that sat on the window sill. One tea cup was for rent and one was for food. Every need had a cup. There was even a cup for shoes. My grandmother knew that once the shoe cup had enough money, she could have new shoes. Until then, the cup waited, perhaps with nothing more than a dime, until the shoe money was saved. My grandmother understood the value of money and how it flowed. She and her family talked about it. She could see it, sitting in the cups.
The next generation had bank accounts, with ledgers, written in pencil, to be balanced. Money was not as tangible, but you could still look at the numbers to understand the value and flow. People talked about money, how hard it was to come by, and how you had to work for it. The actual numbers were no longer discussed, the passbooks were secret.
The generation after that, my generation, has plastic money. A credit card or a debit card, either way, it is harder to get a handle on the flow. People talk about it as if it were an endless stream or they don’t talk about it at all. People keep purchases secret from their spouses or lie about the amounts. The leading cause of divorce is money issues but money is a taboo subject. How can we get along if we can’t talk about the one thing we don’t understand about each other?
Will the next generation be even further removed from their cash? Will there be no cash at all? A phone app to be clicked on for purchases is already a reality. The further removed from cash we are, the less “real” it becomes. The less “real” it becomes, the more control money has over us. The more control the people who understand money have over us, too.
The recession came, in part, because the general population doesn’t get how the flow of money works. They think it just comes, “the universe is infinite”, they say. The universe is infinite but money is not, not unless you print more of it.
Talk about money, especially with your spouse and kids. Keep cash in your wallet and a note pad to track purchases. Tea cups are probably not as helpful today, but if envelopes work for you, go for it. Read everything you can get your hands on but don’t believe any of it (yet), keep reading until you get a clear picture. If we put money back in the open, we will have a better understanding of the flow and how it works in our lives. If we have honest conversations about money we will learn to manage it better. No more “Don’t go there”. It is time to ask the questions and discuss the ramifications. Money should no longer be a secret.