Money Morning Musings

For the last few years I have been saying that I am really going to get a better understanding of money and how it all works-or doesn’t. I can say that I have figured out lots of ways that it doesn’t. Growing up as a child of the 70’s and 80’s, money was never spoken about in our blue collar home. It was presumed that you would have a pension and benefits when you worked or all you had to do was get a 4 year degree in just about anything and you would be guaranteed a decent job. Well ain’t that a kick in the pants.

My parents divorced, leaving my mom, a once SAHM, a single working mother living off survival wages and child support. What I gleaned about money from that experience is how to pay Peter by robbing Paul whilst Mary was coming around. Good survival tactics, but not so great for thriving. I can’t necessarily blame my parents, they can only teach what they knew, and my grandparents were all survivors of the depression and WWII, so anything post 1947 must have seemed like a free for all boom, economically speaking.

So every year I keep telling myself I will finally figure it out, yet I am never really the wiser. I’ve tried reading articles and books about it, but its in a language I still can’t comprehend. Teach me like I am 4. But good luck getting anyone to teach you anything. When I approach the subject with people I know that are successful with their money, they are either offended that I even asked, or they with hold. And throwing the questions out on social media platforms has only rendered responses from people who are in the same proverbial boat. Its like taking advice on how to properly bail water out of a sinking ship. And please, if anyone mentions Dave Ramsey I will immediately block your butt. This is not about how to budget my money, its how does money work?

Is the concept of money so abstract that I am rendered stupefied or is my mind too abstract that I am missing it all? I really just don’t get it. Am I the only one?

Saturday Morning Musings

You know when you have something that keeps nagging your insides or keeps popping in your brain and you keep putting it off or just ignore it because your idea of what it is, isn’t something you want to live up to? No? Well this is it for me. I am a terrible journaler. (Is that a word?) I start off with grand intentions and can make it about 3 days, but then I peter out and  pack up some self shame and lug it around in my proverbial baggage for some unknown reason. Well, here is the deal: I am going to get back to writing, but I am letting go of any ideas of what it should look like, letting go of any spoken or unspoken expectations of how often and what it should be about and just allowing it to be what it is. My only hope is that some of it resonates with someone -because connection is what we all want, am I right?

So first of all, this is not a “New Year’s Resolution”. Getting back to writing my blog has been tapping me on the shoulder since May 2022, if not longer, but even more intensely this fall. So I am doing it. It will certainly reflect somethings that are on my ‘I am tired of not doing it, so I am doing it” list, but it will be as random as me. (Sidebar: how do you know if you have ADD as an adult? Asking for a friend….)

Speaking of friends, I just heard this song “Old Friends” by Ben Rector today. It was put out in 2018 but I just heard it today. It really has me thinking about how often people float in and out of your life. It is just the natural process of people on their individual journeys through life that you cross paths and become part of each others story. Which in and of itself is really kind of poetic and sweet, I mean unless one of those people was just an arse and left you with bad vibes. But even then, every good story has its villains and plot twists, its sad moments and its redemptions.

Its the sad moments that had me thinking. Have you ever had one of those friends that you thought you would be friends forever, but they outgrew you, or just moved on? Like ghosted you and they think that you can pick up right where you once were, as if there wasn’t 2 or more years that have passed, and think nothing of it? I have that. I have a few people that are/were in my life like that. Some I get, but there is one that really left me broken hearted and its been almost 20 years and it still hurts. How do you grieve a lost friendship when you are ghosted? Or when they truly believe you could pick up right where you left off after 20 years? Anyone else experience this? Or am I the only one and I sound pathetic and desperate?

So this went a bit dark. I promise my musings are not often dark, but that song really made me go into my feelings. Thanks for reading.