Today, I’m starting a new and entirely sporadically-posted series called Forgeative Experiences. These posts will focus on events that forged my mindset toward earning and spending money. I admit up front that some of my feelings and approaches toward money are wholly partially irrational, if not a bit unhealthy. But they’re hardwired and hard to undo. But I’m trying
I’ve touched on one such forgeative experience — attending law school and then paying off my law school debt — in a prior post: Law School Broke Me. But I hadn’t then thought of this series with the catchy name. So that post will have to look longingly at the posts in this series from here on out. To that post I say: I hope you have learned your lesson. That’ll serve you to come into your author’s mind before he thinks of a not-so cool series to put you into.
On (the) edge
Anyhoo, back to business. My parents divorced when I was three years old. After the divorce, there was no real question that my younger brother and I would live with mom. Because 1970s.
Mom had been a stay-at-home mom since I was born. I think she’d sporadically held some jobs at various points before that. Dad worked full time.
After the divorce, mom had to get a job. With little work experience, and this being the 1970s when women’s employment options were limited and women were even more openly discriminated against than now, her options were scarce. She took a low-paying, full-time job. That income, supplemented by alimony payments from dad and, I am pretty sure, some help from my maternal grandmother, allowed mom to pay the bills.
But well-off our little household was not. As far as I can reacall, I didn’t want for anything. But there were few frills or thrills. And mom often spoke of our precarious financial situation.
On at least one instance mom noted that we teetered on the edge of being able to live in our modest apartment and being forced to go on public aid and live in a dangerous housing project. I’m not sure how much truth there was to that, but the fact that I can remember it more than 40 years later shows that the statement scared the snot out of me was impactful.
Scarce tactics
The concept of money has since held an outsized place in my psyche. And not necessarily an all-positive one. Even now — when we objectively have reached a point of financial security that even two or three years ago I could hardly have conceived of — I worry a probably unhealthy amount of time about our finances. And I undeniably have a scarcity mindset. Cutting expenses comes much more naturally to me than figuring out ways to make more money. And I frequently think of ways to lower our expenses and fret over expenses I know we could cut or hack, but for various reasons have chosen not to. Tho this isn’t bad, it’s not necessarily all good.
As you, Dear Reader, will learn from subsequent posts in this series (and that outlier post referenced above), I’ve had several experiences that reinforced this money mindset. But I think this early experience set the framework for everything that followed.
I’m not just a little envious of other bloggers whose childhood experiences either gave them the space to experiment with ways to generate income, or that instilled in them a drive to hustle. That’s a mindset I know is (or, at least, can be) positive and that I’m trying to adopt. But it doesn’t come naturally to me.
I’ve benefitted perhaps more than anything from the fact that I learned some apparently marketable skills in school, entered the legal profession — in which there’s a fair amout of opportunity and, shall we say, less than business-savvy lawyers running the show at most firms, which allows for disproportionately high salaries compared to other industries — and apparently am a decent sort who people don’t mind being around. That can be chalked up to luck as much as anything.
This combination of factors has allowed me to get fairly generously compensated for probably subpar work. But for better or worse, it’s also limited the impact of my struggle with developing and implementing (high-)income-generating side hustles. To be sure, I’m not trying to make excuses. Just identifying a situation that I, myself, have had a hard time overcoming. In the grand scheme of things, this is a “problem” of the smallest order. I am beyong blessed and lucky.
I have started to take action and over the last few years have started various side hustles. None has proved to be the mother lode, but each has been a learning experience, and most have provided me with income I’d otherwise not have had. I’m excited to keep plugging at this.
In future posts I’ll let you in on other forgeative experiences for which you are free to mock me that have shaped my relationship to and approach concerning money. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on coming up with inventive ways to make money.
