The one thing every woman needs to know about her money is…it’s HER money.
I often find myself smuggling in items of clothing or waiting for my S.O to be out before I slip the sneakers amongst the older well known crew.
And then, when “are those new?” gets dropped, I respond “no, last season” or “they didn’t fit so ‘n so and she passed them on”.
My lowest moment being when I asked to borrow R800 for groceries, knowing I would only spend half so I could use the remaining half on something I had been eyeing.
Guilty.
You may be judging me a little. That’s ok. I judged myself too, then I took a step back and wondered why I felt the need to act like Piper Chapman when I work an 08:00 – 17:00, nail my side hustle and can seriously make my own ends meet.
Therein lies the problem, I was acting like a criminal and so, I was allowing others to treat me like one.
Side note to explain what I mean: “acting as if” is a very powerful way of changing our state of being. Remember when your little male family member was playing his favourite super hero and he could literally fall out a tree and not cry because that particular character would never have cried should he have fallen out of a tree? Yet in real life, Timmy couldn’t keep it together if you didn’t share an Oreo with him? That’s what we are doing when we are “acting as if”.
We override reality and adopt the persona that we have bought into. As children, these persona’s are usually hero’s with traits that we worship. As adults, they have limiting, somewhat toxic traits that can keep us trapped.
When we adopt a poverty mind set of “I don’t deserve this” or a criminal mind set of guilt, our brains behave appropriately, as instructed, and so we “act as if” we are poor or we are criminals, making those around us respond accordingly, subconsciously of course.
What I intend each women to know after reading this is that, your money is yours. It is only yours from the second your earned it. The amount does not dictate your worth, or how much you deserve in life.
The moment you allow anyone else to determine how much you deserve in your life or what you should allow yourself to feel guilty about using your money for, is the moment you allow someone else to run the show, buying into a reality that is not your own but someone else’s, where you are just a minor character.
Everything in life is a trade. Skills for cash (your job), cash for wine (the bar), time for time (friendship), and skills for product (trade exchange), to name a few. We trade what ever it is, for most of us it is skill, for the money in our bank accounts.
Your finances inevitably will be required elsewhere in life. Responsibly, whether you are required to give half or all of it away due to family requirements or poor choices, isn’t for anyone to comment on. It is however, for you to know that that decision, and fulfilling it, is yours alone.
The free will to determine where your money goes and necessity to do so is on you because the trade that took place to get the money into your account is because of you, making the money YOURS.
It doesn’t belong to the person who you owe it to, it doesn’t belong to someone who did you a favour ages ago or to someone who earns more than you at home.
It is yours.
Money carries energy. Know that you have access to all the free will in the world, the money earned belongs to you and your power to choose and responsibly do what is necessary with YOUR money is yours.
As Candace Bushnell said “Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society”, why not make society squirm a little
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