The New Math

I've never been good at math. I remember my parents making a teacher give me extra math assignments so I could practice more. Hours and hours of sitting at the kitchen table with my father. I do a problem, and he'd ask me how I'd solved it. Most of time, it felt like dumb work. He'd look at me and say: "You have to understand the process." And I'd do the problem again. I'd start out fairly confident, but then around step 3 or 4, things would inevitably break down. I didn't know what to do next. I'd have a vague gut feeling and go with it. Sometimes it would get me the right answer, oftentimes, it wouldn't. But we'd stay at it. Failure didn't not seem to be an option. Looking back, I'm not sure why there was an insistence for me to "get math". The most valuable thing I learned was that it is in fact important to understand why I do what I do. This may be why I have always valued and sought out therapy.

Recently I came to the decision to stop seeing my therapist. I decided, just before the start of lent, that I needed to once and for all, start a grown up relationship with money. Ever since my first checking account, it's been one disaster after another. The CEO of Bank of America probably has a small bathroom in his house named in my honor, financed of my overdraft fees. I'd heard a financial expert on NPR touting her 21 day financial freedom plan. I bought the book, and jumped right in. (Head first) In order to complete her plan, I went on a 21 day financial fast, stopping any non-essential spending, and completing one task a day to lay the groundwork for financial freedom.

Day 7 involved the creation of a budget. My husband has our budget on his laptop on an Excel spreadsheet. Every so often, he brings the laptop home in order to go over the finances, either by my request of his insistence. He'd show me where we were spending our money and the areas where we overspent. I always took the overspending as solely my responsibility. I received a sum of money each month. It's for groceries, household expenses, things for our son, the pets, etc. Any money leftover was for me to use anyway I wanted to. Without fail, I was always left with more month than money. I'd always need to borrow from the main checking account in order to make it to the end of the month. A lot of times, even that didn't work. I would overdraw my checking account and get whacked with $35 overdraft fees on end.

These money talks, meant to be informational and empowering, always left me with a deep sense of shame. I'd vow that this time, I would do better. I'd download an app so I could track my expenses. I'd make up a spreadsheet of my own so I would know what I was doing. I closed the account and reopened another so I'd have a fresh start and there would no way I could go wrong. It would go well for a while, but it never lasted. The checks bounced, the spending continued, as did the recriminations, the self-flagellation, the fear, and the shame.

Shame had a running buddy. Hate. I pride myself on being a very capable and competent woman. I pride myself on being beyond capable, driving myself achieve the absolute best in whatever it was I was doing. I can not, for the life of my, understand my blind spot with money. My relationship with money is beyond dysfunctional.