I Had to be Honest with Myself

From an early age I had an unhealthy relationship with money. I grew up in a happy, middle-class home, but with a clear sense that money was always tight. Getting money or having someone buy me something meant love, whether it was my grandmother palming me a little spending money or my mom buying me clothing (whipping out the credit card and muttering, “Your father is going to have a fit.”)  

When I had money, I spent it. Period. Any time I went on a trip or out shopping with friends, I had to buy something. I got a part-time job in high school at a local book store. 90% of my money went right back into the book store or was quickly spent other places. I managed to save a paltry sum and spent it (of course) on a camera to take with me to college.

My parents encouraged me to go wherever I wanted to for college, despite the fact that I could have attended the university where my father taught for free. They and I took out enormous sums of parent and student loans for the small, private four-year liberal arts college I attended. I went on to a 16-month graduate program which was also financed with loans.

In college I got my first credit card, as so many of us do, with a $500 limit. I heard all the admonitions about using it sparingly and always paying off the balance in its entirety. I think that lasted a month. Maybe two. They kept raising my limit. I kept spending.

By the time I got married, I was $40,000 in debt. But I had no sense of reality about money. This staggering sum was meaningless to me. It was par for the course. It was just what you did to live.

We bought our first home in when the housing market was at an all-time low. Shortly thereafter, things took off and our home nearly doubled in value over the next 8 years. We used it as an ATM, paying off all of our credit cards, student loans and our car, making home improvements, paying off all our credit cards again, and then paying them all off a third time. When the house was maxed and the credit card balances started climbing again, we began liquidating savings—my old 401K from one job, an IRA of my husbands, some stock we received as a gift, some stock I had received from a job. Over and over we would pay it all off, resolve never to use the cards again, and within a year, would be over $5K in debt.

In the end, I have no idea of how much money we actually spent on credit cards over all those years. And I have no idea what we spent it on.

In 2004, I began working a rigorous food recovery program. That program taught me, for the first time in my life, the concept of “enough.” What a gift! It spilled over into every area of my life. We downsized our “stuff.” I “weighed and measured” our Christmas. The spending was cut way back.

But a low undercurrent of unease persisted around money. In 2007 I quit working outside the home. My children were both experiencing serious behavioral and academic challenges (multiple diagnoses of ADHD, Tourette’s, Asperger’s, Dysthymia, Sensory Processing Disorder, yada yada yada, would come later) and I knew I needed to be available for what I sensed was coming down the pike.

On paper, it looked like we could afford this. I was a whiz with an Excel spreadsheet and when I put in our income and our expenses, the numbers balanced beautifully.

Except the reality never EVER matched up with what was in the spreadsheet. There was always some unexpected expense (usually one that we should have expected.) Things always cost more than we thought they would. We always ran out of money and had to use a credit card. Saving was out of the question.

I began expressing my frustrations about this on my outreach calls in my other program. A fellow in that program was working DA-HOW. She never once pushed me or said, “You need DA-HOW.” She would only ever say, “I have had that experience, too. I work DA-HOW. This is what it has done for me.”

I did not want a second program.

But as it says in the AA 12 & 12, once an addict plants in the mind of another addict the true nature of our malady, that addict can never be the same. Like it or not, I had to be honest with myself. I had to recognize that my spending behavior was a lot like my eating behavior had been. I had to admit that I was powerless over money and that my financial life was unmanageable. I gave up and I gave in. And here I am.

I have not used a credit card in four and a half years. Our income has not changed much. I did not go back to work outside the home. All I did was use the tools of the program the way we do it in HOW, and work the Steps. I am solvent. I have real serenity around money. I am slowly but surely paying off the remainder of my credit card debt. I have done powerful work around vision and have just begun working a part-time job that absolutely feeds my soul in every way.

Money is still tight. We just don’t make that much of it. But my family’s needs are met one day at a time. I don’t live in fear. The vagueness is gone. I know exactly how much debt I have and what that number actually means. I have a very humble amount of savings, but it is more than I have ever been able to save in the past.

My life is challenging. But I am reminded that this program is not about learning how to become solvent. It is about learning how to live life on life’s terms without using spending and debting.

My life is beautiful. Thank you, DA-HOW.

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