November 2017

It began with a magic trick. When I was young a friend of my father\’s would pull a quarter out from behind my ear, and then make it disappear again. This became an apt metaphor for my relationship with money: one moment there and the next moment gone, feeding two powerful feelings about money: insecurity and lots of fear about never getting it back. My next memory of money was of being gifted with Kennedy silver half dollars on my birthdays (one for every year). Not realizing their worth, I spent most of them, but when I moved some years ago I found a stash of them in a small black bag.

As a child, money was tight; often a stressful topic at our house. Money messages included being prudent, entrepreneurial and thrifty. I wore hand-me-down clothes, planted seeds in our victory garden and overheard as my parents argued over whose turn it was to pick up the food stamps. My father taught math at a local high school and then took to the streets as a Fuller Brush salesman in the evenings. To bring in additional income, my mom corrected high school English papers and my father managed apartments to reduce our rent. I learned about the importance of saving money, of looking for opportunities, and of working hard.