IN MY ENGLISH CLASS in junior high school, we read a play called I Remember Mama. It was a story about a poor Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco in the early 1900s.
The mother ran the household while her husband went to work and the children went to school. The mother was in charge of the family’s finances. Any time a family member needed extra money, he or she would have to ask Mama for it. She’d listen to the request and, if it was critical, she’d get the money from the petty cash fund. If there wasn’t enough petty cash, she’d ask the person if it was important enough to justify withdrawing money from the bank. Upon further review, the person would say it wasn’t.
The big surprise: As we learn at the end of the play, there was no bank account. Instead of saying, “we can’t afford it,” Mama wanted family members to decide on their own that the item wasn’t important. This would allow them to save face and not feel poor. They squelched the desire themselves and moved on.
My mother-in-law would tell me of her upbringing in New York City. Her parents were Chilean immigrants who didn’t have a lot of money. They raised their six kids on her father’s salary. They were poor, but so was everybody else in the neighborhood, so they never thought of themselves as poor. My mother-in-law’s life was just like the characters in the play. With money so tight, she constantly had to decide that some purchases just weren’t important.
A digression: Two famous actors came from the neighborhood. When they were kids, Lauren Bacall and Burt Lancaster were friends with my mother-in-law’s siblings.
What I found most interesting about I Remember Mama: Because family members believed the bank account was only to be used for the most important items, it made them reconsider what they wanted.
I’ve inadvertently adopted the same mindset. Money that’s automatically deposited into my checking account is used for daily expenses. Once I move that money to a savings or investment account, I never use it. I could, of course. But in a classic example of mental accounting, I think of this money the way Mama’s family thought about the bank account. It’s never to be used except for the most important things.
I’m not suggesting this approach is for everyone. I’m cheap. Moving money out of the checking account makes these dollars sacred and not to be used. The benefit of my mental lockdown is that my money grows at the expense of a luxurious lifestyle.
By contrast, money burns a hole in my son’s pocket. When I give him money, he can’t wait to spend it. The problem is, he never decides what he wants to spend it on. He just wants to spend it. The result: Tip jars are filled and money is left on the restaurant table, even if we leave a tip using our credit card. My son would benefit from this “sacred dollar” mentality, but it’ll never happen.
Still, for spendthrifts, adopting some mental trickery could allow them to reduce their debts and build up an emergency fund. They must believe the emergency fund is crucially important and the items they’re tempted to buy hold less value than maintaining that rainy-day fund. If not, the money will be spent—and they’ll never enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having a cash reserve.
YES, I feel most of life is a mind game trick to be adapted and implemented.
How we act is up to us after all.
As a spendthrift who was told, rightly so, by his parents that money burns a hole in your pocket, I eventually got with the saving program-after digging myself a huge hole and continuing to dig for a few years. The discipline I finally imposed on myself to dig out of the hole carried forward into saving. For someone who has been in a bad place, there are few better feelings than achieving financial independence. Long story made short: Don’t give up on your son, perhaps he will eventually find a way.
I have a slight variation since SS is the only income that routinely comes into our checking account. I determine how much we will need to supplement our SS (I’m not at RMD age yet and all dividends in my IRA are reinvested for now) and put it into laddered T-bills redeemable at regular periods during the year. I don’t allow myself to liquidate any other investments but hold myself to the T-bills. We’re still in the early years of what we hope will be a long retirement but the system seems to be working so far.
I feel the same way about money deposited in my checking account.
I didn’t know “I Remember Mama” was a play. I remember the 1950s TV show of the same name.
Not just a play but first a book…”Mama’s Bank Account” and also a heartwarming, sentimental movie starring Irene Dunne as the matriarch of the Hansen family. A story of family love, not so common a theme in today’s society.