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I thought I had overcome it when I retired and the numbers in the spreadsheet said it was practically a sure thing – financial security for life for my wife and me, and something meaningful left over for the children. It was a wonderfully liberating feeling when, freshly retired, we bought a home for our retirement near our families, a new car and joined the golf club, for the first time without a second thought.
So why have I spent the last three days waiting to change the battery in my mouse when it’s clearly ready to give up the ghost?
Jay Gatsby… or Ebenezer Scrooge.
Two men, two fortunes — and for neither is it really about the money at all.
Gatsby builds his fortune not to be rich but to rewrite his past and reclaim a love he believes wealth can buy. Scrooge guards his not to enjoy it but to wall himself off from a world he has learned to fear. One sends money outward as enchantment; the other locks it inward as armor. The ledger is only the surface. Underneath runs something older — a longing, a wound, a story told so long ago we’ve forgotten we’re still telling it.
I suspect most of us carry a little Gatsby or Scrooge inside, in quieter proportions. And not only those two. There’s George Bailey, who never grew rich yet measured his wealth in the people who showed up when he needed them. There’s Dickens’s Mr. Micawber, sliding cheerfully toward ruin, forever certain that something will turn up. There’s Charles Foster Kane, who could buy anything yet spent his last breath on a word money couldn’t buy.
And the forces that shape us aren’t only personal. They’re cultural too — the immigrant’s hard-won thrift, the child of the Depression who still saves the foil, the family where money was a forbidden subject, or the one where it was the only subject.
This is where I’d value your reflections. Answer whichever question speaks to you:
Which character — one of these, or another from book or film — captures a relationship with money you’ve recognized, in someone you’ve known or the person in the mirror?
Where do you think your own relationship with money was formed — by family, by hardship, by faith or culture, by some moment you can still name?
And the one I keep returning to: can a person rewrite the money story they were handed? If so, what does the rewriting?
My own little Scrooge, it turns out, didn’t retire when I did. He just moved — from the big decisions, where the spreadsheet reassures me, down to the small ones, where it has nothing to say.
I ask because the longer I look at why sound financial planning reaches so few, the more I believe the obstacles aren’t only structural. They’re the quiet, often invisible attitudes we carry toward money long before we ever open a spreadsheet. You’ve been generous with your wisdom before. I’m hoping you’ll be generous again.
My approach to/attitude toward money is partly built from family origins and partly by faith convictions. My husband and I both grew up in very modest conditions—I’d say barely lower middle-class on both sides. I always had to work for what I wanted, and that gave me a strong work ethic that I have to this day. I have a strong need for security and have never wanted to take risks with our finances. I also wanted my kids to have enough and never feel like the “poorest kid in the neighborhood,” which is how I grew up. At the same time, because of our religious faith, we feel strongly about giving to charity and have always done that even in our young married years when finances were very tight.
Well, chalk another one up for HD I now know about Mr. Micawber.
My relationship with money came from my parents and to some extent my grandparents. My grandparents were frugal, my grandfather reused the tinsel from his Christmas tree year after year. When we went fishing we had to bring sandwiches and couldn’t buy our lunch. My mother reused the foil, bought nothing not a necessity and they truly lived paycheck to paycheck, some weeks without a paycheck because my father didn’t sell a car.
All that gave me a desire to do better, a modicum of frugality and a bit less tolerance for people who can’t avoid hurting themselves by their actions. Unlike my parents who wouldn’t or to some extent couldn’t help their children and grandchildren, I am focused on doing both, now and after we are gone.
Only four financial matters are important to me, Connie’s security no matter what, our children’s well being if they need assistant, our grandchildren’s college education and charity.
Connie’s family had less than mine, but 58 years working together, enjoying good fortune and managing money allows us to meet those important financial matters. A few poor decisions and we could have messed it up, but keeping my parents in mind helped avoid that. I didn’t get every financial decision right along the way or now, but we always kept our focus on the primary goals.
Wonderful first post, Javier. Please write more!
I would guess my relationship to money developed around family that had lived through Depression and war. To waste any resource was wrong and to save and spend thoughtfully was right. That foundation remains with me, though consideration of the planet’s limited resources guides me more now in what I spend on and enjoy.
Rich Uncle Pennybags – He was on the Monopoly currency!
Javier, I take your question seriously, my answer is sincere. I’m trying to strike the right balance between Scrooge and Mr. Micawber. This will probably be a fight to the death.
Oh, that’s an easy one — right now I identify completely with George Banks. Last August I paid $75 for a handmade 12″ birthday cake from a local home bakery for my grandson. Lovely. Then we priced a three-tier wedding cake from the same place — $1000. Now, I can easily afford it, but let’s be honest about what we’re actually dealing with here: it’s three cakes stacked on top of each other. That’s $225 worth of cake, not $1000.
And while I’m at it: why do burger buns only come in packs of six when any rational person is cooking four patties? Phew. Good to get that off my chest.
I’m being a little dramatic, I know — but it gets at something the film captures beautifully: the tension felt by someone who is naturally frugal, watching money disappear on things that feel overpriced, while knowing that none of it matters half as much as making sure the people you love feel celebrated.
Addition: Javier, I had to think for a while before answering your third question.
When I was young, I didn’t really have a relationship with money because I didn’t have any. My parents didn’t have much, never owned a car for example, but they had enough, as far as my child’s eyes could tell. Looking back, I think they gave me something rare without meaning to: not a financial script to follow, but an emotional one. They made me feel secure even when the bank account probably said otherwise. So I never grew up with fear or resentment around money. It was just… absent. A blank page.
As I started earning, I developed my own relationship with it. And I’ve noticed that script keeps changing as I’ve become wealthier. I’m not stuck fighting a childhood Scrooge; I’m just figuring out who I am at each new stage.
So to your question about rewriting—maybe it isn’t always about overcoming a bad story. Sometimes it’s just about having the freedom to keep editing as you go without any historical baggage.
That’s funny. We saw “Father of the Bride” (the Steve Martin version) when our oldest daughter was three. It freaked both of us out. When our second daughter was born, I said to my husband, “Can you believe it? We have TWO kids. Two daughters.” And he said, “Two weddings.” Our second daughter was maybe two hours old!
As it happens, our daughters are in their 30s and there have been no weddings. Is there a statute of limitations on that?
P.S. I love Steve Martin, love that movie and the sequel, and am happy that he and Martin Short reunited for “Only Murders in the Building”!
In the US we have “the hot dog paradox”. Hot dogs come 10 to a package, hot dog buns come 8 to a package….. what the heck?