A Money Hack For Adopted People Who Live With Money Worries

Here’s what I discovered about myself after decades of spending money almost always slightly faster than I could make it.

One of my biggest worries was (is) that I’ll end up homeless. I came close to this fear after writing You Don’t Look Adopted. If not for friends, who knows where I would have gone. The more I worried about not having money, the more, it seemed, I didn’t have it—even when it was seemingly pouring in from different sources. I am, after all, a hard worker. I’m also a hard spender. I have literally thrown money away to get rid of it because having it makes me feel so not like myself. (There are many ways to throw money away: I bought things I didn’t think through and then soon after brought them to Good Will. I signed up for courses and classes and then backed out, forfeiting my deposit. I paid for a new website and then never used it. Why? So many reasons. I can feel powerful when I buy something. I can get a feeling of accomplishment. I can get a dopamine hit. I can avoid sitting still and feeling my feelings. Etc.)

One thing I have appreciated about psychedelics is the parental or teacherly way they can take my system for a tour of my beliefs or actions and show me the fallacies in my thinking. They showed me, for example, that I would not have to worry about money so much if I didn’t spend it all. This is kindergarten learning, yet if your body does not learn the lesson, I think, the thought can float around in your head as a guilt-making should but not much else. The medicine let me feel what it would be like to live with financial security. It made the idea of security part of my system, something that newly made sense to me because it felt part of my being. It showed me that my gut would calm down, that my pulse would settle, that my head would feel less blown open. It showed me that I would have more agency with others, that I could be more empowered in my own decisions and desires.

I think when your birth mother seemingly does not “invest” in you, you can feel like an empty bank. Why should you have money when she didn’t have enough to keep you, for example? Why should you feel safe and secure when those were not the feelings life greeted you with when you were relinquished? Why should you be someone with agency when you weren’t born that way?

It can make no sense to the body and the mind to not spend everything you have the minute you get it when you live in fight or flight, when your job is to stay alive today and because of that, tomorrow might not seem like a very good idea. When you are living in survival mode and fearing starvation, saving a piece of bread for the next day seems like Camp Stupid. Even if you have lots of bread or money in your pocket, if you are stuck in fight or flight, you might eat or spend it all just to get back to normal, even if normal feels like dying. When you are in survival mode, excess is a foreign language, something incomprehensible.

How can you feel like you have “enough”, anyway, when maybe “enough” has been a problem from the start. Did you have “enough” time with your mother”? Did you have “enough” milk? Did you have “enough” clear reflection of who you are? Did you have “enough” understanding of your roots? How can you, then, perhaps, ever have “enough” money when you don’t even know what amount “enough” is?

I think money worries can be a form of anorexia or bulimia. Money worries can be a cry for help. Money worries can be a dysregulated body. Money worries can be a child refusing to grow up. Money worries can be an adult hating the way their life turned out. Money worries can be a mind that is unclear about what it means to be adopted. Money worries can be a way of feeling like you are keeping the train slightly off the track so you don’t speed through your life and get to death before you figured out what flavor of ice cream you life. Money worries can be a way of avoiding claiming an identity. Money worries can be a form of cutting, of trying to get to the root of life force energy.

At 60, I’m getting to the point of now or never. Fuck it. I’m going to say YES to life. Fuck it. I’m going to figure out who I am, what I like, and, if I’m lucky, find a life partner. Fuck it. I’m going to become myself, whether I ever got the permission slip from my parents or not.

Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.

One life.

Why not make the most of it?

Here’s an idea if you are struggling with your relationship with money (and this is not about blaming you in any way—we behave the ways we do generally for very good reasons):

Write down a list of ten ways you have spent money in the past month that supported your belief that one day you’ll be homeless rather than supporting a belief that you are financially secure because you treat money as something you like to have around.

Whenever you feel like it, see what behaviors on that list you can change. See how it feels. Dip your toe into having a bit of money in the bank. Let it stay there. See how if feels to challenge the belief that you are not safe. What if you are now the person who is able and willing to take on the job, the job of protecting you?

What would you have to think about or feel if you didn’t have to think about money?