YMOL Discussion, Week 2, Chapter 2

[catherine]

I love these stories.. seems like having Depression-era parents shaped attitudes for sure.

This chapter made me wonder how/when it happens that we teach children with their blank slate minds about the whole concept of money. Any parent will recall their toddler watching us purchase something and then trying to imitate that in some way.

This is such a broad, broad question: What is money to begin with. You're right--what do kids know or care about money. To a child, as long as needs are being met, money is an illusion. In fact there are many people who believe that money IS an illusion--Charles Eisenstein for one. This would be a whole discussion in itself, but there is a huge part of me that falls in that camp, mainly because it seems unnatural. "The birds of the air neither sow nor reap" We are the only species that has come up with this construct, and what started out as a tool to streamline human transactions has become the focus of our lives all too often.

Your comment on toddlers made me think of when I was in St. Louis with my kids for 3 months shooting a movie. They put us up in Union Station, which is now a mall/hotel. So I'd look out of my hotel window and see stores. My kids were 6 and 7 at the time--talk about the "kid in the candy store"! I needed some way to rein them in, so I gave them a $5/week allowance. It was an interesting experiment. My son spent his IMMEDIATELY and then asked for advances. My DD on the other hand had spotted a Little Mermaid pencil case in the Disney Store on Day 1 of the allowance. It was $30. She saved every $5 bill I gave her, and six weeks later, I took her to the store to buy the pencil case.

So she took it off the rack.. but then stopped. She opened her wallet, looked at the $5 bills, looked at the pencil case, and put it back. She never bought it. She brought the money home with her. Seeing my kids act the way they did makes me think that a lot of our patterns are hardwired.

The one time that money caused major problems was when I was married to my ex-husband as we were so different.

I think it is hard for people who have vastly different attitudes towards money to stay married. It seems like a daily conflict of values.

As a weird aside, my mother prided herself on not ever knowing how much money my father made.

Wow, those were the days--NOT! Glad it worked out for your mom.

Insert your thoughts, Money is ____________________

For me, my thought was a tool of opportunity. It has a value as a medium to allow you to do things that you might not otherwise get to, or want to. Yet it can't really provide security

Great way to put it. I have to think about how I would finish that sentence. How about the rest of you?

[Tybee]

Money is necessary for survival. Someone always has to pay the bills. As we move through life, the responsibilities may change--we start out dependent, we try to avoid ending up dependent, but usually we do move closer to, in some way or another. The time you have to make money seems to be an arc, and some of us struggle with that arc, and are less successful than we would like to be to achieve the kind of financial independence that we envision in this culture to be optimal.

If we have access to more money than we need for survival, then our options go up. Our options will also be on an arc--I cannot do what I could have done with money early in my life, if I had had it and used it in a healthy fashion. My parents, who have three times as much money as I do, are severely limited by health and end of life type issues to use that money well for options, although they are very lucky to have enough to meet their survival needs, for as long as they have those needs. So thirty years from now, I will have fewer options but higher survival needs.

At 60, I have fewer options to make money, and less time to make more should I make a mistake with the money I am stewarding.

Money may be stored up life energy, but the mechanism of exchange between money and life energy is fluid and ever-changing.

Money is something I like having, would like more of, as then I could utilize it to improve my life options and those of my children and grandchildren. If I had more money, I could, for example, help my son put my grandson in MOntessori school, which would be a good thing for him. But I don't have enough money to make that kind of choice.

Time, energy, and health are all related to money, although I haven't figured out the equation yet.

Jason and Nedra had more options, at their age. Money remains important throughout our lives, so the choices they make now will affect them in years to come. This is why I like to see long-term trajectories, to help figure out what works, for a long time. That is why I liked the investing chapter, where the book grappled with the long-term risks and options.

[flowerseverywhere]

Money is freedom or shackles, you can choose.
You can live below your means and invest wisely, get a manageable living space and so on. You can accrue huge debt, buy lots of fancy stuff and so on.

What will ultimately being you happiness?

For or me it was living below my means, being aware of what we were spending through years of tracking our spending. Researching investments and their risk and fees and so on. If I look back on my life I value my art works, my beautiful flower gardens, the fact that DH could retire early as he had a lot of health problems.

Money only has a certain amount of value. Once you meet your basic needs what are you going to do with the rest? Mindfulness on spending ( including what you spend to manage investments and in interest) is my most important money value.

[catherine]

Money is necessary for survival.

Is that true, Tybee? I'd like to push back on that, and I don't want seem contrary--just exploring the absolute truth of that.

There are people who have lived without money: Peace Pilgrim, Daniel Suelo, Mark Boyle, HeidiMarie Schwermer.
Then there are people who have intentionally limited their income to very low levels, below $10k a year--like Jim Merkel, and "Jackie" in the book Twelve by Twelve.

This is where I think people have conflicting definitions of "money as security." I think you raised a great point that the "security needle" moves throughout your life as you are faced with different challenges: providing for family vs addressing health issues etc.

I have been thinking a lot about this, and have come to the conclusion that at this point in my life, despite my sincere admiration of these people, I am decidedly NOT a Mark Boyle or a Peace Pilgrim. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I like earning money. I need to earn money if I am to absolve my debt and continue to live in a home I've grown fond of.

I think your other good point is that at 60, you really have to think about your exit strategy. I probably don't have another career in me at this point, although I enjoy working so it's not out of the question. My goal now is to really focus on mindful spending as flowerseverywhere said, make a decision on the home/debt vs downsize/freedom equation, and stash whatever few bucks I can.

So, yes, to me money is necessary for the choices I am making RIGHT NOW. But I could choose to live like Peace Pilgrim, and I'm not sure that from a pure survival standpoint that it would have to mean my life would be compromised--as long as I had the kind of intelligence I would need in order to survive without money (which I wouldn't).

So for me, money is ... Funny, I still can't answer that question.

[Tybee]

Is that true, Tybee? I'd like to push back on that, and I don't want seem contrary--just exploring the absolute truth of that.

There are people who have lived without money: Peace Pilgrim, Daniel Suelo, Mark Boyle, HeidiMarie Schwermer.

Yes. For those who go through life with the rice bowl, someone else is working to provide the rice.

And if Peace Pilgrim could no longer walk, then someone else would be paying (God, I hope so) to provide a bed where she could lie.

So maybe substitute rice for money, and you will get my drift?

We are all interconnected, and money is sometimes the rice that connects us, but energy is always being exchanged, and someone is always paying the bills (or the rice, or doing the walking.)

[catherine]

Yes. For those who go through life with the rice bowl, someone else is working to provide the rice.

And if Peace Pilgrim could no longer walk, then someone else would be paying (God, I hope so) to provide a bed where she could lie.

So maybe substitute rice for money, and you will get my drift?

We are all interconnected, and money is sometimes the rice that connects us, but energy is always being exchanged, and someone is always paying the bills (or the rice, or doing the walking.)

I do understand, and that is a criticism that some people have with people like Suelo. When he had to leave Moab for a speaking engagement, he had to depend on someone else's gas and willingness to drive him.

And yes, Peace Pilgrim did accept food and lodging from people, but she would never accept money. So you are absolutely right--someone's life energy can facilitate someone else's moneyless existence.

But if you consider that there are tribal communities that live fine without money, then you can't say absolutely money is necessary for survival. In the US, probably that's closer to the truth. Because money is a construct created by humans, I don't see it the same as other things we need for survival like food, clothing, and shelter. Currency=relationships in places that don't depend on money. I'm just stretching the idea of money being essential for survival but I agree that it's true for almost all people living in some form of civilized society.

[Tybee]

For me, the message of Peace Pilgrim is that we are all interconnected. That remains true whether we live in America or whether we live in a moneyless society. The means of exchange may differ, but we are all still interconnected as far as the exchange of value goes, as long as we are alive.

To give an example, my mom used to exchange legal services for deer meat, which is a bartering example closer to the moneyless societies that you describe. And she still exchanges hunting rights to her neighbors, and wont accept money for that, but does say, "just give us some deer meat." So for 40 years, she has not bought any meat.

Yet the ability to retain that property means that she has the money to pay the taxes on the property. She pays to maintain the house. Before that, she took deer meat in exchange for legal services that reflected tuition paid back in 1950, at 1950 dollars, earned from her job working in WWII at the Navy plant, building ships.

Even moneyless exchanges reflect a perception of value on both sides. Even if they just give her the meat because she is 90 and they are fond of her, it is an exchange. Even if people gave Peace Pilgrim food, it is an exchange that they value what she had to say and teach. Or mayhe they just revered her because of her age or because she would NOT take money. Another example--Like we pay taxes and hope that some of the money goes to pay for medical care for a newborn, born to someone who has no money to pay for medical care. Or I send money to some organization that provides cleft palate surgery for people around the world that cannot get operations for their children.

Even though I could not pay for the same operation for my grandson, if he needed it here. (That irony really offends me.)

So maybe money is somehow an expression of an exchange of value.

I don't think we can isolate ourselves and say, money means survival or security because I have it. We are also essentially interconnected. That was what I was trying to say.

[Tammy]

Money is a symbol - a placeholder until we exchange it for whatever it is that we truly need or want.

(This book discussion is a great idea. I'm not saying a lot but I'm really enjoying it.)

[iris lilies]

I cannot envision a world that I would want to live in where money as a means of exchange does not exist.

now, maybe I have a paucity of imagination here? I can be enlightened.

My image of societies without money is an image of places where shelter, food, health, and entertainment are terrifically simple, there cant be much specialization of skills and knowledge because there is no way to compensate for that. In the simple society where most adults know how to construct a basic shelter, everyone can be compensated with one of the small number of items the community values such as herbs, tomatoes, midwife services.

There is no place for the specialization of today's community members. Take house building. For instance, the guy who lays floors does not need or want the lilies I grow, so how does he get compensated for laying my floor? The plumbing guy has no interest in beets, carrots, and tomatoes we have for him because he has tons of these items already from previous customers, they are perishable and he cannot bank them as fresh, and he already has two years of preserved vegetables! DH might be able to trade some cArpentry for my new IPad, maybe. But how does he perform carpentry at the homes of each of the 28 people in the supply chain? How would that remotel work?

A moneyless society makes absolutely no sense to me unless we are living at a subsistence level.

[Teacher Terry]

Totally agree IL. I have exchanged services with people when I was young to save $. For instance I had a small group of friends where we watched each other's kids when needed so no one had to pay for a sitter.