Personal Growth
3 Destructive Beliefs in Trusting Contributed to My Financial Independence
Sometimes Negative Perceptions Motivate Us to Positive Change
How does a woman from humble beginnings start at ground zero and eventually own a multimillion-dollar company, retiring with financial independence that surpasses anything she could have imagined?
This is a story of how my road to financial independence began, fueled by mistrust of others.
Three negative events in the ten years following my high school graduation played an outsized role in shaping my thoughts about how I was going to live the rest of my life:
My father’s untimely death
My boss’s lack of financial expertise and planning in facing hardships
My spouse’s layoff during the recession
As a result of these events, I was determined to be a provider. I didn’t know how I would do it or why it mattered until I probed deep into my mind to unravel their profound influence on my career.
What do I mean by a provider? I decided that three things were most important to me.
· Don’t die early like my father, the provider, did. Choose to live a healthy lifestyle and be trustworthy.
· Get smart. Don’t be unknowledgeable, as my boss Alan was. He let his knowledge deficit create a catastrophic failure. Choose lifelong learning and financial intelligence.
· Accumulate wealth so I can be financially independent and not worry about depending on others for necessities.
My interest in using “be a provider” as my life’s ambition was taken from the wording in surveys used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other government agencies. The common question was, who is the primary provider — who provides the household’s income? It would be the male. To a young me, this meant being a provider was important.
The Economic Barriers for Women
In the early 1970s, being a provider was unacceptable for a woman in my family. It was considered the male’s job.
Women, in general, still faced many financial restrictions. Laws and social norms limited women’s opportunities and access to money. Banks often required a father, husband, or other male relative to co-sign for a woman. When I graduated high school and went to the bank to open a checking account, the bank required my father to co-sign. By then, I had been working for six years, since the age of twelve, and was responsible to buy my clothes and other supplies by the age of 16. But, banks believed that women lacked the ability to manage their finances.
I felt increasingly suppressed by the draconian gender rules because they were unfair. From an early age, on one level, I was always smiling and enjoying life. On another level, I was enraged that being born male had all the advantages I dreamed of for myself, like going to college, being a business owner, and having access to money and credit.
Two years after I graduated, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited discrimination in lending, making it illegal for creditors to require a male co-signer or to discriminate against women for opening checking accounts and loan applications.
As economic opportunities began improving for women, I applied for a business loan for my first business.
My Father’s Death
Dad believed that women belonged in the home caring for their children, with the father as the provider. He provided a below-poverty-level income for Mom and seven children.
I knew I had no control over who my parents were, and I could not modify my Dad’s behavior toward his daughters. I could not make him into a nurturing parent who would treat daughters the same as sons. But living in poverty was not acceptable to me.
My Dad’s death from cancer in 1974 shattered the belief he instilled in me that men should be the providers. Mom was left to care for the remaining four under-age children. With no skills and no support, she had to figure out how to be the provider.
I remember the dreaded call from my sister on Thanksgiving Eve. Slamming the phone down angrily, raging about Dad dying, I screamed, “Don’t you dare leave my mother to raise those kids herself!”
He was supposed to provide for her. He was supposed to leave money but left her with a huge hospital bill instead. There was no life insurance. Mom knew the feeling. She had been left by her father when she was ten. He didn’t die. He just disappeared, leaving Grandma with eight kids to raise alone. Mom and four other siblings were sent to the Children’s Home.
Upon his death, I perceived Dad as an unreliable and untrustworthy provider. This opinion was cold and harsh, but he had conditioned me to think this way growing up. He believed I should not go to college and not work — that I should have a husband to care for me and the children.
I considered him a failure. Life was teaching me an important lesson. Don’t trust providers; trust only yourself.
My Boss’s Failed Business
Shortly after my father passed, I was employed by a pipe manufacturer. My boss and owner, Alan, promised me college tuition reimbursement and a management-level position.
Alan had purchased the company because he desired to own a business. He had no experience in pipe manufacturing, nor did he have emergency funds. Still, the bank loaned him money to purchase the business. There was a caveat, however. The loan came with a healthy premium tied to the prime interest rate, an additional 6%. A year later, the Great Inflation peaked, and the prime interest rate was at an all-time high. Alan was paying 26% interest on the loan, making monthly payments unsustainable. The business failed fast.
Working for him became a source of stress. Vendors were constantly calling for payment. Alan instructed me to tell them the check was in the mail — it wasn’t. My doctor eventually linked my intense anxiety to two miscarriages. He told me I would have to leave my job to have a successful pregnancy.
Then, I contracted bacterial Pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining of your lungs. Pleurisy causes extreme pain when breathing, sharp, stabbing, and piercing pain. It lingers for weeks. Talking hurts. Standing and sitting hurt. It feels like your body is squeezing your lungs to death. It was the most hurt I had ever experienced.
Pleurisy was the last straw. I resigned. Nine months later, the bank called in Alan’s loan. The company was bankrupt in a day.
In my mind, Alan failed as a provider. He had promised me tuition reimbursement and a path to management. Breaking his promises revealed again my perception that you can’t trust providers. Providers fail. You have to trust yourself.
My Spouse’s Unemployment
A severe economic recession set in after the Great Inflation of the 1970s. 1981–82 was the most brutal financial downturn since the Great Depression of 1929.
Things fell apart. My spouse lost his job and found work in another state. After paying his additional expenses for rent and eating out every meal, there wasn’t enough left to pay the bills at home and buy food. We relied on government handouts for cheese and other food items. This was completely unacceptable to me. Even though I had grown up living in poverty, Dad would never accept government handouts. He grew up in a farm family who subsisted on what they could grow. He taught that you do for yourself and not rely on others.
To make ends meet, I found full-time work in a low-paying job thirty miles away from home using my only skill, office work.
My daily routine was grueling — waking up at 5 am, feeding and dressing three kids ages one, two, and three, driving to the babysitter to drop them off, and arriving for work at 8 am. At the end of the workday, leave work at 5 pm, pick up kids from the babysitter, feed, bathe, and bed. Finish household chores, sleep, and repeat.
The pace was exhausting, and the pay was low. Worse, I worked for a demeaning boss. After eight weeks, I quit, determined to find a job that would reconcile working with childcare responsibilities.
Once again, my troublesome perceptions about distrusting providers swam to the surface of my mind — don’t trust providers. Trust only yourself. And, I reasoned to myself, what if my spouse were to pass away, leaving me alone to raise three children, as Dad had with Mom?
Distrust Fueled My Ambition
Three times in my first ten years of adulthood showed me that providers could not be trusted to provide. How did they contribute to the letdowns I experienced? As I delved deeper into my thoughts, I discovered reasons supporting my belief that I can’t trust providers.
As a WWII veteran, Dad had the opportunity to utilize the GI bill for further education and to secure a better job. He could have chosen to quit or reduce smoking and drinking, which would have eased the financial burden of raising seven children. It’s mere conjecture and beyond my control, but there is a possibility that he might have avoided cancer by making healthier lifestyle choices.
It took time for me to understand that Dad’s unreliability was a blessing in disguise. In my young mind, his passing seemed like he was escaping from a hard life, leaving Mom to become the provider without any skills or preparation.
Alan, my boss, could have been prepared for unexpected circumstances by having emergency funds or additional sources of income. It seems reasonable that an astute business person would have been cautious about paying six points over the prime rate, the maximum a bank charges, and he could have taken it as a warning sign. Also, he could have sought to enhance his understanding of the pipe manufacturing business, allowing him to make more informed and prudent business choices.
My spouse’s unfortunate timing with local unemployment occurred just as he had completed five years of specialized training. The recession arrived, causing a setback that was beyond his control. Yet, my misguided belief persisted, echoing the familiar refrain I had grown accustomed to. Don’t trust providers; rely solely on yourself.
The Ultimate Trial of the Great Recession
As I pressed on with my entrepreneurial endeavors, I carried with me the lingering distrust of providers. Memories of past disappointments and previous letdowns lay dormant in the depths of my mind, buried beneath the demands of owning and managing various businesses and navigating the challenges of raising children.
And then I was tested. The 2009 Great Recession began as panic erupting from a volcano, uncontrollably tossing around chaos and uncertainty. Now I was facing the biggest trial of my career — the survival of my construction business.
And so I began the arduous, painful task of downsizing. Nothing was off limits to keep the company afloat — layoffs, expense reductions for everything, including coffee, and shortened hours for remaining staff.
The financial storm was relentless, harsh, and unforgiving for eighteen long months. Delays in customer payments became common, and the bank stopped loaning money to contractors like us who needed help. Cost overruns plagued our projects. Workers stretched their time to keep their jobs.
In my mind, it was clear that the Great Recession was eating the weak. It didn’t care about the weak. The weak were not going to survive.
I was not going to be weak.
I was prepared and tough, both mentally and financially. The resentment from my past experiences and distrust in past providers drove me. My mind wandered back to when Dad died and when I slammed the phone down and screamed, “Don’t you dare leave Mom with young kids to raise.” I believed in myself and my abilities to weather the storm. I would not be unreliable and untrustworthy with my employees as he had been with Mom.
It was a long fight every minute, hour, day, week, month. Then, the light. Projects that were put on hold started to move forward. The abundance of available opportunities eased competition. Finally, a significant project was awarded to us, and I felt the weight of the long struggle lifting off my shoulders.
Hard work and persistence had paid off.
There were casualties and significant financial setbacks, but the core team persevered and was determined to fight for survival. All the rest was fixable.
We had not been weak; the Great Recession had not consumed us. We reached stability and then enjoyed our most lucrative years.
Breaking Free from Misbelief
The events of the Great Recession forced me to reexamine a deeply ingrained belief. Not trusting providers had fueled my drive for decades.
Ultimately, when the chips were down, I had to face the fact that the very thing I tried to avoid, putting my trust in others, actually helped me succeed. I came to realize that my misbelief was rooted in incomplete and biased information. I continued repeating the misbelief to myself, even though it was unfounded.
Ten words from Bob Dylan’s song, “My Back Pages,” resonated with me then and today.
“I was much older then. I’m younger than that now.”
It speaks to personal growth and the changing perspectives that come with it. As you gain wisdom and maturity over time, you can see things differently than in the past.
I may once have believed that others were untrustworthy and unreliable, but I now see that it was narrow-minded, and I was unwilling and unable to consider alternatives. When faced with the ultimate trial, however, I understood that trusting others was not a sign of weakness but a testament to the strength of human connections and the power of the team.
Don’t be afraid to confront negative and destructive biases and beliefs. It has the potential to enhance your emotional intelligence. Reflect on Dylan’s words and let your mind evolve to become a better person.
