Transforming Our Relationship with Money
Seeing with New Eyes
Money is one of the big taboos of our society. Although it permeates the great majority of our daily transactions and minds, it is usually a topic we avoid discussing — in details or even altogether. Managing our finances is seen as yet another delicate subject and a burden. From my personal experience, whenever people dare to talk about money, we usually land on conversations focusing on the lack of it. As a result, we feel frustrated and inferior, and start to see money as a problem, a barrier to our well-being. In line with Charles Eisenstein (2011: xi), “money seems to be the enemy of our better instincts, as is clear every time the thought ‘I can’t afford to’ blocks an impulse toward kindness or generosity”. Paradoxically though, we have come to believe that the answer to end our suffering lies in having more money. While some people are not ashamed to say that their life goal is to get rich, it is possible to see how normalised this belief is whenever someone starts a sentence about their dreams and aspirations with “if one day I win the lottery, I will…”. One way or the other, these behaviours are connected to the premise of ‘more is better’ which, as we saw previously, is deeply rooted in our economic narrative, and thus in our culture.
In the pursuit of making more money, we spend the majority of our lives working extra-hours to (try to) secure better wages which then would afford a better life. Nevertheless, as soon as we earn higher incomes, our expenses also start to increase, and sooner rather than later we are back in the complaining loop, trapped in this vicious cycle, believing we will never have enough. A questionnaire applied by Robin and Dominguez (2018:11–12) to over 1,000 people from Canada and the U.S. showed that, regardless of their income, people were feeling unhappy and they specifically stated that it would take a 50 to 100% increase in their incomes to make them happy. The conclusion we can draw from this data is that we seem to be embedded in an unhealthy logic that triggers a deep feeling of disempowerment, regardless of how much financial wealth we have. But it does not have to be this way.
Regaining Agency
Let’s take a step back and try to free ourselves from these assumptions for a moment. In the words of Robin and Dominguez (2018:44), “we can’t have an effective working relationship with anything (or anyone) when we don’t know what (or who) it is — or worse, when we identify it as something it is not”. What seems to be the case is that we have been identifying money as the ultimate goal in itself. However, although we often and easily forget, money is not really what we are after. Even in economic jargon, money is defined as “a medium of exchange” and a “store of value”, not the value in itself. And this is only one of the ways money can be framed. From philosophers to historians and anthropologists, the origins and meanings of money have been explored extensively. Nonetheless, we seem to be awfully attached mainly to its physical or material form, losing sight of its multi-sided purpose.
Robin and Dominguez distinguish four layers of money: material, psychological, cultural and “life energy”. The first one comprises the coins, notes and daily transactions through which we buy things, as well as our earnings. The second involves everything from fears to longings, greed, and fantasies. The third layer speaks to the beliefs internalised in our culture such as the ones mentioned above (‘more is better’ and living in the scarcity-narrative). Finally, the fourth layer is the idea of money as life energy, “something you trade the hours of your life for” (Robin and Dominguez, 2018:49). I find it relevant to stress that in every layer, there is a relational aspect which we normally take for granted. A few authors allude primarily to it, defining money as a social relationship, a means of connecting human gifts with human needs, or matching the human creativity with our unmet aspirations.
Although I celebrate the recognition of the energy-quality of money illustrated by Robin and Dominguez’s fourth layer, for the purpose of this thesis, I invite us to leave the ‘hour trading’ aspect aside and focus on the metaphysical concept of money as energy. Rather than what money does, I believe this is the realm where we get the closest possible to what money is. Terms used by different authors to describe it include flow, power, information, seed and symbol of the sacred, the latter referring to the earliest forms of money. When using the word flow, we can even think of it as water or blood, nourishing life where it goes. What these different readings seem to reveal is that, in its essence, money is a neutral energy. In this sense, it can be charged positively or negatively, promoting higher good or destruction. One possible interpretation then is that not only have we been charging money more negatively than positively, but we have also been focusing solely on its material layer. In this light, when we consciously choose to expand our understanding of money, we begin to see things through a different lens. We start to heal our relationship with it, get reacquainted with our money-energy, and ultimately regain agency over it to start acting differently. Patiently, we exercise moving away from a place of victim (of money, the economy, our employees, or family), to a place of empowerment, seeing money not as something that happens to us, but something we can invite into our lives.
I find it very important to mention that the ability to take these steps is strongly dependent on our social context and personal moment. I do agree that having a minimum financial comfort might be necessary to challenge and free ourselves from the assumptions we carry around money. Nonetheless, I believe we should watch out for the traps and excuses we sometimes create for ourselves. Influenced by the automatic feeling of “I can’t afford to do it’’ many people fall into the dodgy common belief that we first need to be rich to start acting consciously about money.
Joan Antoni Melé (2017:30) argues that “the study of money and our relationship to it makes us confront ourselves and everything we carry as foundations in our deepest subconscious”. Transforming our relationship with money can be extremely difficult and usually takes time, but it does not have to be a burden. According to Robin and Dominguez doing so might comprise, but not be restricted to, going through four stages: financial intelligence, financial integrity, financial independence, and financial interdependence — not necessarily in this order. Little by little, we begin changing the way we think about our short-term decisions and long-term investments, from what we buy to where we keep our savings. And once we become aware of how our money is affecting people and places, our sense of responsibility to do better comes into play.
Interdependence and Responsibility
Entire generations, including mine, were raised in an economic and cultural narrative based on the fear of scarcity, as I have stated earlier. As a result, competition (to see who gets what first) has been established as the fuel of evolution and progress. Because we were taught to believe that there is not enough for everybody, from a very early age we learned the importance of fighting for our own accomplishments, wealth and well-being. A silly yet shocking example is how most of us in the West have grown up playing board games such as War and Monopoly, completely unaware that we were internalising (and having fun with) the idea that for someone to win, someone else has to lose. As a result, we have come to give great importance and developed great attachment to our possessions — my money, my house, my food — and feel violated “when we are robbed or ‘ripped off’, as if part of our very selves had been taken” (Eisenstein, 2011: xii).
Echoing Melé once again, by trying so hard to survive, win, grow, and succeed at all costs, we have forgotten to live as human beings. We have separated ourselves from the rest of the living world based on the conviction — which is in reality a total misconception — that we are better than any other being and, therefore, entitled to own everything: the land, the water, the animals and plants. The industrialisation and globalisation eras reinforced this separation, making us completely oblivious to the origins of our belongings and numb to both the immediate and long-term consequences involved in their production and disposal. Ultimately, our actions carry a sense of anonymity, as if they left no trace, denying any kind of relatedness. Our spending and investing decisions translate these long-held assumptions, for instance, when we treat them as simply a matter of our personal choices. Following this logic, our responsibility and commitment is to ourselves and perhaps to our family only. Ergo, whatever happens outside our door is someone else’s problem to deal with.
What the ecological and social crisis has come to teach us is that we got this all wrong. We humans were never separated from the living world but are, in fact, deeply embedded in — and entirely dependent on — it. We now see ourselves forcibly invited to reconsider all of our habits and really inquire into the consequences of each of our actions, upon risk of extinction of the majority of the species that inhabit this planet, including our own. Until now, we have treated the individual level as the end-point of what we care about, of our responsibilities and worries. But what if we turned this logic around and began to see it as the start-point instead? At this moment in time, we must expand our responsibilities beyond the sole purpose of guaranteeing our own personal success, and put real effort into questioning “how does the way that I shop, eat, travel, earn a living, bank, vote and volunteer affect my personal impact on social and planetary boundaries?” (Raworth, 2017:56).
The acknowledgement of this interdependence, along with the growing evidence that we have not only overshot several planetary boundaries, but also are falling short on social well-being indicators worldwide, demands we act immediately. The United Nations estimated a USD 2.5 trillion annual funding gap to be bridged, in developing countries alone, if we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. As daunting as it may sound, we must remember that there is already enough money circulating in our economy to solve these major problems. Moreover, we should not delegate to someone else what we can start doing ourselves: “To expect, naively, for government leaders to be responsible for solving the world’s problems not only infers an escape from our own responsibility, but it also represents great danger to human beings who wish to have freedom and autonomy in their lives” (Melé, 2017:53). We need to be all in.
The choices we make regarding what we use our money for inescapably carry a message and reflect who we are and what we stand for. From a place of non-judgement and understanding that in this turbulent era of transition it is nearly impossible to be 100% correct or coherent, my invitation is simply for us to be aware of the fact that we are all responsible for the impact of our financial decisions. From this acknowledgement we can then take steps, whatever size they are, towards changing the way we use our money, so that we can do (much) better for people and planet.
As we saw in a previous article, perhaps most of us would not feel comfortable with the way banks have been using our money or proud to associate our names with the great majority of the companies our money has been supporting. Here lies the paradox: on the one hand we are only buying organic food, campaigning against wars, or working for an NGO that provides affordable housing to people in vulnerable situations. On the other hand, we are financing, most times unknowingly, farming practices that are likely to be connected to deforestation and heavy use of pesticides, and which offer product prices so low it makes impossible for organic producers to be competitive. Similarly, we might be financing the weapons used in wars, and fuelling house-price bubbles which have made it incredibly hard for anyone including ourselves to afford a home. Put simply, our money seems to be working against what we truly value.
“I need to have an understanding of where my money is and what damage it might be doing to people and place. And I’m not satisfied doing maximum damage to people and place in order to maximise my money. I don’t think it should be legal. It’s certainly not moral. Who and where is it affecting and how. I feel responsible to ask these questions to money I’m involved with.” Joel Solomon, 2017.
When stated this clearly, it does not seem to make sense to keep investing our money in these institutions or funds. What I first feel when thinking about these issues is major discomfort, frustration, and that feeling of disempowerment I have mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, whatever distress these facts rise, I believe we should not let it paralyse us, but instead use it to feed our demand and will for change. Finding alternative ways is hardly an easy task though. On the contrary, it usually implies complicating something which was made very easy for us by the mainstream options. Nonetheless, we must understand that making the world more sustainable and just will require complicating our lives or, better said, getting involved with life.
By creating a healthier relationship with money, I believe we can see finance with new eyes and start working hard towards making it more life-supporting and regenerative — increasing the well-being of ourselves, our communities and our planet. Whether we stand for social justice, resilient economies or mitigating climate change, alternatives to banks and funds as we know them are starting to flourish all over the world offering a different way of investing and engaging with finance. Examples include everything from divesting from fossil fuels to investing in renewable energy, affordable housing, women empowerment, social entrepreneurship, food clusters and more. While some of us might change our habits in order to simply improve our daily existence, others might do it to honour “our sacred role as ancestors of the future” (Solomon and Bridge, 2018: xxiv). Whichever is the motivation, we have an invitation and a responsibility to go deeper and further into the creation of a new finance landscape. And one way we can start is by shifting our money somewhere more aligned to our values and which builds with us the future we wish to live in. In the following articles (6, 7, 8, 9), we will see the options available to make this happen.
References used for this article:
EISENSTEIN, C. (2011) Sacred Economics: money, gift, and society in the age of transition. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
ROBIN, V. and DOMINGUEZ, J. (2018) Your Money or Your Life: 9 steps to transforming your relationship with money and achieving financial independence. 2nd Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books.
LIETAER, B. (2001) The Future of Money: A new way to create wealth, work, and a wiser world. London: Century.
GREENHAM, T. (2013) ‘Money is a social relationship’ at TEDx Leiden. [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1pS1emZP6A [Accessed 14/08/19].
WEBSTER, K. (2018) A Flow of Wealth or a Wealth of Flows? | Disruptive Innovation Festival (DIF). [YouTube film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYNoQh_ZyPc [Accessed 14/08/19].
SOLOMON, J. and BRIDGE, T. (2018) The Clean Money Revolution: reinventing power, purpose, and capitalism. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.
SOLOMON, J. (2017) The Green Interview with Silver Don Cameron and Joel Solomon. [YouTube film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHHxuf6PjGo [Accessed 14/08/19].
HÄUSLER, M. M. (2019) Mar Michelle Häusler | Your Money AND Your Life. [YouTube film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfomg2bT48 [Accessed 14/08/19]
MELÉ, J. A. (2017a) Dinheiro e Consciência: A quem meu dinheiro serve? São Paulo: João de Barro.
MELÉ, J. A. (2017b) Palestra Joan Antoni Melé EWRS. [YouTube film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnctcryZCo&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 14/08/19]
LEITE, T. (2012) 99% + 1%: O Próximo Passo da Revolução Colaborativa: Tatiana Leite at TEDx Jardim Botânico. [YouTube film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-2yzQZitSM [Accessed 14/08/19].
MADSBJERG, S. and BERNASCONI, L. (2015). Development Goals Without Money Are Just a Dream. [Online] Available from: https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/development-goals-without-money-are-just-a-dream/ [Accessed 14/08/19]
