I’ve been thinking a lot these past months about my relationship with money. How much does it matter to me? Why, after 25 years without thinking about it, did I suddenly start worrying about how much money I make? And more importantly, what does it say about me that I care about money? I’m going to think aloud in this post, and I doubt that I’ll go back to edit it. This topic annoys me. So, please bear with me if it ends up like my thinking is all over the place.
I want to start by reflecting on what money meant to me from my childhood till now.
I’ve to admit that I’ve been fortunate to never have to worry about money while growing up. Not that my family was rich, but we lived well, and I didn’t have much to complain about. We were your typical middle-class Ivorian family, whose parents had been lucky to study abroad. We didn’t celebrate all my birthdays, but I always had at least one gif. We didn’t travel every year, but I went to France once, for my 10th birthday. In fact, I think the only time I envied my ‘richer’ classmates was during the summer vacations. I went to French schools, and almost all my classmates traveled every summer, and I envied that. But it’s the only point that I can remember. I was a timid bookworm, so as long as I had books and my three friends by my side, I was happy.
As a teenager, my relationship with money was about status or, to be more correct, about belonging to a respected group. If you had money, you could dress a certain way, and you were de facto included in a specific social category. Here too, I doubt that my interest in money went any further than this observation. Even though I was aware that the habit makes the monk, I put little effort into being more stylish. I was always the kind of person who wore the same shoe for three weeks, and unless someone pointed it out to me, I wouldn’t notice. I rarely care for more than a few hours about these types of things. Now that I think about it, even when I started getting my allowance at the end of college, I mainly used it to buy food and comics. I even remember that one time when I lost 10,000FCFA and didn’t sweat. My crazy self just thought that someone who needed it more than me probably took it and moved on.
It gets worse during university. I didn’t choose my degree according to the salary, but rather according to what interested me. When I was studying, I received a monthly allowance, and once again, besides eating and going out with my friends, I didn’t have many needs. My parents had to force me to buy clothes because they would be desperate every time they visited me. So once every two or three years I would do a big shopping spree. Outside of those times, I never felt like I needed more. I was more a chill at a friend place person than a party girl in the clubs. From the age of 18 to 25, money for me meant paying my rent on time, having enough to eat, being able to buy a book whenever I wanted, and travel one or two times every 24 months to visit my family back home. Even when I had internships, I used all my salary to buy gifts for my loved ones or my little brother’s school supplies. Money was not in my top 5 list of priorities.
My only priority during my college years was one thing; finding meaning in my life. And for me, that meant, and still means, finding a meaningful work. It has been my lifelong quest since I was 11 years old when my parents told me that being an ambassador was not a job. Lifelong quest, source of depression, one of the top 2 things that made me lose my sleep, etc. So, how the hell did I started giving so much importance to how much money I make?
I think it started when I failed my 4th year of college because of the startup I was working on. Not only did I lost my interest in chemical engineering, but this startup failed, and I had to retake my fourth year. I still feel guilty about it today. My parents went to great lengths to pay for my school, and I disappointed them. When I decided to work in the startup industry, a risky career that they didn’t understand, I wanted to prove to my family that they didn’t need to worry about me. I needed to make enough money for them to know that I was good. They don’t understand what I do, but they can understand my paycheck. I set the bar for what I should be making based on what a recently graduated engineer should make, and I refused to accept any offer below that.
I was extremely blessed and lucky to have found last year not only a job that I find meaningful but who paid me enough so that my parents don’t worry about me. Truly, I don’t know how it happens, but I thanks every day my guardian angel for that. But, and we’re finally talking about the reason why I started this post, it turned out that it’s not enough. I started wanting more.
I am still a bookworm, I still spend most of my money on food, and even though I pay more attention to the way I dress, I’m far from being a big shopper. I still care a zillion times more about doing work that interests me than having more money. Money doesn’t solve the existential crisis, you get? But hey, I discovered that I want more than I thought. Way more. This is funny because I evaluate how much I should have based on how much I hear other people are making or what my parents say. Is it not ridiculous? Imagine that I make X,000$ and that I negotiate to increase my salary by 50%. My employer accepts, I get my raise. I’ll be happy but then I’ll hear that a friend make x1,5 more than me. Back to square one, I’ll start feeling like I need to work more to make as much as him/her.
You know what, let’s list all the reasons why I want more money. I don’t have time to lie to myself when I’m writing down my thoughts. I’ll probably discover new reasons as I type. Leggo:
- I want more money so that I can pay for my dad to travel the world. His big dream was always to go backpacking, and he never got to do it because he gave priority to his family. I also want to do multiple pilgrims with my mom.
- I need more money because I want to stop caring about money. If I have enough savings or passive incomes thanks to “investments”, I will be able to stop worrying about it.
- My dad, my brother and Lambda School career page say that I should make more.
- I need money to not be financially dependent on anyone.
- I need more money to angel invest. It’s lame, but my main reason for angel investing is not getting rich but supporting people. I believe in building valuable services for the masses. I really really want to have enough pesos to support great builders. I will probably explain in detail why another day.
- I need money to maintain my living condition. I like to stay steady.
- I want more because my peers earn more, and I will be damned if I make less than them because I’m a woman.
- I’d like to have more money to travel. I’d like to see the beauty of the world. It sounds like a good way to spend my time on earth.
- Raising kids looks very expensive. It feels like I should start prepping for that very early.
… If I start talking about kids, it probably means I’ve exhausted all my reasons. My conclusion is this, I want enough money so I can stop worrying about it, and people stop making me feel like I should care. It annoys me. I feel like I sound like a child, but really, I just want to stop thinking about it.
To me, money means not having to worry about rent, food, medical bills, and being able to indulge in a book, a dress, or an activity every once in a while. Money means being able to fly to a friend’s wedding, buy gifts for my parents, and be able to provide for your family. That’s all it is. Having money gives me the freedom to focus on what matters.
It’s exhausting to feel like you never have enough. I’m afraid that if I keep comparing myself to others, I’ll start chasing the wrong thing. And if there’s one thing money can’t give me, and that I absolutely cannot let happen, it’s ending up doing meaningless work, having a meaningless life. That would destroy me, seriously.
The next question now is how much money is enough for me to stop worrying about it and for my family to leave me alone? I’m not sure, you tell me.
