Tw: mentions of binging, financial abuse
Hello,
For context we weren’t exactly poor. My sibling and I went to a very expensive school and lived in an upscale area but that was it.
We had limited possessions and had to carpool because dad wouldn’t drive us anywhere and wouldn’t let anyone else touch his car. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the car owning kid understood but they used to mistreat me because of it.
Eventually I realized even those seemingly worse off than me (lived in lower rent area) had a better quality life than me – more possessions, fridge well stocked and always having a lot to eat, they went on vacations a lot (within the country and neighboring countries), going to concerts and other events, having guests over- basically signs of living a much fuller life than me.
It didn’t help that mom (stay at home) was bad with money causing dad to be stricter. We were reprimanded and shamed for wanting the most banal things a teenager/kid could ask for. When I got gift money, mom used to take it from me and when I started working she guilted me into handing over half my salary (this continued even when my salary increased). She would always be spending that money within days and most of the time we didn’t know on what.
Anyways I have gotten therapy, cut her off (I know dad was a problem but he wasn’t a manipulative bitch, whatever harsh rule he imposed on us he applied on himself as well) and finally stopped binging. But I still have a hard time saving.
My therapist explained that because of being deprived I spend the money ASAP in order to maintain control over it. I understand all that. But I still find it difficult to save when I have extra money. It’s like I’m allergic to a positive balance in my account. When I do make a decision to give up something I feel horrible and end up feeling depressed. I feel like a loser/failure for not having that money yet. A voice says “oh you think you get this thing/experience later??? lol you thought that as a child and you still haven’t been able to have those experiences/things”
Do you have any tips to overcome this and actually save?
Strategies to save when you grew up deprived
byu/Weird_Check_1042 inpersonalfinance
Posted by Weird_Check_1042
8 Comments
I have a savings account at a different bank and have a certain amount sent there with direct deposit. I don’t have an atm card for that account, I have to physically go there to withdraw the money.
Setup automatic savings that get taken out of your account and placed somewhere else. Treat it like a bill that youbowe yourself. Do not link it to your atm to make ot harder to withdraw. This is the whole pay yourself first. Start with a small amount and increase the savings by a few dollars each month.
You should ask your therapist how you can modify your destructive behavior.
You’ll need several bank accounts and set up direct deposits. Get a main hy savings account with a bank that’s hard to take the money out of. An online only bank and discard the debit card so transferring will require a minimum of 3 days making it harder to access your long term savings funds.
Choose a small amount to keep locked away in a revolving cd account. 3 months and just renew it every time after adding a little bit more. Makes it harder for you to burn through.
Keep the spending money in your current account. When that runs out you’re officially broke. Don’t touch the other two unless someone’s dying or you’re being evicted lol
In situations like yours, the best thing to do is to save the money before your check hits your account. Take advantage of your 401k if you have one. Your HR department will also send money to other accounts if you want to send some to accounts you never look at.
Set up an account at an online bank, and have money diverted there from your regular bank on a weekly basis. You still have access to it, but not immediate. It usually takes a couple of days for funds to transfer back into your account from the online one. All of this can be managed online, no brick and mortar bank involved.
Automate savings. If it doesn’t land in your main bank account, it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Before I retired, I had $200 per biweekly paycheck sent to a brokerage account at Schwab, where it would be auto-invested in a money market mutual fund (SNSXX). The balance of my take home pay would be direct deposited to my checking account for bills and budget.
If I had the impulse to spend some of my savings, there was considerable “friction” – effort and delay. I would have to sell some mutual fund shares, and wait a day for the trade to settle. Then I’d have to schedule a transfer of cash to my bank account – usually a couple of business days. That much hassle meant for the most part, I left my savings alone.
Once you have a nice balance in savings, and you have perspective on how much work and how much time it took to build it up, you may well start having the opposite emotions – that touching your savings makes you feel anxious / depressed.
The overall idea is to make saving money effortless – fully automated – while the process of spending that money involves several steps and delays.
I’m glad you shared this because I also had a long time of feeling “allergic to a positive balance in my bank account” and it felt so strange because you’d think we’d want that. But my mind was like “If you have money, someone will try to take it so spend it asap on something you want.” (My parents had no money, the house was constantly on the verge of being taken, our phone would often get shut off, and we only had money every so often when my dad got a payment from a family trust, so there was no budgeting just waiting for this influx of money which would “save us” which is something I also veer towards.)
What helped me, was starting a “Did Not Buy” list. I started a spreadsheet of all the things I didn’t buy, random crap on amazon mostly, or impulse clothing purchases I put back down, or instagram ads where I got all the way to the payment section and stopped. Seeing that number add up, made me feel disciplined instead of deprived because half the things I thought I needed, more than half, were things I barely remembered wanting.
Then I started squirreling money away into an online savings account (separate from my regular accounts). The app has “buckets” that you put money into and see a little graph that goes up as you get closer to the goal. It feel to me like I’m “spending” when I put money in there, because it disappears from my regular account, but it’s not gone. It’s in the “redo bathroom” bucket or the “travel” bucket or “emergency savings” bucket, and looking at those becomes the same kind of soothing dopamine hit that spending used to give me.
It’s hard, coming from a background like ours to change the way our brains work around money. And trying to take advice from people who haven’t been there is like a naturally thin person with no food issues saying “just eat less and move more!” to someone trying to overcome disordered eating (or “eat more and move less!” depending on how their disorder manifested.)
You’ll get there. It takes time and it’s a lot of different moving parts to adjust. Just start slow, set up some places you can squirrel money, and start squirreling. And keep talking about how it feels with your therapist (which reminds me, I should talk about money with mine at our next visit.)