Digging Inside the Old Box

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I found another mentor in the book of Suze Orman, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom ( Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying)


The First Step reads: “Seeing How Your Past Holds the Key to your Financial Future.

I remember a quote by Bo Sanchez, “Do you know that 90% of your money problems are mind problems?”

I surely agree. Each of our actions is driven by our thoughts. And more than we know it, our thoughts today are products not only of our present experiences but of our past.

My Exercise

I was tasked to look back to the times when I started to value money – when I started to realize that it could create pleasure, that it meant more than a shiny object or a colored paper.

While the “Tax Due” thing is a talk around the office today, while every family has utility bills to worry about, and I am talking about my drive to spread financial education; going back to my childhood /school days simply creates pleasure and nostalgia, and helps me connect the dots between what I was before and what has become of me (in terms of money).

See what I have below. Nothing to brag about. Nothing to be so ashamed of. While it is good to look back, just remember that the most important thing is what we have and what we do now.

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At 12, I received P 4,000 pesos from Papa who was abroad as a birthday gift. I was able to buy my new pairs of clothes and sandals. I was able to treat my dearest friends to the newly opened burger stand in the plaza. (I know, that amount has a big value in 1996. But uhm...where did the remainder go?)
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Janice, grade school classmate, was fond of giving stuffs to me like the colorful trolls, coin purse with sling, and stuffs she used to buy from the store near the school.
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When most of my classmates and schoolmates had either beautiful school bags on their new trolleys or trolleys just built-in with their bags, all I had was an old skinny-type, unpainted trolley where my hands used to ache when I had to load too many stuffs in my bag.
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Shopping for new school supplies was something I look forward to each May (or before the first week of June comes).
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On days after every Christmas, my cousins and I would lay the aginaldos we got from our godparents and relatives and buy gifts for everyone in the family. When few amounts were left, how excited we were! That meant more stuff for school for January.
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I cut my fingers by a blade while opening my tightly-sealed coin bank. If my memory serves me right, it was an old Pringles that contains one-peso coins it. The blood oozed unstoppably that the only thing I managed to do was to pick a couple of coins get the bandana in the closet, wrap around my fingers and run to the nearest store in the street and buy Band Aid™. The rest was history.
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The first wallet I’ve had was a pink one made of plastic, with foam stuffed inside to make it soft to touch, and of course, to make it look thick (as if there were lots of money inside).
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The chart below shows the daily allowance I was given when I was a student.

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In Grade 2, I bragged about the blue two-peso bill which was rare that time (because it was almost out of circulation).
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One time when we were kids, my cousin accidentally found P1K bill beside the main street. She was very happy because it was her first time to touch an amount like that. Happier was her mom, who was saved from spending for her school supplies. Not only that, I think they were able to visit her grandma from a slightly faraway province. (Note: For unknown reasons, two more separate incidents of finding money on the street was talked about by the neighborhood that time. I (or my mom) was also supposed to find and pick some thousands when the ball bounced to the other side of the street, where the money was. It did not happen. It was not meant to happen. Mama decided not to cross the street to pick the ball, because the younger sister might follow her and might get hit by the vehicles.
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Off to Manila to work, my mother used to leave me with my youngest sister at home (with relatives’ supervision, of course) and gave money for the day. I would play as the “Little Mama” who’d budget that petty amount for the whole day. Because I learned to cook early, I would cook whatever I know, or sometimes what I wanted to experiment on. The worst I can remember was the instant noodles, sprinkled with Clover Bits ™ on it.
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When not abroad, Papa used to drive jeepneys or baby buses for our living. In the evening, I used to wait for him in the sofa and would run to the doors every time I heard his bike bell go “Kring! Kring!” (an alternative to horns that go “Poot! Poot!”) Well, that just meant pasalubong like Pringles, Nagaraya is coming!
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My uncle used to bring me to school during my first grade. There was one time that we forgot to get my allowance and our transpo fare from Mama. He, who had nothing on his pocket that day, had to talk to the jeepney driver to forgive us for not being able to pay him.
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Sometimes, I would cry quietly in self-pity when I got reminded that we were not as well-off as our relatives were. Oh what a dramatic lass! This grown up Natalie just can laugh about that old self and do something about my current financial status.
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Then what's your story? How did it make the kind of spender/saver/investor that you are in the present?


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