The Road to 50 - Better Off

Final in my series about the road to 50 (I turn 50 on Wednesday!)  This time about money.

I used to be really concerned about money, how much I had, how much I had in comparison to others. Now I now that contentment doesn’t come from money.

I heard a story on NPR that took a new look at how bad the economy is. The story included a survey of people who were asked how they felt about the economy. One of the questions posed to the group was “Do you think your kids will be better off than you are?”  

Overwhelmingly, the response was no, my child will not be better off than I am.  

And so, for the first time in 60 years, the idea that the next generation will do better than the past generation is in question.  And that was cause for alarm, according to the story.

I struggle with how we define better. In this story, it sounded like better means to be economically better -   a better education, a better house, a better (higher paying) job.

I wondered about my daughter E and what the quality of her life will be when she grows up.  If I subscribe to the premise of the story, if my daughter doesn’t go further than I did in college, or have a job as good as mine, or lives in a place that is smaller -  whatever trophy you want to assign to it - her life will be less than mine.

Which got me thinking about money and the place it holds in our lives. 

When I was young, I was more focused on money. I  looked at other peoples’ money and how they displayed it and compared it to my own.  My focus on money wasn’t  just about how much I had, but how what I had compared to others.

I’ve lived through yuppiness of the 80’s, the dot.com boom of the 90’s and the real estate boom of recent years. I know how fast things can grow, and how fast we get caught up in striving for our piece of that booming pie.

But for each of these booms, there was a bust, and it was living through the bust that changed the way I look at money. After the dot.com boom, my husband and I were both laid off,  unemployed. Our daughter E was one-year old at the time, so here we were, this new family without jobs, without the healthy income that we had come to take for granted. 

It was a scary time, full of uncertainty. Yet for all of it’s challenges, I also remember it as a time of such gratitude. In a time of absence, I became abundantly grateful for the simple gifts that we did have. A roof over our head. Food to nourish us. Each other to lean on.

One of my favorite memories of that time is of the three of us gathered in the kitchen.  I’d roast a chicken while E would sit in her little throne of a high chair and B told stories. E would shove sweet potatoes in her mouth and run them through her hair and laugh with delight at it all.  It was warm and safe and good in that kitchen, it gave us comfort. We had no money coming in, our saving was whittling away, but in the glow of that kitchen we found a goddess that sustained us. 

We eventually emerged from that time, got jobs, got back on the track of making money. But the experience fundamentally changed me. Since then, I’ve held on to the feeling of being grateful for the gifts that we have, the abundance in our lives. I no longer have to look around at what others have to see the value of what I have right here in front of me.

What I want for E when she gets older is to be as happy in her life as she was in the warm kitchen running sweet potatoes through her hair. If she is a waitress, an artist, a high powered lawyer or some combination of all of those, I want her to know that it’s not the amount of money she has that matters. What matters is peace in her heart and a feeling of gratitude for all that life has given her.

Better off, indeed.