Parents in India believe in providing full financial support for children’s higher education. The moot point is; Would you pay for your child’s higher education abroad, even if it means dipping into your retirement kitty? For many, it is an investment into their child’s future, and by extension their own. There is a difference in the way many parents look at it and the right way to look at it. We have seen parents struggling to honour the EMIs even after retirement by resorting to Debt. They believe “that is what a good parent would do”.

Parents also believe to spend lavishly on their children’s wedding, even if it means dipping into their retirement kitty. The parents believe that it is their duty and obligation to have a lavish wedding and follow the traditions. During the current pandemic, parents are unhappy because they could not spend on the wedding and display their social status.

It is the story the parents tell themselves that matters. Do you want to change your belief and strategy? If you want the strategy to change, you have to change the story itself. It all begins by listening to the story you are telling yourself.  Having said that, two people in an absolutely identical situation can have very different stories. They assigned different meanings to identical economic stimuli. 

Each story is meaningful, unique, and deeply embedded in our personal narrative. It begins in our childhood with how we see the economic world and our place in it. These storylines affect everything. Our attitude towards Debt. Our attitude towards credit cards. Our attitude towards spending and saving. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Carl Jung has said, the stories we tell ourselves help us navigate the world. But some of us may be driving ourselves in a direction we don’t want to go. While we may blame fate and destiny, it is the unconscious storyline that is being played out that has a large influence on our decisions.

Some common adages: “Money is power”, “Money makes the world go round”, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “If you take care of your money, it will take care of you”, “Money is an excellent servant and a terrible master”. “Money can’t buy love”. “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness did not know where to shop”. These tend to catch on in our subconscious mind. The one who believes that money can’t buy love will have a different relationship with money than the one who believes that when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window. These statements of money often are disguised as statements of life. They even contradict each other. But if we have bought into them, we internalise it. The one that we adopt, even though it is subconscious, has a lot to do with the decisions we make.

 SARAH NEWCOMB of Morning Star has some practical suggestions.

Do some reflection. Think of the person who cared for you most of the time when you were a child. If they were to finish this sentence: “Money is……”, how would you complete it for them? It could be luxury, security, peace of mind, donation, gift, stress, the root of evil, the root of inequality, and so on and so forth. Think about how their attitude towards money affected your life back then. And how it affects your current perspective. How would you finish that sentence?

 It’s only a story, and a story can be changed. Once we’re conscious of the stories we’re working with, we’re in a better position to question, and if necessary, rewrite them. Think of the classic “The Hare and The Tortoise”. We were always told that the moral of the story is that “slow and steady wins the race”. The tortoise won only because the hare took a nap. So maybe the moral of the story could be not to underestimate the competition. Or, finish the job first and then relax.

You can do the same with the stories of your financial victories and mistakes. You can turn the narrative into something new. A new chapter – New habit. If you need to break a bad financial habit or create a new one, it helps to use a temporal landmark that implies a new beginning. Think of it before the new year 2021 knocks.

Source: Morning star