One of the most important lessons about financial freedom I learned at the Women and Money seminar I’d attended of my own volition in my early twenties. When you have no money, you have no options, so at the very least, maintain a side nest egg that you can access if you suddenly have to run.
You don’t know what life holds. The loving partner might one day be arrested, have a sudden and traumatic health event, or suddenly discover a vulgar secret that was previously unknown to you, and now, it’s unavoidable. These things happen, and could happen to you. We hope they don’t, but hope is not a plan, and when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
You need options. Should you never need it, great, you can will it to your children, and may they always have options. My siblings splurged theirs, immediately, on stuff they no longer own and likely can’t remember. Some of that inability to remember would be self-inflicted, the result of a wild time with friends. I had my own wild times with friends, but later in life. I spent more money, and in no way could I have described it as “my entire life savings.” Like, never, ever, ever.
Not even from my first quarter. My siblings spent theirs, and then begged me for mine. If I knew power, ever in my life, it was in that moment. They say money is power for a reason – everyone wants it, or more rather, if you took a survey, it would win, every time. There are a few who are immune to money, at both ends of poor and rich, but you can count on it. It’s cold and hard.
Ways to Save
Handily, the government has two ways to help you become a saver and create financial freedom for that rainy day. One way is your RRSP, in which you take dollars that you are supposed to pay tax on this year, stuff them away, and spend them in some future year, the idea being that you pick a year in which you have a much lower tax bracket. That way, you save thousands and thousands of dollars you would have paid in taxes.
Tax is money you give to the government to pay wages of civil servants, to pay for any program the current government is backing, and to pay interest on what the government has already spent. What income is to a business, tax is to a government.
You might think the government needs as much as they can get, and you are happy to pay whatever they bill you.
Or, you might attempt any number of tax-minimizing strategies. It’s tax avoidance if you are unlawfully minimizing your bill. Many people call tax-minimizing a smart thing to do, and it’s smart, because with some intelligence and a little effort, you get a high payback.
If your RRSP is maxed out or you are out of contribution room, since there is a ceiling and it’s reported to you every year on your tax assessment, you might want to turn your focus to your TFSA.
This is a tax-free savings account, meaning whatever you earn with this money is not subject to tax. Rules exist for putting money in and taking money out, so it’s not your daily savings account. When we talk about earning with your money, we mean that things like stocks earn dividends and can go up in value, and the government promises not to touch them.
Investing As Work
When you hear people talk about making money while they are sleeping, they might be investors.
When you hear people say they make money while they are sleeping and they are peddling stuff on the internet, they have systems, and people, and they are by no means asleep at the wheel of that business. It takes a lot of focus, time, and work to make it look effortless.
Today, you have options. Sometimes, when you have no options, you try to ignore reality, and it does a louder and louder job of arguing with you, until inevitably, it wins. Such is reality. Concrete and cold. Sometimes it manifests in your body as a literal dis-ease, something you know to be true that makes you greatly uncomfortable, and sometimes as a by-product of avoiding feeling that discomfort, such as a poor diet, avoidance of exercise, drugs, or alcohol.
Over the centuries, women have become savers when there wasn’t an extra dime to be found. Yet they found it by scrimping themselves, where others wouldn’t notice. They darned their socks, mended their garments, were creative in the kitchen, and stoic in their silence. Pin money, my grandma called it. Whatever it takes to create financial freedom for that rainy day, because the sun doesn’t shine every day.
Women do this, and call themselves heroic. I’ll get crushed, so you don’t have to endure a sliver. Give it up, because when you are crushed, you are of no use to anyone else, and in fact, might become a burden yourself. How does that martyrdom suit you now, knowing that it will eventually backfire and all your suffering was for naught? It sure ruins a reputation.
Having Big Bills
I know that when you need something to stand between you and a threat, you need cash and liquid funds.
Stocks take time to trade, so plan for at least a week’s worth of spending. Think about what you need today, then add hotels, restaurants, extra gas, and possibly clothing as needed. Get a money belt, fill it, and when it’s full, trade the fives for tens until you have a solid wad of $100 bills. If you are like me, you decide that three is better than one, and you can wear them all at the same time. Better to be flush than sorry. Lock them in a safe, hide the safe, and leave it alone.
Just like that, a saver has financial freedom for that rainy day. If you trust institutions, you get an account, deposit faithfully without fees, and one day call it a down payment.
My siblings had friends instead, yet when they needed a friend, they turned around, and no one was there. That’s happened to me too, and victims of domestic violence. First, you get isolated from your friends, then from your family, and finally from the opportunity to let anyone new into your life, until you look around and realize you have no lifelines. The offender thinks, “Ha, ha, I’ve got you now.”
I might not detect every lie, but some are so overt, I can’t help but gawk. Recently, I was reading a news article about a woman who endured multiple incidents of major physical abuse over many months. She says, “I should never be put in a situation like that.” Who put you in that situation but you?
Only against all will, against all might, against every note in your throat, against your every ability to do something different.
Going Willingly
But you went willingly. With a brand-new baby.
Willingly.
You might have to sit yourself down and school yourself as to what is will, and who is in charge, because there might be people who have trained you otherwise, before you could contemplate such a topic as your true will, let alone your gut instinct or your intellectual wisdom.
Too many women are raised to believe that they don’t have to worry about financial freedom for that rainy day. Or see a relationship as an excuse to live a higher standard of living. Someone else will take care of them. They will “always” be there.
Easy streets are rough travels, I say.
There’s no such thing as always, except maybe the child who never grows up, who never chooses to face reality and truth, because they can’t take their attention off of fear and pain. It might be scary and painful, but you are no longer the little girl.
You’ve seen scars heal, and even fade. You’ve been through tough times, and you will get through them again. What you need is more of “your” self.
Take back what you’ve been giving to others – your attention, your focus, your fear, your dreams, only you know what you’ve placed on whom. It’s time to save yourself.
A saver lives on a single person’s budget, banks on the couple’s budget, and invests the difference. His and Hers accounts that remain separate with separate access.
That way, if something unexpected and unacceptable happens, you won’t have any financial issues leaving. That is, life is up to you, and not society. Both partners are free to choose every day, and treat each other under the privilege of choice, not the curse of necessity.
A Plethora of Options
Society doesn’t determine that you have to continue living with your boyfriend who shot you because there aren’t enough beds at the shelter, because there aren’t enough beds in the whole system, even though we’ve just had nine years of the version of government that theoretically should have pumped money into growing and inflating the system. Yet it did not. You want the system to take care of you? I wouldn’t depend on it, any more than I would a close friend.
A saver, I created my own financial freedom for that rainy day, and then a friend wanted in.
One day, she said, “If I had to leave, I’d just show up on your doorstep.” I personally had to back away from this relationship because I worked hard for my three-bedroom house, and each room served a different purpose. You may not presume to intrude on my life, nor my abode. I do me, and you do you. If you don’t have people in your life who would take you in, perhaps your boundary versus their boundary is why you don’t have more people in your life. I just met you, and I’m your closest friend?
When I realized I had systematically ended every relationship in my life, and had long lost the opportunity to make any new ones, and I had a financial way out, I didn’t see a lack of lifelines, but a lack of geographical ties. I could go anywhere I want. Anywhere. I decided I wanted to stay in the same province and live south enough to have a garden. What a wide-open market and plethora of options to consider.
Some might view a plethora of options as exhausting, but you know how to choose.
Non-regrettable Outcomes
If you knew the real estate market, you’d be happy, because today, you may not have been seeing any available listings within your boundary, in your price range. Zilch, nada.
Navigating decisions is my power. Studies say that people with options are actually more miserable because they suffer making them, and suffer after having made them. Am I doing it right? Did I do it right? Constant analysis, and never knowing that you made the perfect choice.
I do not prefer a vanilla-and-chocolate world, just to make choices less regrettable. Sometimes it is binary to me, while everyone else sees shades of gray, like holographic images that become clear only at a certain angle.
I know myself, having spent all those years getting to know myself, not learning how to fit in. I wasn’t using friends to escape my home; I was using books, nature, and swinging on swings. Knowing my values and my morals, and more importantly, where the mainstream goes, and I chose to go another way.
I’ve lived a life of uncommon choices, and when the governments make their decisions to affect the most people for the most votes, I have the expectation that I will not be benefiting from that expense. I will pay, but I will not get. It’s perfectly logical for me to hold conservative views when I make bold choices.
Checks to mothers? Not me. Families? Not me. Retirees, not me, and I’m also not getting the workers’ benefit. Schools and the education system have nothing to do with me; unions, professional organizations, and anything to do with working for a living don’t affect me, as I don’t work for a living, and neither am I retired, and grateful to have financial freedom for that rainy day.
Differences Need Space
It wasn’t until I’d introduced myself as a rural-dwelling hunter that someone said to me, “Oh, you must be Conservative.” Hmm…
Of course, I am a conservative, but I was raised to be a Liberal. My mother even enrolled us in the same school, so my older sister was in the same class as Justin. I am not a fan of either Trudeau. I need to be clear about my politics. If you are a Liberal, then it makes it a little easier for you to adapt my message or my story to your values and beliefs. Slice and dice my advice, because I am clear about them, and I have no need to be cagey.
I don’t believe the alternatives are less than mine; I simply believe there are differences, and differences need space to exist. We need dark and light, but the smallest drop of black renders white paint grey.
I don’t believe in trying to hide a part of myself, just as I don’t expect a dude who wants to wear a skirt try to hide that part of himself. We just need to allow for a respectful space. There’s a good reason that people are nicer the farther you get from a city.
You cannot grow a cactus in a rainforest, and their pears are delicious, just as we need the rainforest for the unique habitat it provides. Respectful space exists in nature. Today, we are crowded, like ants, into very constricting spaces and shared places.
Financial freedom for that rainy day is the amount of distance you can purchase between you and your nearest neighbor.
If you didn’t start out realizing you are better off being respectful and kind, you will learn it as soon as you need help, and help you will need.
Unseen Realities
Businesses breathe this reality when they are local and family-operated. Financial freedom for that rainy day relies on popularity.
Businesses tend to forget that, as they grow, the distance between the CEO and the customer widens. It happens financially when that one person at the top makes a year’s worth of wages for the bottom guy. It happens when the CEO needs the product or service, and is rendered a treatment far more perfect than the average customer would ever receive.
More insidiously, it happens when we make all the ugly stuff stay out of sight, like the workers who are sewing the clothes and can’t afford any. Like the garbage from consumerism and disposable items is sent to other countries that have their own problems and don’t need ours. When you invest your money, know who does what, and whether you want to contribute to the problem or consciously choose other companies that do different things.
Respectful space means don’t wear your skirt so short that I know it’s a man in a skirt in front of children who don’t yet need to know that there’s anything there worth pointing at, worth glamorizing, worth staging in public. We need to protect innocence and awe in children for as long as we can, because when you lose it, you know immediately that you’ve lost something important, and you may not get it back. Respectful space.
I was raised believing I didn’t deserve food unless I ate what was provided to me. My mother was a terrible cook who didn’t think that she deserved to be shackled with the job. When what we see and what we hear become what we choose and what we do, your financial freedom demands that you examine what you think you deserve.
Needs of the Ego
As a conservative, I believe that if you are willing to do the work, then you deserve the rewards of said work. To me, it was a red flag if I was dating someone who projected what I might earn for a living and immediately started spending it.
At least, I will decide how to spend the money I earn. From that moment on, I started filtering out any potential prospect who didn’t have a comparable financial situation to my own. Financial freedom for that rainy day had to be equal.
If things were going to end up fifty-fifty, I wanted to make sure that they started that way. If I was going to be heartbroken, I didn’t want to be wallet-broken, too. From my parents’ divorce, I learned the long, protracted way that what was once a happy union must untangle, like that gold chain in your jewelry box that you wished you could wear, if only you had time to get the knots out of it.
I know there are people who marry with the intention of coming out richer, and, like all scams, I try to avoid becoming the easy target. The easiest way to stay wealthy is to keep it a secret, but for some, the point of being wealthy is to flaunt it.
“What good is it if you can’t spend it?” They cry.
A lot of good, actually, depending on what you do with it, but leaving it in the bank is a form of security for the future. Freedom and choice, should there come a day when you need it.
Flaunting is a need for the ego, the one who wants to be better, smarter, or whatever than everyone else.
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