I really have to hand it to these folks – they got clear about what they wanted to do, and they just did it. Of course, keeping up good habits is always the challenge in the long term — how many people have paid off credit card balances with home equity, only to run up more credit card bills, while still paying down their extra loans? But the fact that these folks achieved their goals makes me think they’re going to really like the results… and they’re going to stay motivated to keep up those good habits.

The nice thing about truly hard-to-win success is that once you achieve it, you realize you can do it, and if you did it once, you can do it again.

Check out the article – it’s a good one!

Yes, bad decisions. Bad infomation. Bad intentions. Bad numbers. Bad math. Bad, bad, bad… Most people can figure out how to lay blame squarely on someone’s shoulders — the bankers (easy targets that they are, not that they’ve ever been the most popular folks at the high school dance, to begin with)… the greedy Gordon Gecko-esque stock brokers who convinced themselves (and a lot of us) in the 80′s, that “greed is good”… the predatory lenders who wrote all those loans to people who didn’t draw the right conclusions (if they drew any, at all) from their loan documents… the people who bought the houses they did/did not know they couldn’t afford… the departure from the gold standard… the change in laws which allowed banks to claim full credit for loans that were only partially paid up… the push towards taking out second mortgages on houses to pay off credit cards which never really went away, but (after the debt was zeroed out by the “home equity loan” — a second mortgage) started loading up on more charges, in addition to the home loan…

There are oh, so many ways to figure out how this went wrong. And there are oh, so many ways to assign blame. And in many cases, whichever way you point, you’d be right. At least partly.

I, personally, am quite relieved this financial meltdown is happening. People have been warning about it for years, even decades. There are various economic models that predict this sort of thing happening, and people have been ignoring the cautionary predictions for years and years. Finally, the rubber has hit the road, and the truth is coming to the surface. It’s painful, yes, and a lot of people are getting hurt, and even more people are having the living daylights scared out of them. But to me (even though I myself am feeling some pressure), this seems like a good and natural part of a fundamentally flawed process that needs drastic overhauling… and wasn’t going to get drastically overhauled, so long as anything was working properly, at all.

Now everything seems to be falling apart, and the end (of something) seems near. Certainly, things can get worse. They can get a whole lot worse. Any number of terrible things could happen. We could all be turned out of house and home. We could all lose our cars and our jobs and our relationships and our material security, such that it is. We could end up in a “Greater Depression” or be bought by China. We could be bought by someone who we don’t think is our friend, but has more money than we do, and can help us subsidize our material habits. Or we could all divest of our involvement with money, period, and go do something else. Like farm. Or hobo around the western states in boxcars. (I’m only being partly facetious — I know people who would prefer the last option to financial servitude to any foreign power.)

But let’s remember, if nothing else, financial cycles and economics are cyclical in nature. And while money seems to be disappearing or being diluted or losing value, or what have you, the fact of the matter is, the value that’s in it isn’t really going away — it’s just shifting and changing and moving.

Case in point from my own life:

Back in 1987, when we had that “adjustment” to our economy and Black Friday happened, I was living in northern New Jersey, near one of the richest, most affluent towns in the United States. Going for my morning walk, one day, I saw more than one BMW with a hand-drawn “For Sale” sign in the window. And on the news, Drexel Burhnam Lambert had just laid off 600 or so employees, just out of the blue. It was the biggest news of the day — a supposedly strong Wall Street firm was letting people go, just like that. People were stunned. Shocked. Horrified. Taken completely by surprise. If this could happen at  Drexel… what’s next?

That was one of the first dominoes to go down that I remember from that time. Drexel hitting hard times. On its way out. Oh no! It was a “signature wound” of that time, and watching the news interviews with the abruptly displaced Drexel employees left a deep impression on me. The fear. The worry. The shock. Everyone’s worst nightmare — a job with one of the best, supposedly safest companies you can ask for… just going away. I worried that it might happen to me, oneday. At the time, I didn’t realize I’d eventually be moving into financial services, and if I had, I might have reconsidered my career path.

Let’s fast-forward to 1989 or 90… I’ve moved from the New York metropolitan area to Center City Philadelphia, and I’m going through massive life changes. I mean, real life changes. As in, leaving a marriage – literally walking out with nothing more than a bag of clothing, the promise of a friend that I could crash at her place if I ever left my ex-husband, and a day job as a legal secretary for a safety net. I was out on my own, muddling through getting on my feet, sometimes not having two pennies to rub together, and not being able to hold down a full-time job because of chronic health issues. I had rent to pay, as well as bills and a student loan, and I had to put food on my table. I was temping my way around the Philadelphia law firm scene, moving from one assignment to another, taking work where I could find it. I was fortunate to be on my own, really, because if I’d had anyone else to support, I would have been in real trouble.

At the time, I was blissfully unaware of how close to the edge I was living. Work was regular, but it was never guaranteed. I was just going day-to-day, dealing with health issues, trying to get my divorce papers moved through, just going through the paces of getting back on my feet, practically and emotionally, after what had been years of less-than-optimal treatment by my former spouse. I was also on medication for chronic pain that had, as a side-effect, malaise and short-term memory loss. Since I was temping, I was often “floating” — being assigned to one attorney, one day, when his/her secretary was out… then being assigned to another on another day. Moving from one floor to the next, from day to day, changing duties, shifting locations in the building, never being at the same desk more than a day or two in a row… it was all getting to be a little much.  What I really needed was a steady gig that didn’t have me moving around from place to place, and that could guarantee me steady work for more than a day or two.

Lo and behold, the HR department asked me if I’d be willing to put in two weeks working for an attorney whose secretary had quit. They couldn’t find anyone else to work for him, because he had a somewhat aggressive, abrasive personality and the secretaries were generally afraid of him. But he was an important figure at the firm, and they had to find someone to fill in for two weeks while they searched for a replacement. Well, I didn’t know him from Adam, and I figured that I could do just about anything for two weeks… plus, I needed something at least moderately stable and predictable, so I said, “Sure.”

Well, it turned out that this attorney was one of the members of the team that was carving up Drexel Burnham Lambert… dividing the spoils and distributing them wherever it seemed like they should go. I don’t remember much about the job — and if I did, I couldn’t tell you, because it’s all very confidential. But what I can tell you is that a whole lot of hours were being billed and a whole lot of money was changing hands, in the aftermath of this collapse. And where certain people had lost, others had gained. Where certain jobs were dissolved, others were created. Drexel may have ceased to exist in its former incarnation, but it was still a huge money-maker, for the people who knew where to look for the money.

And I was one of the people that benefited — a poor itinerant legal secretary living on the edge, who was able to introduce some rare predictability into a too-exciting life, and settle into just doing my job, paying my bills, and catching my breath. I didn’t get financially rich off the experience, but I was enriched in other ways. Ways that counted perhaps even more than money.

That’s the lesson I come away with — that currency, as devalued as it may be, as diluted as it may become — never really goes away. It just changes places and forms and flows in different directions. Money may be scarce for some, but I’d bet the farm (if I owned a farm) that it’s in great abundance for others. And no, I don’t necessarily believe that it’s only in abundance for the few who have access to power and connections and influence. I believe money is in abundance for anyone and everyone who knows where to look, who makes a priority of finding it, and who uses their noggin when they deal with it.

While some say that this whole bailout deal is a way for the rich to raid the coffers of the middle class and push them out of the action, I think there’s more to it than that. Personally, I have a really hard time believing that any one group of people has the market cornered on material wealth, and that just because you belong to a certain class, you’re destined to a certain financial future and/or you’re at the mercy of others from a different class. I think that’s a cynical and half-hearted approach to what is admittedly a difficult subject for many: money and how we deal with it.

And I think this bailout situation (and the world’s financial woes) offers us the opportunity to face up to this difficult subject, both collectively and individually, and see where we’ve taken a turn that leads us in a different direction than the one we want to take, deep down inside. It offers us the chance to take a long, hard look at our patterns on small and large scales, and develop new ways of relating to our money, our world, and yes, our bankers and stock brokers (who, after all, are people, too). It gives us the chance to admit that yes, we are human, that we make mistakes, and that our choices have consequences, and yes, Mom was right when she warned us against running up our Visa and MasterCard and Discover and AmEx… and then neglecting to pay our bills on time.

As painful as this is — and it is painful! — this bailout is a boon in disguise. It gives us the chance to see where we’ve gone wrong, where we’ve gotten off-track, and it gives us the chance to ask ourselves, “Do we really need all this stuff, after all?” Is it absolutely necessary for the United States to hinge its identity on consumption? Or is there something more to life that we can enjoy — that doesn’t incur a 23.9% APR? Do we have to buy a new car every two years, or will the one we have in the driveway do quite nicely? Must we define our identities by what material goods we own, what bling we flash, what clothes we wear, what zip code we have? It gives us a chance to re-examine what truly makes us rich, what truly gives value and meaning to our lives, what truly sustains us, and will save our asses.

It forces us to re-examine our definition of “wealth” and “security” and take stock of what matters most to us. It teaches us to look for what really makes life worth living.

And that can’t be all bad.

I’ve had to really re-think my work with money a great deal… realizing that the path that others follow is not necessarily the one I want to follow… realizing that, as much as folks need help with financial planning, there’s this other unmet need for transforming not only what we do with our money, but how we relate to our money.

The latter piece is actually the one that interests me. The piece that can’t be taught in a classroom or by a certified instructor. The piece that defies ‘certification’… period.

In the past year, I suspended my financial planner studies with Boston University, when I got to a critical mass of realization at how indoctrinated the financial planner textbooks are, how one-sided the methodology is, and how rigid the prevailing ideas are about how money “should” (and “does”) work. I don’t agree with a lot of it — my experience and my gut tell me something quite different than the stories they tell me. And I didn’t/don’t feel like being enculturated along those lines, anymore. I may resume my work with BU in the future, but right now, I’m really focusing on the spiritual and heart-centered aspects of full-spectrum wealth — and money is a vital part of that.

So, that’s where I am, basically. Going back to the roots, back to the basics… and seeing where that will take me.

Having worked in financial services for year — focusing on money management info for women, and building online tools for folks who need to manage their money independently — I’ve seen a lot of folks driven to be ‘perfect’ with regard to money. Financial advisers must be “on” all the time, bankers have to be 100% accurate, accountants can’t be off… There’s no margin for error.

I think that there’s a very human impulse to want/need perfection and control, when it comes to this territory, which can be so tricky and powerful and overwhelming. The I-must-be-super-human impulse is so strong in the financial services field, and it really convoluted a lot of things for me. Especially as I’m human, and I’m not 100% accurate all the time. There’s a lot of power in it… and if you mess up royally on a grand scale (I’m thinking S&L scandals and Subprime mortgage shenanigans), you can really do some serious damage.

But I still love to work with money… it feels very natural to me… Whether I have a lot, or a little, the energy of it is what moves me. The sacred potential of it. The power to co-create that it puts in my hands… the power to re-create my relationship with the world and the people around me.

But I’m not perfect… I’m not a multi-millionaire… I’m just a regular gal who’s willing to “go” where a lot of folks aren’t, when it comes to looking at money… so the voice that says “Who are you to talk about money?” has been pretty loud in my ear for months, now. So, I let it be… and I listened… and what I heard (and keep hearing) is that wealth and abundance and prosperity and, well, money, are as vital to our health and well-being as ever.

So, the call is back… louder and stronger and more insistent… and so I continue with this journey. Money. Abundance. Sacred Wealth… Seeing what all is there, when it comes to what wealth is truly about… Seeing what all is in here, when I think about it, feel about it, dream about it, talk about it… It really is a journey, a process… and it is sacred.

It is good.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a year’s mortgage payments — maybe
more, maybe less, depending on geography
and a thousand other factors — to put a roof over
the heads of children,
one or two parents, one or two pets.

This is more than $10,000.
This is artist supplies and studio space and
airfare and cost of living covered
to make room for the next emerging painter/scuptor/
illustrator who must take her show
on the road
to move forward and evolve as the goddess she is.

This is more than $10,000.
This is nine months of adequate health
and dental insurance for two women of a certain age
that keeps their bodies whole and their teeth
and lets them concern themselves with matters
other
than base survival.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a used hybrid car
that still gets more than 50 miles to the gallon — it’s not just
the down-payment, it’s a full price payment that
relieves the buyer of debt
so she suffers less each month.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a week in the hospital with a full battery
of tests for a sick child whose symptoms
are beyond the usual doctors’ explanations, plus
medications and follow-up visits
to ensure the child’s complete recovery.

This is more than $10,000.
This is 2,000 bags of birdseed — 20 years
of well-fed chickadees and cardinals and nuthatches and bluejays.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a new well and clean water and irrigation
for a village far, far away,
where drought and dysentery are rife.

This is more than $10,000.
This is bail money for a poor woman
who was in the wrong place
at the wrong time.

This is more than $10,000.
This is college tuition (at least part of it) for a working mother
who always wanted to finish her degree
but had mouths to feed instead.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a truckload — or more — of food
and medical supplies
that needs to get through 50 miles of
mountain passes before the first snows
of winter fall.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a year’s worth of property taxes
in a town that’s struggling to save its land
from developers.

This is more than $10,000.
This is several years of proper care
for magnificent, ancient trees
by educated arborists who do not use
trucks with cherry pickers or climbing spikes, and who
are losing business to “tree guys” who do.

This is more than $10,000.
This is the freedom to sit and think
and write and draw or dance and sing and grieve
and rejoice without interruption
till all that needs to come out… is done
and ready for the world.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a year’s hard labor, cleaning
or cooking or cutting or doing whatever it takes
to keep the world running, the children fed, the landlord appeased.

This is more than $10,000.
This is half a year’s work by a young woman just graduated
from college
who doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life,
but has found a job to make her parents
happy.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a month’s worth of work
by a geek-girl building technology
in a cutting-edge field that will change the world.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a week’s worth of professional services
billed by a highly-trained and experienced woman who is at the top
of her game
and at the height of her acumen and professional
powers.

This is more than $10,000.
This is a day’s work by a woman holding a seminar at $250 a seat,
training 40 people to improve their lives, further their careers,
survive in the world, or be far, far more than they ever
thought they could be.

This is more than $10,000.
This is possibility.
It is power.
It is choice.
This is the freedom to be the goddess you are,
the ability to support other women in becoming goddesses
in ways they never dreamed.
It is the right and the responsibility of conscious co-creators.

And it is just the beginning.

(c) 2007 By Kay Stoner

Like most folks I know, I’m pretty ambivalent about money. I grew up in a counter-culture household that valued many other things more than money. I was well-trained to suspect it, to distrust it, to avoid it. And for years, I told myself, “Oh, I’m not interested in money. It’s impersonal and corrupting. What I’m interested in, are things that money just can’t buy.”

But as my life has grown and expanded, I’ve found myself dealing more and more with an ever enlarging world, where the opportunity to do work-exchanges or barter, hasn’t presented itself. I’m dealing a lot more, every day, with people I’ve never met before. People who have things to offer me, and services I need, who aren’t willing to “work a trade” of my web-building expertise for their services. The arborist who’s pruning my trees, can’t make use of my abilities. Nor can the farm stand down the road. And frankly, they haven’t got the time for me to explain to them just how much good a website will do them.

They need money.

I’m also coming across an increasing number of folks who are working for positive change in the world, who have real financial needs. They need to print educational materials. They need to pay for plane fares. They need to pay for internet connectivity. And they need to support themselves and their families, while they work to effect lasting change in a needy world. These are not selfish people. These are selfless, giving individuals, who deserve to have all their human needs met, while working day and night for the benefit of humanity.

They need money.

In my own work, too, I find myself focusing more and more on change that reaches beyond my own life. Change that moves me away from dependency on fossil fuels. Change that moves me away from workaday activities that drain my energy. Change that moves me towards a life that has true quality — not necessarily one kind of quality alone, but real depth and breadth that give my life texture and deep significance. In order to move more towards this way, I have to de-couple myself from the mindless rote activities that are standard-issue, when it comes to making a living. I have to make a life, not a living. I have to meet my obligations and responsibilities with joy and pleasure and open-hearted anticipation, and I need to live up to my responsibilities and take my place in the world as a full participant and co-creator.

To do this, I need money.

Now, as I said, I was raised in a counter-culture household, where money was often seen as a corrupting influence. The rich were suspect. The super-rich were condemned. People who had lots of money, were generally held in suspicion of having done something unsavory to get that way. Money, I was taught, was a root of evil and a temptation and it had a strictly limited place in the lives of people who knew that the best things in life were free. Community and personal interconnection were stressed. Alternative means of living were emphasized. It was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than it was to get into heaven, if you were rich.

And of course, we all wanted to get into heaven. Who wouldn’t?

But in spite of my training, hidden away from sight in the back of my mind, I’ve always been of the conviction that money does matter, that money is not evil, in and of itself, and that in the right hands, a lot of money can do a lot of good. I kept that opinion to myself, of course. I didn’t dare say out loud that money itself was not the culprit, but the people who controlled the money were. It was a foregone conclusion that, no matter how virtuous you were, if you got some money, you’d be irreversibly tainted and all your attentions would turn inward towards yourself — at the expense of the greater whole.

Biases against money were — and still are — so deeply entrenched, that questioning them instantly puts one in the same category as the ultra-evil ultra-rich. Even mentioning that we might want to rethink our ideas about money, is viewed askance.

But ironically, the very people who once taught me that money is a source of evil, are now interested in having more of it in their lives. My parents, who tried to instill other values in me, are nearing retirement, with far too little saved, for comfort. My father is shepherding an educational initiative which has great potential to change lives, but he lacks the funding to really make it fly. Pamphlets and booklets need to be printed, and the printer doesn’t work for free. Airfare costs money. Gasoline costs money. He can stay with friends when he travels from town to town, but he needs to eat. And he needs to pay for his computer supplies and internet connection. My mother is worried, they won’t have enough money to support themselves, when she retires from public school teaching next year. Yes, she’s got a pension, and Dad might be getting a grant or a loan, but will it be enough? What if their health fails? What about the vacations they want to take? After all these years, of not putting emphasis on not letting money run their lives, suddenly, money is the main thing running their lives.

It’s time to start talking about money. We live in a big, complex, highly-interconnected world where value of one object or service does not translate equally between individuals. We live in a world where bartering doesn’t cut it, where we have bills and expenses and fundamental needs, which need to be met with money. We live in a world, where local businesses are threatened by multinational conglomerates, and local craftsmen are losing ground to DIY warehouse stores. We live in a world, where we need money, and we ignore this element of our lives at our peril.

So, let’s put aside all the fear and aggravation around money, for a while, and start talking about it and thinking about it rationally. A lot of “survival issues” come up, as money is a root cause — of tremendous good, as well as some evil. Money is so closely tied to our will to live, our fears of dying, our anxieties about abandonment, our feelings of self-worth and love from others, it can be difficult to separate out all that baggage from the element itself.

But guess what — that’s just something we have to learn to do. Just as we’ve learned, over the past 50 years, how better to work with our natural world, reduce pollution, and protect valuable land, water and air, it’s now time to learn to work with our money — learn how to approach it, not as slaves, but as masters. Not as beggars, but as co-creators. It’s time for us to start trusting ourselves to use money, to wield it properly, as a trained craftsman wields a circular saw. It’s time for us to give serious and concentrated thought to how to better incorporate money in our lives, as a good and constructive force for positive change.

Let’s think well about money — for a change.

A lot of us tend to think of “sacred things” in terms of religion or some higher definition of the value of something. Sacrosanct. Holy. Religious. We have a lot of unconscious associations with the concept of the sacred, but we often don’t have a very specific or detailed concept around what makes something sacred.

I suspect that’s due at least in part to our collective move away from organized religion that’s been going on for the past 40+ years or so. Once upon a time, everyone could agree on what was sacred and what wasn’t, because there were institutions in place to tell us what was what. The Church defined acceptable (and unacceptable) forms of behavior, it told us what we had to do, to get to heaven. The Law told us what was allowed and what wasn’t, and people used to follow along. Our old institutions of schools and family and just about every different sort of social organization had standards to follow and rules to abide by. That’s just how it was — for aeons, people have looked to authorities or outside institutions to define for them what matters, what doesn’t, what’s good, what’s bad, what’s problematic, what’s the right thing to do.

But now old patterns are dissolving, old ways of thinking and relating are disappearing. And a lot of us don’t look to authority figures to define our spiritual practices, anymore. Either that, or the figures to whom we look are either far less authoritarian, or they encourage us to look within for our own definition of what feeds our souls. We have to define for ourselves what’s good, what’s bad, what’s problematic, what’s the right thing to do. We have to identify for ourselves what is and is not sacred.

Priests and ministers aren’t always in the business, anymore, of telling us what we should and should not do. (Some are, of course, but I’ve noticed a steady movement among religious leaders away from playing the role of “ultimate authority”, to being “spiritual guides”.) And even if priests and ministers are willing to tell us what matters in our world, a lot of us miss their messages because we’re just not in church as much as we — or our parents and grandparents — used to be.

We don’t just look outside ourselves to one place, one person, one institution, to define for us what matters and what’s important. We look within, and we tap into myriad different sources for meaning and fulfillment in life. We look in lots of different places to tap into the sacred.

And in the process of developing greater spiritual autonomy, while we may gain greater individual influence over our spiritual experiences, we can also lose our focus and lose sight of the guiding principles of what makes our spiritual lives meaningful and fulfilling. We can get scattered — so scattered — searching high and low for meaning and purpose. And in all our activity, we can lose our center. We can lose our connection to the sacred.

We lose our concept of it. “Is nothing sacred, anymore?” we ask. And we think it’s gone… perhaps for good.

Now, when I get into a cognitive conundrum, I tend to return to one of the most fundamental sources of meaning about my experience(s) — language.

Over at my favorite online dictionary, I found this definition of “sacred”:

Sacred

1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane): sacred music; sacred books.
4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study.
5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.
6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights.
7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office.

Synonyms: venerable, divine, consecrated, revered, sacrosanct, inviolate, inviolable

Antonyms: blasphemous.

[Middle English, past participle of sacren, to consecrate, from Old French sacrer, from Latin sacrare, from sacer, sacr-, sacred; see sak- in Indo-European roots.]

From the Online Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, from pp. of obs. verb sacren “to make holy” (c.1225), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from L. sacrare “to make sacred, consecrate,” from sacer (gen. sacri) “sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed,” from O.L. saceres, which Tucker connects to base *saq- “bind, restrict, enclose, protect,” explaining that “words for both ‘oath’ & ‘curse’ are regularly words of ‘binding.’ ” But Buck merely groups it with Oscan sakrim, Umbrian sacra and calls it “a distinctive Italic group, without any clear outside connections.” Nasalized form is sancire “make sacred, confirm, ratify, ordain.” Sacred cow “object of Hindu veneration,” is from 1891; fig. sense is first recorded 1910, from Western views of Hinduism.

sacred ['seikrid] adjective
of God or a god; (that must be respected because) connected with religion or with God or a god
Example: Temples, mosques, churches and synagogues are all sacred buildings.

sacred ['seikrid] adjective
(of a duty etc) which must be done etc e.g. because of respect for someone
Example: He considered it a sacred duty to fulfill his dead father’s wishes.

sacred (jargon)
Reserved for exclusive use by something. The term might mean only writable by whatever it is sacred to.
For example, “Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler” would mean that if any other code changed the contents of register 7, dire consequences would ensue.

Taking a close look at these different ideas, I see that there’s plenty to think about.

That being said, I think this is a great stopping place. Jot down some notes, step away, and ponder these ideas from a distance, over the course of my day. Just let it sink in… over time.