Breaking the silence of women and their money

Long ago, and not entirely consciously, Liz Perle made a quiet contract with cash: She would do what it took to get it — work hard, marry right — but she didn’t want to have to think about it too much. Sound familiar? Well, after talking to over 200 women as well as researchers and psychologists, Perle found that she was like many women who have similarly complicated relationships with their finances. She shares those stories and her own in a new book titled, "Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions and Cash." Perle was invited to discuss the book on "Today." Here's an excerpt:

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, I realized I’d better count my money. There’d been no time in the airport. I’d been too busy wrangling a four-year-old and wrestling with my own mix of numbness, efficiency, and sorrow. I’d checked my luggage — a box of toys, a suitcase filled with tropical clothes — and turned to see my husband kneeling by his boy, both of them in tears. My son and I were leaving Singapore, where we’d moved five weeks earlier from New York City to join my husband. He’d been working there for six months. But by the time we’d arrived, he’d changed his mind about wanting to be married.

“Please go home,” he said, concluding a tearful discussion we’d had during my first week.

I pointed out that this would be tough since we’d sold our apartment, expecting we’d be in Asia for three years.

“Go. Please,” he repeated.

Four weeks later, having exhausted any hope of salvaging our marriage, I stood listing against the Singapore Airlines counter as everyone around me scurried purposefully to somewhere or away from someone. I was having trouble focusing on what was happening. In one hand, I clutched two passports, and in the other, a fistful of bills that had been peeled from a thick wad. Snapping to, I stuffed them in my pocket and took my son in hand, pausing before my husband. Do we hug? Kiss? There was no way for our bodies to say goodbye. I mumbled that I’d call from San Francisco when I got to my friend Sue’s house, and headed down the gangway to the waiting plane, tugging my bewildered child.

There were fifteen $100 bills.

I had just lost my marriage and my home, and I had fifteen hundred bucks.

Henry Holt

Since this is a book about money, I won’t go too deeply into the losing-the-marriage part. Suffice it to say that the first thing on my mind as I flew thirty-five thousand feet over Guam while headed back to the States was not cash. But putting the heartbreak aside, I did have a few concerns: My companion was a four-year-old, I was unemployed, there was no place called home, and every single household possession I owned was in a sealed container on a huge cargo ship steaming its way toward Asia through the Suez Canal.

For as long as I could remember, I’d lived with a kind of chronic anxiety that something like this would happen. That I’d lose my financial footing and end up shuffling around in bedroom slippers pushing a shopping cart down an alley. On the surface of it, this was not a rational fear. Since I was born a relatively middle-to-upper-middle-class girl with all the privileges, experiences, and options that come with membership in the Club of Disposable Income, the chances of my remaining in one end or another of that income bracket were probably going to be pretty good. (That and the fact that, in my saner moments, I did know that my husband was an unhappily married—not bad—man and that he would not leave me and his son high and dry.) But that hadn’t stopped me from worrying that one day, without warning, I could plunge from the safety of my nice life into—if not poverty—a quality of life so diminished that I wouldn’t be able to bear it. These stubborn fears had persisted through years of economic independence, and they regularly woke me up at 4:00 a.m. disguised as regret over an unnecessary impulse purchase, sure that it represented the first step on the steep path to sheer ruin.

Then, one day, quite suddenly, my worst fears were realized. Without warning, my marriage collapsed, taking with it my financial security. After all, I had (quite willingly) handed over my economic life to my husband. Now he and all our assets were retreating at five hundred miles an hour.

Here’s what was clear: that I wasn’t getting my marriage back.

Here’s what was not so clear: how I was going to afford my life.

There’s nothing like losing just about everything to lay bare what’s important.

Long ago, and not entirely consciously, I made a quiet contract with cash. I would do what it took to get it — work hard, marry right — but I didn’t want to have to think about it. I simply wanted to know I would be financially secure. This intentional avoidance eventually exacted its price. In the service of sidestepping, whenever possible, my anxious feelings (if not my facts) about money, I’ve signed over a lot of power to anyone or anything that promised to make me feel financially safe — no matter what the consequences. I’ve left my emotions about money — the fears and ambivalences — largely unexamined. I’ve avoided facing my contradictory feelings about the whole subject, such as the fact that I want to have my own money with the independence it gives, while simultaneously hoping someone or something will step up to the plate and take care of me. I’ve invited these highly emotional and unstable sets of feelings into every relationship I’ve had, and they have silently accompanied and influenced each one — with my father, my work, my friends, my bosses, and my husbands. (There have been two — oddly, both named Steve.)

My nonspecific fears of financial ruin have led to some good things, too, though. They’ve pushed me to work hard, which propelled me into some good jobs, which, in addition to nice salaries, gave me a sense of identity, some freedom, and extended periods when I felt pretty good about myself. Anxiety about my future has put money in my IRA, has helped me save enough for a down payment on a house, and, in the hopes that the sins of the parents aren’t visited on the kids, has prodded me to impart to my children a respect for cash and a sense of its importance. In fact, I’ve always paid my way, not just out of financial need but because emotionally I’ve needed the freedom that a decent income ensured me.

None of these facts, however, made a dent in my anxieties.

My financial solvency — like most things in life — has come with a few strings attached. In order to keep the real and imaginary wolves from my door, I’ve occasionally acted in ways that haven’t made me feel too swell about myself. I’ve been silent when I should have spoken up. Stayed ignorant when I should have paid attention. I’ve remained tethered to unhappy and unhealthy work and personal relationships. I’ve been complicit in bad business practices and poor management.

My agreement to trade bits of myself for security has had personal side effects — eruptions of rebellious immaturity where I haven’t paid my bills or lived within my means in spite of very real consequences. I didn’t change my IRA portfolio from all those tech stocks I’d invested in hoping to get rich quick (whoops). I didn’t balance my checkbook and ended up paying 18 percent interest on the overdraft that bounced over to my Visa card. I’ve left jobs purely because I’ve hated them, even though they paid me well. Each of these incidents resulted in big reversals in my financial fortunes, and if you graphed my net worth over the course of my life, it would look like the mark of Zorro. Embarrassed and occasionally unnerved by my own tendency toward erratic fiscal behavior, I’ve stubbornly refused to examine it, instead choosing to pin my hopes on that white knight, dream job, unknown dead rich uncle, or winning lottery number that would rescue me.

This kind of magical thinking — if not downright denial — has allowed me to maintain a remarkably constant approach/avoidance relationship with this most fundamental part of my life—with the emphasis on avoidance. I’m no stranger to the financial fantasy realm. My daydreaming drew heavily and rather unimaginatively on the run-of-the-mill Disney model. It involved the acquisition of a husband who would present me with a “happily-ever-after” life by taking away my money fears. Yet despite my most strenuous efforts, I didn’t manage to find one until my midthirties. Buried inside my increasingly frantic search for he-who-would-be-solvent was the fantasy that once married, I would have the security I craved. Insistent feminist that I was (and remain), I still wanted the option of knowing that I, alone, would not have to be the steward of my financial destiny.

I married the first guy I dated who owned a really good suit. (Okay, to be honest, I also married the first guy who asked.) He was handsome and powerful and had an impressive job. He also made more money than I did, which I admit was a total turn-on. (Well, he had some debts and some overvalued real estate. But I overlooked these departures from the script.) On our first date, he told me to get out of the street and go stand on the curb, that he could hail us a cab. He was an alpha male, a self-made man, and clearly comfortable with finance and investment. I exhaled.

In spite of years of paying my own way, I couldn’t hand over the checkbook fast enough. He liked to control the cash, pay the bills, invest the money, and govern the expenses. That was more than fine with me. I had a little money in my IRA, a bit more in a 401(k), and some profits from selling a home I’d bought with a small inheritance from my grandmother. We both had good jobs; we both made good money. He managed it. I spent it. That worked for me. I settled into domestic life all too happy to place my financial future in the hands of someone who would show his love for me by paying for everything.

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