I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. -- Patrick Henry
Monthly Musings
Staying in touch with cash flow
Posted by Peter Hughes on Thursday May 31, 2007
Recently I had a significant healing shift in my relationship with finances, money and spending. I transitioned from relating to money as something that moved out as quickly as it came in, to an understanding that money is a creative energy which, when honored and used with conscious intent, can be a magical and powerful tool.
In our home we have regular finance pow-wows where we schedule a time to meet with the intention to have a creative budget planning session. In the past these pow-wows usually turned into battlefields to work through our old stories and relationships around money. My old story was that money equals death and needs to move on as fast as possible. A zero balance in the check book was not only easy to balance but in my mind guaranteed a longer life. (That's a whole other story for another time.)
Each time we had set good intentions to stay within a budget we'd find, at the end of the month, we had spent more than we had generated for that month. There was no mystery, we just didn't honor our budget.
Several months ago, while revisiting our budget I was instructed by spirit not to resist honoring the budget we had agreed to implement. Where in the past my ego would go through a whole monologue about not wanting to be controlled, limited, blah, blah, blah, this time my ego was silent. Again, spirit said, "Do not resist." I felt there was something else in this for me other than implementing a budget, something bigger that I could not see, yet.
This particular month we created that we would only use cash for our household, grocery and discretionary spending. (We had recently replaced "allowance" with "discretionary spending" because we were relating to an allowance as a restriction, a punishment of sorts. Discretionary spending had a different sound, feel and vibration, much higher in fact.) We also made a connection about the use of cash and the absence of actually touching our money as it came to, through and from us. In these times of debit and credit cards the handling of cash is not nearly as much a part of our daily life as it used to be. We realized that by using our debit cards instead of cash we had become disconnected from cash flow in our lives. Understanding that money is energy, we saw how we had become removed from the energetic flow of cash. We had in fact become absent from a direct connection with the very thing we desired more of. Understanding that the definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, we found we were more than willing to try something different.
The month began with enough cash on hand to support our household, groceries and discretionary spending for the first two weeks of the month. Midmonth we would withdraw the second half of the budgeted fund to support us for the remainder of the month. At month-end, if we had stayed in integrity, receipts and any remaining cash would total the allotted funds.
Much to our delight (and very much to my surprise) we found we were not only under budget for the month, but we were $700.00 under budget. We had actually spent less than we had budgeted. All this without feeling deprived or controlled.
To anyone with any financial training (my partner is a financial planner as profession) this result comes as no surprise. You spend less than you make (or as I put it, make more than you spend. It's less limiting and holds a higher vibration.) That's just common sense, no mystery. We'll it doesn't end here. I was reminded of what spirit had whispered in my ear a month earlier, "Do not resist, there is something here for you much bigger than you can see at this time."
I remembered during the second week of our new budget implementing practice, I had purchased some lunch while running errands. As I handed my discretionary spending cash to the cashier, I was stopped mid transaction by a very strong sense of absence. I took a breath and realized that for the first time in my life, consciously, I was experiencing no uneasiness or shame around money, and more specifically around making a purchase for myself. This was a defining moment for me and spirit made sure I took the time to connect with it and acknowledge the shift. This was the "something bigger" that spirit was talking about.
So, the second month of our new relationship with finances started out with a confidence and enthusiasm which I had never experienced before in regards to money. I was actually looking forward to seeing what surprises we would create this month. And then it hit, a string of breakthroughs that left us stunned. We had a series of Mondays like nothing I've ever experienced. The first Monday my partner received a 30% bonus payment from his employer. What a nice boost that was. The following Monday he received, from the same employer, a 30% raise in salary. How exciting is that? The next Monday we received word from our home insurance company that it was going cover the cost of replacing the roof on our home, a $14,000 home improvement project. Okay, didn't see that one coming. And, if that wasn't enough, the following Monday I received a check in the mail made out to me in the amount of $5,000, a gift. We now refer to that day of the week as "Cash Flow Monday."
Getting in touch with our cash certainly has paid off.
Speaking of which, we just paid off our credit cards and are going out to dinner to celebrate. We'll be paying with cash, of course.