On Having Enough

I've inherited my father's money about two years ago now. I've been (moderately) wealthy for two years, in other words.

I still think like someone who is lower-middle class, which was how I was raised, and how I lived for most of my life. 

Lower-middle class: there was always enough food, even though it wasn't great food, and we always had clothing, even if it was terrible clothing. Our vacations were spent visiting my parents' relatives in Indiana, or driving to Florida to spend a day at the beach. (This was about what we did for my kid -- our vacations were day-trips to state parks; or an overnight trip to Tulsa, where we would visit the zoo; or a week at my parents' house in New Orleans.)

There was never money for extras like field trips or meals in restaurants or books. I remember a terrible fight my parents had because my mother subscribed to a children's book club which delivered books once a month. Those books were how I read Tom Sawyer and Little Men and Aesop's Fables. 

And when I got out on my own, I almost at once fell into serious debt due to thyroid cancer, so even when both Dr Skull and I were earning pretty good money (from sixty to eighty thousand a year total), we were still living paycheck to paycheck. Money was always a constant worry. When the car broke down, which it frequently did, because it was a crap car, it was always a disaster.

So it's only been in the last two years that I've had enough money. This is such a change, I can't even tell you. We can eat in restaurants. We have a good car. We can afford good health insurance. When I needed another pair of shoes, I just bought them. (I wore a pair of shoes that was cracked across one sole for about a year, because there was never any money for a new pair.) I got new glasses when I needed them, like right then, not waiting and squinting for months. 

I have a wealth manager.

I do still think like someone who doesn't have money. The kid has to keep reminding me, when I hesitate to buy something at the grocery (have you seen the price of chicken lately?), that I can afford to buy food. (When the kid was little, we only bought fresh fruit in the summer, which was when I had extra money from summer teaching.)

It may be true that money doesn't buy happiness, but life without the constant worry and fear about money is certainly making me happier.