Shout Out to My X

“Generation X women, who as children lacked cell phones and helicopter parents, came up relying on our own wits. To keep ourselves safe, we took control. We worked hard and made lists and tried to do everything all at once for a very long time without much help. We took responsibility for ourselves--and later we also took responsibility for our work or partners or children or parents. We should be proud of ourselves.” Ada Calhoun

I am a Gen X woman. I have watched the women born in the generation before me, maybe go a lifetime without having to work in paid employment. A single wage, a husband’s wage has been enough for them to be able to meet the milestones of house buying, if this was not an option, no worries as the council houses were available before the buy to let sell off. If they stayed married and happy enough, or maybe unhappy but too frightened to leave because they are economically dependent, unqualified, and inexperienced in the world of work, paid employment was never even a consideration.

Gen X women like me were sold the dream (lie) of being able to have it all. University education, careers, babies if they came along and marriage if you wanted – or not. ?Not once though were we shown by our mothers how to look after ourselves financially if we decided on a different route for them there, how could they possibly know? Financial education in school did not exist when I was journeying through my childhood, I had no positive role models, the beliefs I learned were that money was evil, unless you gave it to charity – I was educated by catholic nuns. Or, from home, there was never enough money, food, clothes, scarcity (70s scarcity). ?I hoped I would be able to wing it as I had no one to ask and didn’t want to offend anyone by asking, felt ashamed I needed to ask. I’d be OK as I have my degree and a good old work ethic. If a work ethic was all you needed to be able to be financially well, I would have been fine. There was a problem with this line of thinking though as the harder you work the less you earn, and I have done some poorly paid jobs!

Society has changed exponentially in my lifetime. The financial systems have changed exponentially, access to housing, healthcare and happy long-lasting partnerships can seem limited. Publicly owned assets that served the whole population have been privatised for profit. The money paid through tax has moved from the government into private business and into shareholders hands. Personal finances are more complicated than ever and will continue to complicate the more we change jobs, take time out of work, live longer, get ill, buy stuff we think we should be buying, divorce, and die.

For generation X women we have the delightful, gender pay gap which leads to the gender pension gap, and we are fast approaching our pensions, or not if you missed that memo (written in invisible ink in Serbo Croat!) There’s the motherhood penalty, ?the lack of access to the better paid jobs, the systemic biases throughout our childhoods, education and employment that keep us looking for jobs, well below our qualifications, well below our skill set and well below our abilities. Not bold enough to say as young women, bloody hell yes! I can do that whatever male dominated industry job that the men are doing, just because they don’t meet at least 95% of the job specification, were not encouraged or supported and therefore, don’t have the self-belief that they could f..ck yes! do it and maybe, just maybe, do it better.

It's more expensive to live alone. It’s more expensive to be poor. Proportionally, the single parents with no money are paying the most. VAT is a regressive tax, and it is arbitrary on what it is added to. Children’s shoes are VAT free until your children’s feet get too big to be called child’s feet. My son is 14 and has size 12 feet. Who decides when a child is not a child? Not the mother, feeding and clothing that child. 18 to drink, 12 to pay full price on a flight, 16 to pay full fare on trains with size 7 feet? Pay in instalments and you pay more. Pay in cash from the shrapnel of coins found down the back of the sofa and you pay more. Debt compounds for the poor, faster than wealth compounds for the wealthy and with huge emotional and physical impacts. Poverty is traumatic and the trauma keeps poor people poor, generation after generation. The family story of success or not plays on repeat. A legacy no one knows how to ditch. Very difficult – but not impossible – to overcome.

Of all the generations that have come before or will come after, Gen X women carry the heaviest load of unresolved financial trauma. (they also are carrying a massive emotional burden too but that is a discussion for another day) The emotional distress that comes directly from money concerns is kept hidden, silent. There are no discussions about money because only a few people know how money works and they aren’t sharing. Or maybe we aren’t asking because we don’t know the right questions. Whichever way it is, the silence, lack of discourse, lack of knowledge and support and lack of specific information will keep the money exactly where it is or where it isn’t.

The lack of preparedness in our financial education has left us vulnerable. Vulnerable to poor decisions, bad relationships, strained mental health. Financial literacy should be a basic human right. Abraham Lincoln knew this. In his Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery in the US, he formed a bank to teach the emancipated slaves about money. Not only is it fair and just but it makes absolute economic sense. If someone can manage their finances, they can budget, they can plan, there are healthier and the relationships with work, with family and with friends is easier and they are not a burden to the state, they cost the state nothing and yet contribute in the form of tax!. Money therefore CAN buy happiness; it certainly buys choice. Was that another lie, that it couldn’t.

I am a Financial Adviser Qualified Coach and Educator available for Financial Wellbeing Corporate workshops and one to one or couples’ money coaching. My purpose is to empower more people to financial wellness through education and awareness. My expertise is personal finance. Contact me directly if you think I can help you find funds to live a generous and adventurous life.