Lucinda Atwood - The Good Friends Guide to Money: Your Math-Free, Guilt-Free Guide to Financial Health

the Good Friends Guide to
Money

Your Math-Free, Guilt-Free Guide
to Financial Health

Lucinda Atwood, Ann Leckie
and Marina Glass

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

The Good Friends Guide to Money

Your Math-Free, Guilt-Free Guide to Financial Health

Second Edition

Copyright 2011 by Lucinda Atwood, Ann Leckie and Marina Glass

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-5607-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5609-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5608-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011917154

iUniverse rev. date: 01/10/2012

Contents

Do You Want to Improve your Relationship with Money?

Im sorry, its been declined. Do you have another card? The cashier hands back your debit card. Trying to look unconcerned, you pull out a credit card. Hopefully that one will go through; two declines would be embarrassing.

Oh well, its only a week until payday, you can live on credit that long. But still, its only the 25 th ; last month you made it to the 28 th before running out of cash. It seems that each month, the month gets longer and the cash gets shorter. One of these days youre going to do something about that. And start a savings account. Imagine going on a real vacation

Which reminds you to buy a lottery ticket, or as you call it, the retirement fund.

Do you experience money as a source of sadness, jealousy, anger, resentment, confusion or worry? Many of us do. We want to be responsible, but feel out of control with our money. We work so hard to earn it, but there never seems to be enough. We know what we should be doing, but nothing seems to work, at least not for long. We are not weak or stupid, but somehow money seems unmanageable.

Spending is no fun either. Paying the bills is depressing; so much of our money goes for expenses. We feel guilty spending on ourselves, so we overspend in other areas. Or we overspend on ourselves, but still feel unsatisfied.

These negative emotions diminish the quality of our lives.

This Book will Help You Change your Relationship with Money

Ask yourself these questions:

1.Do you have credit card debt?

2.Do you worry about which bills to pay this month, knowing that you cant afford to pay all of them?

3.Did you and your partner argue about money this month?

4.Do you feel anxious about money?

5.In the past month, did you save less than you think you should have?

6.Do you ever feel jealous when friends go on a trip or to an expensive restaurant, or buy new shoes?

7.Are you thinking about working longer hours or getting a second job in order to pay the bills? But worrying about missing out even more with your kids or partner?

8.Do you feel that you should be doing more for family or groups you believe in such as community, religion or charities, but cant due to lack of time and money?

9.Do you worry about your financial future?

10.Do you worry about your childrens relationship with money? Do you get upset when they ask you to buy things? Do they constantly beg you to buy things?

11.In the past month, did you buy something only because it was cheap?

12.In the past month, did you deny yourself an experience or item that you really wanted, only because of the cost?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have the potential to improve the quality of your life by improving your relationship with money.

Your relationship with money has nothing to do with the amount of money that you have. Read that sentence again: Your relationship with money has nothing to do with the amount of money that you have.

Your sense of abundance and financial health is affected by your thoughts about money, the way you interact with it, and how you perceive the role money plays in your life. When you spend and save according to your values and goals, you will feel sufficient and abundant. You will get what you want.

How you think and feel about money greatly affects your sense of abundance and your ability to have enough. Changing your relationship with money can change your life.

This book was written to give you an option; to offer you a new way of thinking about abundance, your values and your money. You can create a positive and joyous yes joyous relationship with money.

This book will help you to:

Develop a healthy relationship with money.

Manage your money confidently.

Spend and save in alignment with your goals and values.

Make saving and managing your money an easy and positive aspect of your life.

Develop a network of professionals and experts who can help you manage your money at specific times in your life.

This Book will Help Others

When you improve your relationship with money, you will influence your friends, family and co-workers. You will model healthy attitudes and open the door to understanding that rich is a state of mind .

By living your values, your life will improve and you will touch the lives of others. You will free up money to donate to charities and good causes.

And, yes, you can still have nice shoes!

Listen up, Girlfriend

We wrote this book as a girlfriends guide to money. Think of us as your girlfriends, walking beside you, supporting you. We are the girlfriends you turn to when your relationship goes bad, who listen with open hearts and then tell it like it is.

We like you. We believe in you. We believe that you as you are are sufficient. You have everything you need to have a healthy relationship with money; all you need is the insight to evolve your thinking.

When you believe in yourself the way we believe in you, your relationship with money will change. You will have enough. You will find yourself spending and saving in alignment with your values.

What this Book is Not

This book is not a lecture we are not here to tell you what you have done wrong or how to live. We will not encourage you to get rid of all your possessions or to stop shopping.

This book is not about numbers and equations. It contains no math and none of those gut-wrenching, headache-inducing exercises that make most of us feel guilty and incapable.

Who Are We?

Lucinda Atwood, Ann Leckie
and Marina Glass

We are three friends who saw women giving their power away through lack of knowledge, awareness and support. We have experienced the move from lack to abundance. We know the joy of spending and saving in alignment with our values. Our goal is to help you develop a great relationship with money so that you too can live happily and fully.

The three of us have backgrounds in finance, human resources, community development, writing, design and fine art. Between us we have five children, two husbands, three cars, one dog, two cats and a gerbil. We practice taekwondo, triathlon, soccer, yoga, abundance and living the best lives we can.