Jen Sincero - You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth

I f youre ready to make more money, you can. I dont care how many times youve tried and failed or if youre so broke youre selling your bodily fluids for bus fare or how often youve found yourself center stage at the checkout counter, feigning shock and indignation: Are you sure? Declined?! Thats impossible. Can you run it one more time? No matter how out of the question it may seem for you at this moment, you can make lots of money. Even Ima-buy-everyone-I-love-a-house-and-a-gold-tooth kind of money, if thats what turns you on.

Id also like to point out that theres nothing horribly wrong with you if you havent figured out how to do it yet. Money is one of the most loaded topics out therewe love money, hate money, obsess over money, ignore money, resent money, hoard money, crave money, bad-mouth money; money is rife with so much desire and shame and weirdness its a wonder we can utter the word above a whisper, let alone go out and joyfully rake it in. (Have you been brave enough to read this book in public, I wonder? With the title in full view?)

It reminds me a lot of how weve been conditioned to deal with sex, another gold medalist in the Topics That Totally Freak People Out Competition. When it comes to having sex and making money, youre supposed to know what youre doing and be all great at it, but nobody teaches you anything about it, and youre never supposed to talk about it because its inappropriate, dirty, not so classy. Both money and sex can provide unthinkable pleasures, birth new life, and inspire violence and divorce. Were ashamed if we dont have it, were even more ashamed to admit we want it, we will do things/people were not nuts about in order to get it, and I know Im not the only one who has caught myself fantasizing about a stranger dressed like Batman coming up and giving me some on a bench in Central Park (am I?).

The good news is if you, like most people, have a troubled or conflicted relationship with money, you have the ability to heal it, transform it, and become such awesome pals with money that you wake up one day to find yourself standing in the middle of the life youve always wanted to live. And you can start making this change right now. All you need to do is wake up to whats holding you back, make new, powerful choices about what you focus on, ensmarten yourself about money, and go for it like you aint never gone for it before. Which is what this book will help you do.

I personally transformed my financial reality so quickly and massively that everybody who knows me well is still wondering what the hell happened. And believe me when I say if my broke ass can do it, you can do it too, no matter how rickety or hopeless you may feel right now. Because I knew precisely zero things about making money until I was in my forties. My forties! Thats the age when most people possess things like houses and college funds for their kids and an understanding of how the Dow Jones works. Meanwhile, at forty I possessed a barren bank account, a deep wrinkle line between my eyebrows from stress, and a first-name basis relationship with Sheila at the collection agency.

For the vast majority of my adult life I was a freelance writer, forever scrambling for work that paid an insulting nonamount considering how time consuming and challenging it was. Had I actually done the math, I would have realized just how free my lancing was, but I instead chose to be in denial of the facts, work harder, complain more, and just, you know, hope that Id somehow magically start raking in the dough or get run over by someone rich who would then have to take care of me for the rest of my life. My watertight plan for getting out of financial struggle was partly based on having a whole lotta hang-ups about money (money is evil, rich people are gross, I have no idea how to make it, Id have no idea what to do with it even if I did know how to make it, etc.), as well as my perpetual, and torturous, state of indecision. I knew I was a writer, and I also knew I wanted to do more than sit alone in a room in my robe and type all day, I just didnt know what it was I wanted to do. And rather than just picking something already and seeing where it led, I chose to bite my nails down to bloody nubs and wallow in the I Dont Know What the Hell I Want to Do with My Life quagmire. For years. As in decades. It was so painful. And devastating. And utterly paralyzing. This is how I found myself at the ripe old age of forty, living in a converted garage, in an alley, in fear of requiring dental work, excelling at financial mediocrity in the following ways:

• Eating/drinking/filling my pockets with anything that was free, regardless of whether or not I really liked it or needed it.
• Walking countless blocks, in flip-flops, to save five dollars on valet parking.
• Employing duct tape, instead of professionals, to repair things like leaking pipes, busted shoe straps, and fractured bones.
• Meeting friends at a restaurant for dinner, ordering a glass of water, tap is fine thanks, I love the tap in this city, before explaining to the table how Im really not hungry, Im stuffed actually, and then the free bread is placed on the table and disappears into my mouth in a blur.
• Choosing between phone service and health insurance.
• Spending excruciating amounts of time purchasing anything, from a TV to a bedspread to a wooden spoon, in order to thoroughly investigate every possibility of a cheaper option, a forthcoming sale, a coupon code, or to entertain the question, Is this something I could perhaps make myself?

If Id put the same amount of time and focus that I put into freaking out about not having money, cutting back my expenses, finding the deals, haggling, researching, returning, refunding, redeeming, rerouting, rebating, into actually making money, I would have been driving a car with working windshield wipers years before I actually did.

This making money thing is not about never again making wise, informed purchases or rejoicing in a good sale or filling up on bread. Its about giving yourself the options and the permission to be, do, and have whatever lights you up, instead of acting like a victim of your circumstances. Its about not pretending everything is cool, I love having three roommates, none of whom know how to use a sponge or a goddamned broom, instead of focusing on making more money to afford yourself your own place for fear youll be judged or youll suck at it or that itll be too hard or no fun or out of your reach. Its about creating the wealth that affords you the life youd love to live instead of settling for what you think you can get.