An initiation by fire
by Spencer Sherman
The fire that started in the ninth floor records room became the largest commercial building fire in Philadelphia’s history. When 1,500 of us were evacuated, the city’s firefighters poured more than 12 million gallons of water onto the blaze.
I panicked. My records! I thought. My lists of prospects! My customer profiles! Deal reports! Transaction data! These were the tools of my trade. Their destruction, as I saw it, meant the destruction of my livelihood. I was a nervous wreck.
In the morning, I raced back to my office. Blue-uniformed police officers barred my way. The fire was still smoldering; arson was suspected; a reward had been posted. I babbled that retrieving my documents from the doomed building was a matter of life or death. Incredibly, one sympathetic cop allowed me to pass. I headed up to the second floor, up to my knees in water, splashing through garbage and downed wires.
My action was dumb and dangerous, but I was oblivious to those facts and everything else as I reached my office and grasped my livelihood in my hands. The computer was a goner—saturated and dead. My paper files had all been drowned, but I jammed them soaking wet into my knapsack and raced for home.
My house had a small, fenced-in plot of lawn out back. I meticulously separated the dripping-wet papers and spread them, one by one, across the lawn to dry. That afternoon, I tiptoed among the sun-dried pages — the papers I had “saved” as if they were the singular totems of a primal religion — and noted that every single one of them was blank. That’s when it hit me. What on earth am I doing?
I stopped. I simply stopped in my tracks.
What had started out as the worst day of my life began turning into the best. In that moment, I saw for the first time my own money madness and what it was doing to me. The fire had done more than burn up paper; it had illumined a profound truth about my behavior around money.
What am I so afraid of? I asked myself.
The answer was there instantly, springing up from my memory in sharp focus. My mind took me back to my childhood and into my family’s modest apartment in Queens, New York.
I am eight years old and I ask my father how much money he makes. My father does not answer. He just stares at me — a cold look of barely suppressed fury. His look says, Back off! You have approached a high voltage wire that is dangerous and absolutely off-limits! His look says: Shh! Money is the key to our survival; don’t even speak of it. Ever. To anyone. Money is security. You can never have enough money. And you must never speak of it to others.
As I grew into adulthood, these money messages reliably showed up for every money decision, increasingly dictating my responses to money and my behavior where money was concerned. Always, I turned inward, clammed up, and held tight to what I had earned even as I worked hard to build my money fortress higher and thicker.
So it was probably not surprising that I chose a career in money because I saw money as key to my survival and my identity. Nor was it surprising that I found it so difficult to discuss fees with a prospective client—or to talk about money at all.
When I first met my wife, I was completely at ease discussing my sexual history in detail on our second date, but talk about money — values, goals, dreams, debts, possessions, assets? You’ve got to be kidding!
That day in Philadelphia started me on a quest to understand and transform the unproductive and destructive behavior that I was exhibiting around money. I ultimately realized that I had an ailment called Money Madness. Awareness of my patterns and courage to be with the painful feelings around these patterns, at last helped me start to loosen their grip on my behavior.
Eventually my fear subsided around not having enough money. I embraced the possibility of sufficiency right now, in this moment, regardless of how much money I have. With this awareness of sufficiency, I found that I was able to talk openly about money with my spouse and colleagues, make sound financial decisions, and relax about spending, saving, and investing.
I never knew I could have a money and investment life that could be free of stress and struggle. Thanks to my initiation by fire, I now know it is possible.
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Spencer Sherman is the CEO and co‐founder of Abacus Wealth Partners and is regularly named by Worth magazine as one of the country’s top 100 wealth advisors. Spencer is the author of the bestselling book, The Cure for Money Madness. He was awarded an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School. For info: curemoneymadness.com. |
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
