Luis grew up hearing the same sentence at every dinner: save every penny, mijo, because you never know what could happen. He listened. Today he makes six figures, and he still feels guilty ordering the second drink. Some part of him is waiting for everything to fall apart.
Carla grew up hearing that rich people are selfish and that making money means sacrificing everything else. She wants to be successful. She also quietly sabotages every step toward it, because deep down, having more feels like betraying where she came from.
Luis and Carla are from chapter 17 of my book. I have been both of them, sometimes in the same week.
Scarcity is a lesson, and lessons can be unlearned
The frugality my mom raised me with is the reason I saved my first $100,000 by 30 and paid off big loans fast. That discipline is real and I am grateful for it every day. It also taught me to save so hard that I forgot money is supposed to serve your life. I had the numbers and I still could not enjoy a single dollar of them. (Fun fact: I once stood in a Costco for ten minutes debating a $12 candle with a savings account that could have bought the whole aisle.)
That is scarcity mindset: a set of beliefs about money you absorbed in a specific house, at a specific kitchen table, long before you had a paycheck of your own. Your balance today barely gets a vote. The sentence you heard at nine is still running the show at thirty.
The dicho that opens chapter 17 says it best. Si te enfocas en lo que no tienes, nunca tendrás suficiente. If you focus on what you lack, you will never have enough. Scarcity keeps you staring at the gap, and the gap never closes from staring.
Two moves to start with this week
Chapter 17 walks through five steps for breaking the scarcity mindset. Here are the two I would start with, because they take twenty minutes and change how the rest feels.
Name the sentence. Write down the exact line you heard about money growing up, in the words and the language it came in. Save every penny. Rich people are selfish. Money does not grow on trees. Then write who said it and what they were protecting you from. Luis's family was protecting him from a world that had been unpredictable to them. That was love. It is also a rule written for a house you no longer live in.
Give joy a line in the budget. Pick a number, small on purpose, and put it in your budget with the label Joy (in the Traffic Light it is the whole Green Zone). Then spend it, on purpose, every month. Planned spending is the antidote to guilt, because guilt lives in the unplanned. When the money for the second drink already has a name, your nervous system stops treating it like an emergency.
Para reflexionar: which one are you, Luis or Carla? Maybe a little of both. Whichever sentence you wrote down first, that sentence is where the work begins.
One thing before Friday: write the sentence down and give joy its number. The Mini FinGoals Tracker is the free version of the sheet I use every week, ten minutes to set up, and the Joy line fits right in.
And if you want to say your sentence somewhere people will not flinch, General at Hermana HQ is the kitchen table. Free, same login as the letter.
One more thing, because I will always say it: this is education, with love. For your specific numbers, a licensed professional is the right person to sit across from you, and if the guilt around money feels bigger than money, therapy is real support.
Con amor,
Ixamar 🪴