Later this month I turn 54, which is solidly middle-aged. I was born in 1968, and was a GenX teen in the 1980s. My first experiences with money, with working, with jobs, were all in that decade.
Some years ago, I had this startling realization that I was in position of a visceral, unconscious, false-intuitive sense about the value of money. I call it “false intuitive” because there was a sense that *felt* right internally, even though it was dead wrong.
That false-intuitive sense? How much money could buy.
Coming of age in the 1980s meant that gas was US$1.24/gallon, bread was US$.75 per loaf. A car cost around US$6500.00. US$100 bought a lot, it was a really significant amount of money.
Fast forward to 2022, and it’s not that US$100 isn’t significant, but it’s not nearly as significant. US$100 in 2022 is apparently equivalent to about $36 of 1986 purchasing power.
Beyond the other money conversations.
I was having a conversation with one of our clients who is about my age. She had been really struggling to raise her prices because it just felt unfair. I helped her look at the spiritual pieces, and the logistical pieces, and all the different ways I support clients to raise their prices.
But, I also asked what decade she was a teen or in her early twenties.
Those first years that you’re responsible for your rent, your bills, your food help to really define how you relate to the value of money.
It was a big “Aha!” for her, to get that she was relating to $100 as One Hundred Dollars (drum roll and fan fare), instead of the $36 that it really was compared to her youth.
Suddenly, raising her prices made sense. Instead of a big spiritual struggle, it was much more a currency exchange issue.
A client that can’t see their way to charge $100, can see their way to charging $36… and then doing the currency exchange up to $100 in today’s money.
There are other conversations to be had.
With business owners, there are other important considerations. Considerations like shifting from thinking like an employee, when every hour is paid, to knowing that limited client hours pay for all the business expenses, and so can’t be thought of as an hourly rate. Considerations like not taking on the burden of responsibility for all the injustice in our current economic system.
But this somatic, historical sense of the value of cash is also important. If you don’t update your sense of the value of money, you will always be coming up short.
How to update your money-value sense.
For some, it’s relatively simple. Often just seeing and acknowledging this can make a huge difference.
A few extra steps can help lock it in.
- Next time you make some regular purchase, maybe grocery shopping, calculate how much you would have spent in currency the year you were 18 or 20. If I spent US$220 on our family’s groceries, for me that would have been about US$80 back in 1986. I simply searched for “value of US$100 in 1986.”
- Spend time with those two numbers. Feel US$80 (or whatever your number is) in your being, in your gut and your heart.
- Allow that feeling to connect with the current price, for me US$220. Sit with it, and allow it to integrate.
- Look at the price you charge clients. Let’s say you charge clients US$80 but know you need to raise your prices, but have been resisting. Connect it to the current amount it’s worth. Using my numbers, US$80 * .36= $US28.80 is what you are really charging them in today’s dollars.
- Let it slide a little. It’s unlikely that you are fully living in 1986 prices or the equivalent, you’re spending money, you know things cost more. US$28.80 is not going to be entirely accurate. But it will be a wake-up call and sobering.
If previously you’ve been getting that maybe you should be charging more like $110 but that had felt impossible to touch, after this process you may get that shifting from US$28.80 to US$39.60 isn’t really that big a jump for your clients.
Although for some the math can feel tricky, it doesn’t have to be terribly precise. If you can get that somatically you may be experiencing money as worth twice or three times it’s actual purchasing power, that update in your being can make a huge difference in your ability to charge sustainable prices in your business.
If you’re old enough that this has an impact on you, and this can be true for anyone over 30 or 35, although obviously it’s more significant the older you are, what did you see about your own pricing and relationship to money?
A few partial scholarships
The September Intensive, Surrender, Sovereignty and Strategy, is half full. What’s true is that we’re past the early-early bird pricing, but what’s also true is that there are a limited number of partial scholarships available.
I was moved by my heart to offer this, and it’s important to me that the right people are there. If you feel drawn, that it’s the right support for you, reach out and see if we can make it work.
