Chapter 2: The Dreams

TranscrIpt:

Hi! Welcome to this week’s training! I’m Sherri Wilson, owner of Genius Communication, which is basically a place for all things biz. Hiring. Marketing. Social media management. Consulting. Today, we’re going to dive into chapter two of my story of paying off $56,000 of credit card debt fast! Listen to last week’s podcast to get the prologue and chapter one if you want.

The dream

I can’t remember the year I had this dream, but it was probably 2012 or so. Here’s a little background to help you understand the dream better. First, I used to go with my dad truck driving every summer for three years when I was 16-18. I loved those trips. I got to see 42 states and spend time with my dad in ways that many kids don’t get to. I mean, when you’re sitting in a truck for hours a day with no where to go, you get to have some great conversations, learn more about him and my grandparents, and laugh. Oh, goodness! We laughed so hard at times. My dad is very funny. I’m sure I got my humor from him.

The characters in the dream other than myself is my mother-in-love, Mickey. She’s since passed away from Alzheimer’s, but she was alive at the time of the dream. My son, Kent, is in the dream the second time. He is about five in the dream but at the time of the dream he was older. I believe he times the dream to a degree and the generational component.

Here is the first dream:

I’m in my dad’s semi truck going down the road. He was driving and I was in the passenger seat as usual. I was 39, my current age at the time of the dream. Instead of it being fun, I had a bad feeling, a foreboding that something was coming—some type of danger. I’m on high alert looking carefully at the road and my surroundings when suddenly I see a huge hole in the road and it was approaching fast! I shouted at my dad and grabbed the steering wheel to keep us from driving into the hole, and then I woke up.

I didn’t know what the dream meant at the time, but I started praying asking for the interpretation. I’m not sure how much time passed, but I had the dream again with some differences.

This time I’m back in the truck, and now I’m driving. My dad isn’t there. Mickey is in the passenger seat and Kent is in the bunk sitting with his legs hanging down between our seats. It’s the exact same road and the same bad feeling. And I was more alert this time and felt I could avoid it. Instead, the hole was out of nowhere. I couldn’t avoid it. We and the truck started spiraling down this vortex. I used extreme effort and pulled up out. The dream ended.

This second dream interpreted both the first one and this one, and it pointed to my first memories of money that developed my mindset and relationship with money that I talked about in last week’s episode.

1986

I’m a child of the 80’s, the Decadent Eighties. My life wasn’t that great though. I love my dad, and he loves me, and I want to be careful with the story so as not to dishonor him. At the time, he was on his third marriage. We lived in Odessa, Texas, an oil town that was booming when we got there. My dad had moved from Oklahoma after he quit Halliburton and started a hotshot business. He’d take equipment to oil rigs, especially back and forth to and from California. Money was good.

Then the marriage started to suffer. He was gone a lot, and I think that was hard on his wife. Both drank a lot, too. Alcohol never helps a marriage that’s dying. Then the oil boom crashed. I remember oil execs jumping out of windows in Midland, the neighboring town. The marriage also went into a downward spiral with lots of fights, drinking, and turmoil. I was 13 at the time, so I felt it all very keenly. I remember being so sad. My only escape was school. Eventually, my dad lost everything—his home, his vehicles, his job, his wife, and even me. My grandpa came and got him. I lived with my step-mother for a bit then we ended up in Childress, Texas before I finally settled here in Clovis.

Growing up, I was never talked to about money. I had no idea how to budget. I didn’t know good money practices. I do remember getting an allowance for a short while, but my step mom stopped that. Not sure why. It gave me a value for working and earning money. I didn’t know how their finances were. I wasn’t spoiled by any means and didn’t know until later that dad made quite a bit of money. Not sure where it all went. We lived humbly. Maybe beer. Lol! Money was a mystery. Then I saw things being repossessed and that mixed with the drinking and divorce created a fear and lack mindset. That coupled with no money skills was a recipe for disaster.

I believe that the first dream was a picture of that. I also saw that I woke up before knowing if we went into the hole or not, which I believe was an indicator that I had a choice. It was during this time that I should have shifted spending habits. We could have avoided all the fear, stress, and uncertainty later.

the second dream

When my son was about five (the age in the second dream), my mother-in-love got her and my father-in-law in a lot of debt. It was so much that they filed bankruptcy. It was really the only option at the time because they didn’t have a grid for a side hustle, second job, etc. to pay it off. My mother-in-love didn’t want to work.

From both dreams, we see a generational component where I am now in a lot of credit card debt like my dad experienced in the 80’s, and on my husband’s side a generation component of his folks doing the same thing and filing bankruptcy. I also felt that if I didn’t change and demonstrate wise money management, my son would also fall into the same pit. Let me say right here that it wasn’t just a falling. I could literally feel the vortex pulling the truck down into it. I had to fight like crazy to get us out.

Those two dreams became my guidance in the decisions we made. I knew that it was going to take tremendous effort to get us out, which I’ll get into later in this series. The first part was examining some of my beliefs about money that were contributing to the problem.

mystery mindset

This one was pretty straight forward—money was a mystery to me. On top of that, I didn’t want to know the numbers. I just kept juggling money and moving it around to buy some time (nothing illegal) while still spending like we weren’t having a money problem.

Finally, one day, I swallowed the fear and added up all of the debt and our income. We were waaayyyyy over what we brought home. My business and my husband’s just didn’t bring in enough. I had to get a job. Something very weird happened after that. The mystery of how bad it was was gone. I felt empowered. I had concrete facts and knew how much extra was needed to survive. I could get that problem solved and then tackle the debt, which brings me to the day I was on my couch and found out that only $200 was coming in that I discussed last week. It was then that I decided I needed a job. Thankfully, I got one but that opened up all kinds of emotions, which I’ll discuss later.

I also learned that there are tried and true principles for building wealth. Once I started using them, it actually wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be to get out of debt.

acceptance and money

This one caught me by surprise. Let me explain. I was doing the Five Why’s exercise to try to figure out why I would impulse buy. Now, I didn’t buy huge things, but if I wanted something, I just got it even though I knew I’d have to put it on a card. It took years and years but all of those little purchases became a huge problem.

As I went through the exercise, I realized that the only time I felt accepted was when my dad was home from the road plus he usually gave me gifts. I had associated gifts with acceptance as a child and that mindset carried over to my money relationship. All those little purchases from Amazon gave me a shot of dopamine in an attempt to recreate the good feelings I had when my dad was home. Once I realized what was going on, I no longer needed to do that. Often discovering the “why” is all that’s needed to create change. From that point on, I was well on my way to freedom.

to be continued…

I now viewed money differently, and our relationship was already getting better. Now I needed to figure out the mechanics of wealth and paying off debt. That’s for next week.