Author separates money, emotions

Liz Perle confesses to erratic fiscal behavior in Money: A Memoir, bravely exposing her financial foibles and hang-ups.

It's an effort to better understand how money shapes women and their relationships.

Her book starts with a bang: She's on an airplane with her 4-year-old son, having just been asked by her husband to leave Singapore, where she and their son had moved from New York five weeks earlier to join him.

Her husband had been working there for six months, but by the time they arrived, he'd changed his mind about wanting to be married and told her to go home. Problem was, they'd sold their home -- and all her possessions were on a ship chugging to Singapore.

So there she was, hurtling toward a friend's sofa, unemployed with a 4-year-old and $1,500 her husband had handed to her at the airport. Abruptly, Perle writes, she was thrown into a position she had feared for as long as she could remember: that she would lose her financial footing and end up pushing a shopping cart in an alley.

Despite this "chronic anxiety" about poverty, she had long ago decided that although she would do what it took to get money -- work hard and marry right, in her words -- she didn't want to have to think about it.

In other words, she wanted to have her own money and independence but simultaneously hoped something or someone would step in to take care of her.

It's a contradictory outlook, but apparently not an uncommon one.

Perle, a former book editor, spoke to more than 200 women and consulted psychotherapists and financial experts to help her discover why many women struggle emotionally with money.

Is it biological? Historically speaking, one of her experts says, men were the sole providers and therefore they tend to directly equate money and power, while women -- who traditionally had no access to money -- combine the two in a very particular way that has a lot to do with romantic love.

Is it cultural conditioning? A financial educator Perle interviewed believes boys still are taught that money is directly linked to their manhood, while womanhood is still tied to a girl's beauty and her ability to connect with others.

Perle writes of her own financial conditioning at the hands of her grandmother (who taught her to do whatever it took to get money and squirrel it away but never talk about it) and her father (whose idea of the worst form of punishment was the threat of disinheritance).

The healthiest woman Perle says she encountered when it comes to her relationship with money is Robin (Perle uses only first names in the book), a successful businesswoman who survived two divorces that cost her dearly, emotionally and financially. But Robin keeps the two separate. "I'm highly employable," Robin says. "I can always take care of what I need to. Money is money -- nothing more, nothing less."

This philosophy dovetails perfectly with the reason Perle gives for writing this book. She wants to help women recognize their money fears and fantasies so they can keep those emotions from harming their financial lives.

Perle writes that her own financial epiphany was slow in coming. Though her divorce was the catalyst, it was the dredging up of painful money-related memories (such as stealing $20 bills from her husband's wallet) combined with insights from her research that allowed her to gradually disentangle her feelings from her finances.

Now, four years into her second marriage, working as an editor and writing, Perle seems to have rewired her thought processes to the point where she handles finances with the same level of emotion as she does in taking out the trash or cleaning clothes.

Kudos to her for having the courage to air her dirty financial laundry so other women can benefit.

Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash

By Liz Perle

Henry Holt, 269 pages, $23

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