Honesty that sparks connection.
Money has always been in the room. Just not always talked about.
This week I'm sharing something I've kept pretty close — my money narrative. Where it started, where it broke, and how I'm slowly learning to use it for what it was always meant to give me: access, peace, and the ability to take care of the people I love.
I was in middle school, when my teacher quietly pulled me to the side and let me know that I no longer qualified for free lunch. I remember feeling confused more than anything. I genuinely thought free lunch was just how school worked. I didn't fully understand what that meant then. But that moment planted something, a quiet awareness that my "normal" was different than what I thought it was.
Pero the thing that broke me a little inside? I learned only recently that my mom worked at a hotel for almost 20 years and left making $6.75 an hour. An hour. After two decades. She loved her job, she told me. She was never motivated by money, even when things got hard at home. She wanted work that let her still come home and be present for all the "mom things" she never got paid to do. And now, I think about that a lot.
When I entered Big Tech I started making more than my parents ever had. That kind of shift doesn't come quietly, especially when you're first-gen and the guilt arrives right alongside the paycheck. I remember feeling this heavy sadness in those first few years. They deserved this too. So I started doing what felt natural: I covered dinners, gave "big" presents — a designer bag here, a brand name jacket there. Things they'd never think to buy for themselves. Giving felt like the only way to make the guilt quieter. Money as care. Money as the thing I could do when I didn't know what else to do.
But guilt is a shape-shifter. It doesn't disappear just because you redirect it, it finds another door. And for me, that door opened during a depressive episode I was living through quietly, mostly alone. I found comfort in the one thing that felt manageable: buying makeup and skincare. Pretty things that arrived in boxes and felt like a small reward in the middle of a very grey stretch of time. I tracked my spending (I always have) and I still remember seeing a single month where I'd spent $500 on makeup alone. It went on long enough that I burned through most of my savings. The guilt that had once pushed me to give generously was now eating through everything I'd saved. Same guilt, different wound.
The shame of that period stayed with me for years. I eventually went to therapy, pero I never once brought up the spending. That's how deep the shame ran. I thought I was okay. I thought I had it handled. I didn't. It took real time to see the patterns clearly and decide I wanted something different. And I did that work.
It wasn't until I started facing my own health struggles that money took on a different meaning entirely. One that finally felt like mine. Not guilt-giving, not grief-spending. Just: this is what I need to feel okay, and I have the ability to get it. The access felt different when it was pointed at myself. And that shift quietly changed everything. I started advocating for my salary differently. Not out of greed, but out of knowing what was at stake: my health, my stability, my ability to still show up for my family.
So by the time my layoff came, I wasn't unprepared. I'd already done the hard internal work. But después de all of it — the guilt, the depression, the healing — there was a new fear sitting in the room: what if even with everything I've built, it's still not enough to keep taking care of them? What if control isn't the same thing as security? That one still visits me.
The thing is, the scarcity mindset doesn't leave just because the scarcity does. I still feel guilt when I eat out too much. I still hear the voice at checkout: apoco vas a comprar esto? Have you seen what other people are saving and investing? You're not even close. That voice is harsh. And it's mine. But I'm learning to let money do what it's supposed to do. Be intentional rather than reactive, in both the spending and the withholding. I use Monarch to track everything. I remind myself there is enough. And when I book a trip to take my mom to Mexico fully paid, or experience Hawaii for the first time, or cover a health bill without panic — that's not overspending. That's the whole point.
Final thoughts
The scarcity mindset is a survival tool that outlives its usefulness.
It kept your family afloat. It made you resourceful. It made you careful. But it was built for a season, not a lifetime. If you're carrying guilt for spending on yourself, ask: is this guilt protecting me — or is it just a habit from when I had to protect myself?
You're allowed to unlearn it slowly.