How Your ACE Score Affects Your Money Habits

How Your ACE Score Affects Your Money Habits

What is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)?

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are the traumatic events that occur during childhood between the ages of 0-17 years.

Money Triggers

Imagine grocery shopping one sunny afternoon. You have all the right ingredients in your grocery cart, and you’re ready to purchase.   But you have a taste for Honeycrisp apples.  You look at the price tag and see that the apples are $3.49 a pound. That’s, like, a dollar more than any of the other apples! You have money to purchase the product, but you experience a weird uneasy feeling in your gut. Your brain is running several ideas:

Girl, don’t waste your money on that! You can get cheaper apples at Kroger.

But on the other hand, apples are healthy, and you know what they say about apples and doctors.

You don’t have any money at all.

If I had a man (or woman) who supported me, I could buy apples.

I bet White people don’t have this problem.

We can’t afford that because papa is looking for a new job.

Now in the 35,000 thoughts that we run through our brain, which thought was the weirdest?

It was probably, “We can’t afford that because papa is looking for a new job.”

Why was that thought in your brain, you might ask?  It’s because even though we are deciding on an action in the present, our minds can be triggered by Financial PTSD.

Our Money Triggers Can Help Us.

We experience money triggers from our traumatic experiences in the past. In many ways, these triggers help us avoid a lot of terrible situations.  When I was little, my family told me never to walk in a check-cashing business because many of them engage in predatory lending.

And I’m glad that they did because, according to the National Associates of Consumer Advocates, payday lending could ruin your credit and charge you five times more than cashing your check at a bank. This warning was given to be because my family did go to the check-cashing place and learned from their experience.

Our Money Triggers Can Hurt Us.

On the other hand, our money triggers can hurt us. They can stop us from getting the things we want. It can be as little as not purchasing Honeycrisp Apples — even though you can afford them. It could manifest as accepting less pay than you’re worth, even though you’ve attempted to negotiate your pay.

Trauma and Money Habits

On a personal level, the most challenging thing as a writer is to convey to readers the urgency around money and trauma. Using trauma as a reflective-interactive tool can help Women of Color process their cultural beliefs around gender and race. As I was looking for more scientific research to support this case, I stumbled upon a TED Talk by Dr. Nadine Harris Burke entitled Adverse Childhood Experiences.

What is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)?

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are the traumatic events that occur during childhood between the ages of 0-17 years. Some examples of these traumatic events are: 

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