It's true ... I want money

Growing up, we had the basic needs, right. Didn't most of us? Now that I'm an adult, married, with children, an education ... la, da, da ... I'm ready to have money. I'm ready to have choices. More than just the basics and then a little. My husband is still getting his degree and I'm happy being at home. Am I the only one done with only maintaining our finances? Don't get me wrong, we have no business having the things we do with us still in school and for us still being young. For those things, I am grateful. But, I'm greedy. I'll admit. I still want more. Is that so wrong?

It's an internal conflict I have. I have had to grow up quickly most of my life and now that I am grown up, I still want to be grown up. What a dilemma. So what do I do? I'm also impatient. I know things will work out ... eventually, but call it instant gratification, call it greed, impatience, I don't care. I just want to be able to look at the books after everything is paid and think, "It's great to have such freedom in spending." Instead of, "O, can I justify this extra expense?" I want to be able to have --- security. My spending habits aren't lavish, certainly not. I don't buy a lot of clothes, nails, hair things or styles, makeup, movies even, nothing more than the basics anyway. But to have the safety net of extra how would that be?

Don't get me wrong, we aren't going bankrupt, we aren't broke, just not nested in a career, yet that matches our earning potential. You know what I really think it is ... these feelings of never being able to get out of this low income tax bracket has increased significantly since the realization of my mother's retirement. She made more than any single mother with an English degree could make these days. That hurts. Not only that, she has nothing to show for it. I am so scared of earning and not having - not the material things, but the safety net - the savings, the investments ... etc. I'm so scared, especially with the economy getting worse and the unemployment rising and rising and rising and our friends and family being laid-off, some more than once, that we'll never survive. It is the pit-f-the-stomach fear that we aren't safe. The times will get worse before they get better. I know this, it is part of the cycle of our social structure, but I don't want to be part of it. I am too easily afraid of "the unknown." How does someone get over that??