Dyscalculics are no good with numbers. That’s pretty much the definition of dyscalculia. But in addition to having extreme difficulty with math, and all the accounting problems implied therein, we also tend to have larger troubles with the world of finance. We’re prone to “short term, not long term” financial thinking, and we “fail to see the big financial picture”.
I bring this up because my household is undergoing a bit of a financial upheaval. My partner has accepted a new job, with the standard start-up trade-off of stock options (which will hopefully be worth a lot some day) for a smaller salary. To make matters more fun, the public transit that Stuart thought he could take to the office is simply not working. That means that he’ll need to drive, which means we’ll need a new car that we hadn’t planned on buying, and …
…and, the long and short of it is that we need to save as much money as we can, and I need to earn more money. We need to rejigger the household budget, and I need a day job. Now, I’m your typical adult LD unemployed/underemployed artist. The bulk of my experience has been in the lucrative fields of retail and teaching. I don’t know how much money I have to earn at this point to cover the cost of the car, but the bigger problem is even having a conversation about budgets and finance at all when half the conversation might as well be in Chinese.
The world of finance is a pretty closed book to me. I suspect that this is because, in addition to being all about math, finance takes it one step farther into Accounting and Investment. Both of those are basically games — investment is pretty much a fancy word for fine-tuned gambling. And for whatever reason, having dyscalculia means that you also have trouble learning games. I can’t wrap my head around the rules to Go, Fish. Really.
I’m not sure how to solve this problem. Whenever we discuss finances, I feel bullied by the numbers. I can’t participate like a grown-up because the numbers swim around in my head, making buzzing noises like killer bees, and never resolve into anything with a coherent meaning.
My husband can’t really help in this area, because he’s too good at math. Seriously, he has dreams in math. Math to him is what similar to what music is to me — an elegant language with a logical syntax that is conveyed by meaningful symbols (and I say this even though my sight-reading is also tripped up by dyscalculia) so how could you possibly improve upon it? Why would you need to?
When I was just out of college, making minimum wage, I actually handled my budget in a more or less functional way. This is because I gave up on ever balancing my checkbook and just went with my intuitive picture of “how much” I could spend. For me, this proved to me far more reliable than trying to do the actual math. Now that there are two incomes, and savings accounts, and IRA’s, and a mutual fund, I’m up a creek.
Has anyone out there found a way to work around this problem? If you have, PLEASE share it. You’ll be doing a public service.
I long to hear some solutions too. My husband is used to having a girl friend organize everything for him. I, literally, have had several nervous breakdowns trying to do what he is delegating to me! .This all resulted in hyper-focusing, over-compensating behaviors (trying to implement Microsoft Money — which just made things more confusing for me/us.) I have begged my husband to bring in a bookeeper but he says we can’t afford it. However he just bought a jet sky so we can go on vacation….? For me, the best “vacation” would be for our 5-years of back taxes to be done!!!
I can’t apply for various types of aid: medicaid, financial aide to got back to school….tuition assistance for kid’s camp… without the “latest tax form”
Hi Debra,
That sounds like a tough situation … and it really seems like it’s not the best division of labor for you to be the one to worry about the finances. It’s clearly taking a toll on your mental health already, and it’s only a matter of time before your physical health is affected as well. That’s not good for you or your family.
Wow.. Sounds familiar.
I have for 4 years been in the most abrasive after-divorce situation you can imagine, so my economy is under constant scrutiny for possibly getting a bit more out of me in child support or whatever. I am deeply in debt because of lawyer bills and my economy is in shambles. It is very stressed.
On top of that, I have sat through day-long meetings with two lawyers and a stenographer while trying to remember months and numbers and where this or that came from UNDER OATH. It was excruciating torture. Sometimes I can’t even remember what year something happened.
What gets me with accounting is that no matter how methodical I am, I always have this feeling of having done it wrong. I try to be the straightest shooter and yet I end up with a conscience as dark as pitch. Whenever I have to go back to it, I feel like I have been caught red handed and that now the End of the World is at hand.
Not only do I feel it is likely I could have done something wrong, I also suspect myself of creating it on purpose – that I should really be able to just overcome my troubles with numbers and dates. I am unwilling to face the problems, since it implies I am somehow defective, a notion I have had since I was a nerd in school who sucked at sports. I got teased and tormented and somewhere, I thought I deserved it for being such a cheat. I was smart in other areas, but NOT numbercrunching. Everybody expected me to be great in all disciplines. At my high school final exam I swapped September and October and my arguments at the oral exam in history fell to the ground as a ton of bricks. I got a D and the teacher was laughing so the entire school could hear it.
We have been doing accounting in the house for a week now. My wife is mainly doing it, but we fight all the time. I am completely exhausted. Every time she asks me a question, I get dry mouth, my hands and feet go cold and I feel like I am about to die. I defend myself and raise my voice and hate myself for it. It is not at all going well.
I would really appreciate hearing if anybody has similar experiences with doing accounting.
Kent
I know what you mean about the guilty conscience. I know it’s not my fault, and in any event I’m making honest mistakes — it’s not like I’m intentionally misleading anyone– but I feel as if somehow, deep down, I’m not just doing badly at math, but that I’m doing something bad whenever I have to do math. It’s a terrible feeling.