Jessica Moorhouse remembers stealing a gumball from the bulk food section at the grocery store as a kid. Having seen adults take “samples” from the bulk bins before, she thought it was no big deal.
Her mom scolded her when she found out what her daughter had done. But Moorhouse says the way her mom did it conveyed a second message — that stealing could make others think they didn’t have money to pay for the candy. Even though she was just a child, Moorhouse came away with the perception that there was something negative about not having money.
“She also kind of made me feel that … that’s shameful because we don’t want to look poor,” Moorhouse, a Toronto-based financial educator and host of the More Money podcast, told The Current‘s guest host Rebecca Zandbergen. “I’ve carried that since,” she said.
Moorhouse knows she isn’t alone. The financial educator and counselor says, more often …