Some Questions to Use for Your Money Autobiography
By Ginger Anderson-Larson

Growing Up

• What were the economic conditions of your family in your growing up years?
• Describe the first residence you can remember. Did your housing change over the years?
• What was the prevailing attitude about money in your family? Never enough? Plenty? Not talked about? Talked about openly?
• How did you come to have money in your possession as a child? Allowance? Ask for it? Work for it? Given as needed? How did you feel about this?
• Who taught you how to give? What were you taught?
• Describe a time when you became aware that you had more money than some of your friends and a time when you realized you had less money than some others.

Teens to Adulthood

• Recall events and experiences from high school that involved things like clothes, cars, friends, etc. What associations do the memories have with money?
• Did the amount of money you had as a teenager relate to your feelings of self-worth?
• When did you open your first bank account, and what was the significance of that event?
• When did you obtain your first credit card? Was it a blessing or problem?
• How did money relate to decisions about education after high school?
• Did the experience of paying your own expenses change your attitudes about money? Did you grow more alike or different from how your parents dealt with money?
• How has career and/or family shaped your current views about money?

Journey of Faith

• What are the things you remember hearing about giving during your growing-up years – proverbs, maxims, spoken (or unspoken) instructions about money?
• How were these teachings related to your faith and God?
• Ponder the legacy regarding money that you received thus far in your lifetime.
• What would you like to experience differently in your relationship with money? What prevents you from experiencing it? What inspires you to grow into this new relationship?
• Jesus teaches that where one's treasure is, there will be one's heart also; where is your treasure and where is your heart? Are they where you long for them to be?
• What do you sense the Holy Spirit may be leading you to see differently in your relationship with money?

Ginger Anderson-Larson is pastor at St. John Lutheran Church in Olin, Iowa, and Zion Lutheran Church in Wyoming, Iowa. Previously she was coordinator of contextual education at Wartburg Theological Seminary. This article and the preceding one are adapted from a much longer piece, “A Money Autobiography,” Currents in Theology and Mission, October, 2009, © 2009 Lutheran School of Theology and Mission. Used by permission.

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