I Think of Money Like I Think of Desserts 🤑🧁

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

My name is Carson, and I’m addicted to sweets.

How addicted? Well to give you some idea, I had 16 cavities filled in 2022. 16! My dentist said it was a record, but not one to be proud of. I’m still paying off the bill in $100 installments each month.

The 16 cavities gnawed through my teeth as a result of eating sugar at night time, without brushing. This was a bad habit I had all throughout my 20s. Cavities threatened the bones and baseboards of this house in which my spirit resides. They caused me countless hour of pain — physical and financial, because they were an expensive fix. All this is a parable to me about living life with a healthy degree of self-regulation and measurement.

Because I think of my relationship with sugar like I do my relationship to money.

I Love Sugar, But I’m Scared of It

I like my body looking a certain way. I want to be slim, and considered “attractive” by society’s standards. I do. I do, i do, i do.

In high school, I was 25 pounds heavier. Tina Fey was right when she said fat can make you invisible. I didn’t get any attention from guys until I was 17, once I had ditched my baby fat, and started wearing makeup. What followed was a spike in confidence that enabled me to be the bubbly person to strangers that I was to my friends. Every song about being 17 (Jan Ian’s; Frank Sinatra’s) I’ve remixed with my own lyrics to describe this blessed transformation.

But My Love of Sweets Still Burned Passionately in My Heart 🥹🍰🍦

I have never entered a room with sweets and been able to ignore them. Whether it’s a tray of holiday cookies or a banana cream pie on display in a diner, my awareness of their existence lingers on and on. I stare at the sweets. I pray over them. Eventually, I pick one up and allow myself two precious bites , and —

Then, the voice in my head kicks in: STOP! Do you want to be that girl again? And I see myself in my size 16 Old Navy jeans, unlovable, not anyone’s crush, not getting asked to dance, spreading the gossip, but never the subject.

Over the years, I’ve come up with a whole congress of rules surrounding sweets. From 2005–2010, I declared Saturday my “cheat day,” which meant I took an almost Olympic approach to gorging myself in that 12-hour waking window. The result was a small landfill of wrappers at my feet, and a Sunday hangover, which I would power through with a lengthy gym session.

Most recently, I’ve been thinking of desserts how I think of money. When I think about it, the two concepts are very similar.

For much of my 20s, I was often broke (see my book of essays for more on the starving artist life). I dreaded swiping my debit card — felt like my survival was at stake. Much like how I feel if I ate a big dessert outside of “cheat day.”

Then, I became more financially stable. I didn’t dread paying rent or swiping my card, because I knew more money was coming in. Money in, money out; breathe in, breathe out. Kinda like how, once you learn that you burn 2000 calories just by existing, you stop doing frantic equations about how much cardio you need to not be the Revolting Blob. And I think it’s only a woman who grew up in the west who’s done this brutal math.

My general guideline for myself is to spend $35/day.

Now, that’s a weekday budget, mind you. That’s like a day when I eat eggs for breakfast and bodega tuna for dinner, with a couple precious Americanos in between. If I do that a few days a week, then I give myself leave to be more egregious the other days. Maybe I’ll have a $200 day, in which I treat myself to a pedicure and a blowout.

That $35/day mindset is similar to how I let myself have half a cookie or croissant most days. And a few squares of dark chocolate every day. Because to spend nothing and have NO sweets would be a straight gulag existence — as in, too bleak to entertain.

My favorite indulgence is to take myself out to a cocktail-soaked dinner capped by a decadent dessert. It no longer needs to be a Saturday — it can be any day. The intake of good food without worrying about the output of money feels like the ultimate spoiling. And on these nights, I don’t worry about being chubby and unlovable. How can I, when I’m heaping so much adoration on myself? Plus, I trust myself to stop eating when I’m full. I trust that, by not depriving myself, I’m not building a reservoir that threatens to drown me in a lustful binge.

I’ve had so many fantastic desserts lately. I play them back, the way you might a good kiss or a satisfying conversation. One night, after seeing a great movie (“How to Have Sex”), I took myself to eat at this restaurant called the Noortwyck. I was so torn over what dessert to get that I ordered two: the Mille Feuille, which was a sinful tapestry of banana, stout caramel, and pecan, AND the Chocolate Cremieux: which was the most generous scoop of coconut ice cream on a cloud of tea flavored froth. The only way that I can think of to describe the Chocolate Cremieux was that it was a like laying on a beach in Jamaica, while simultaneously having a rainy day indoors in London.

Then there was the sticky toffee pudding at Four Horsemen. I took myself there for a Valentine’s Day dinner. The Italian Prosecco was great, but the dessert was at the frequency of angel song. I let myself have more than half. I spent $100, and it was worth it.

Is this me saying I have a healthy relationship with food and sweets? No, I still use both to self-soothe when I’m blue or upset. But I do feel like, in moderating my use of both, I’m enjoying the moments of indulgence as they were intended to savored. 💜🥹

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