By Hilary Hendershott
AdviceIQ.
What you believe about money drives your financial behavior. Finding out your beliefs is a key step to solving various problems, such as money conflicts in relationships.
Money doesn’t actually exist in reality. It isn’t gold or bank account balance or the pieces of paper in our wallet, it’s this conceptual thing, a promise, an agreement, delivered in measurable units, which we later exchange for something we want.
To grapple with this concept, we make things up about money and believe them. These beliefs act like a kind of programming language, which I call Money Operating Systems.
Your Money OS is a very basic belief about money that influences all your financial behavior. This system you install, unwittingly, controls how much you save and spend, whether you invest, how you invest, how you negotiate for a salary and how you feel about all of that.
Your past experiences with money, starting with your early memories of it, created your Money OS. It also came from your parents or the environment you were raised in.
Recognizing your belief helps you tackle your money woes, or those with your partner. Here are five of the Money Operating Systems I see most frequently:
“There will always be enough money.” People with this belief can be high earners, but sometimes they’re average earners who just live a simple lifestyle. If you have this belief about money, you need to be careful. Make sure you understand how much money you need for your financial future. Over-optimism causes under-saving.
“If I am good, the universe will give me what I need.” A positive world outlook doesn’t lead to productive financial behavior. Saving and investing rarely happen, because these folks believe that their financial health is a function of virtuousness.
“Money makes me valuable.” They are often the people who drive the big flashy cars, and they work to have other people perceive them as successful. Money intertwines with their self-worth. Their ego grows with their bank account. But if they are unsuccessful, their confidence suffers.
“There will never be enough money.” This one is pretty self-explanatory, and very common. People with this money belief will be either over-spenders or under-earners, and they keep creating the circumstances to prove this outlook true. They may justify holding on to poorly paid positions or overspending their high income.
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“Money is bad, the root of all evil.” These people believe that business and capitalism are responsible for social ills. They often righteously live without a lot of material possessions. Their negative opinion of money usually leads to destructive financial behavior.
These are only some of the beliefs that determine what is possible in your financial life. It took me some time to be analytical about my own money. I recognized my own system and how it kept me locked in cycles of overspending and feelings of worthlessness, and I’ve since transformed my experiences with money.
So where do you begin to see yourself here? What about your honey?
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Hilary Hendershott is founder and chief executive of Silicon Valley-based Hilary Hendershott Financial. She writes for AdviceIQ, which delivers quality personal finance articles by both financial advisors and AdviceIQ editors.
