I was recently invited to a live chat about the importance of financial wellbeing. It was with Lucienne Shakir (Lucienne is a fantastic female entrepreneur and high performance business coach and mentor). Having been part of Lucienne’s female founder community since January of this year, I knew it would be good.
Lucienne is a fantastic coach, not least because she asks insightful questions.
Q : What does money mean to you?
Ooh, that got the cogs turning!
It wouldn’t be the first time when sharing I’m a financial coach to then hear “I’m so bad with money”.
It was a welcome opportunity to talk about something I see people beat themselves up over. My mission is to make as many people as possible feel good about money.
If you take nothing else away from today’s blog, let it be this:
– You are not good or bad with money. Now let me explain.
Money is transactional; a neutral commodity used in exchange for goods, services and experiences. Well that all sounds very dull doesn’t it? The adjectives we use to describe it in contrast are quite fascinating and tell us a lot. Our relationship with money is more emotional than we often realise.
Money might make some feel happy, carefree, lucky, empowered, excited, appreciated, secure, even free.
Whilst for others it might conjure up feelings of pain, challenge, confusion, fear, regret…
Money evokes strong memories and emotions for us. This is often subconscious and deeply-rooted going back generations.
Perhaps we might think negatively because we feel like we just didn’t have the chance to develop money skills due to a lack of money growing up?
Or
Perhaps we just prefer to allow others to take charge of finances as they seem to enjoy it and somehow it seems more instinctive?
One of my favourite parts of coaching is speaking to clients and hearing their money stories. I always feel a huge sense of privilege to hear these personal experiences from childhood and early adulthood. Then the best bit, working with clients to establish new habits and create new goals to a more positive financial future.
Traditional economic theory assumes that humans operate carefully, weighing up the pros and cons of a scenario to make the best decision that serves them. However behavioural economics argues that humans infact do not always operate rationally. Evidence suggests that our emotions get in the way and as a result often we don’t make decisions that serve our best interests both now and in the long term. If we did, wouldn’t it be great?! We could wave goodbye to impulse buys and regret (buyer’s remorse) and we’d be just great at looking after future me.
So, back to the ‘good/bad with money’ narrative. I would argue instead it is our decision-making skills that need the work.
If you feel your decision-making around money needs work, there’s plenty you can do to actively work on it.
Some tips to try :
– Think about what common phrases you heard around money growing up. What messages did they convey? You might want to write these thoughts down.
– You can also try more in-depth work by regular journaling around this (see my previous blog for more).
– Prefer to talk it through? Uncover your relationship with money with a trusted friend or family member.
– Try a mini audit of the last 3 bigger purchases/areas of spending you made. Was there alignment between what you bought and your overall spending goals? If not, think about what might have influenced your decisions in those situations.
By getting to know ourselves better, we can start to recognise common behaviours and patterns. In turn this will increase our awareness to help us to act in tune with our emotions rather than against.
If working to uncover your own money story sounds interesting, watch this space! I’m working on something exciting and will share details very soon.
Here’s to awareness, acknowledging big emotions and making better decisions around money!
Up next week I’ll delve into navigating talking about money within relationships as this is a big and important one I see coming up time and time again.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what money means to you drop me a line.
🌹Until next time
Bloom | Bud | Grow your money mind
