How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Money, Part 1
Though you might not think of it as a separate relationship, your relationship with money is actually an emotional process, just like your relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners.
Your beliefs about money and the role it plays in your life don’t just affect how you live. They also impact the way you relate to other people.
So how do you develop a healthy relationship with money? It comes down to four steps:
Recognizing your beliefs around money
Finding your fear
Creating a money goal
Making a plan
In this post, we’ll look at what’s involved in the first two steps to creating a healthy relationship with money: recognizing your beliefs around it and getting to the roots of your fears about it.
Step 1: Recognizing your beliefs around money
The process of changing your relationship with money starts with looking at the role money played in your family.
Did you grow up poor? Middle class? Wealthy? Somewhere in between? If you come from a low-income family, was there a feeling of anxiousness about not having enough money? Or was your family content with what they had?
If you grew up in a wealthy family, did you feel like they were always striving for more? Or was there a sense of gratitude around the abundance?
Regardless of how much money your family had, how much did they seem to understand that money didn’t define them? In other words, how did your family relate to the money they had?
Your answers to these questions can help you understand how you relate to money now.
Step 2: Finding your fear
Taking a close look at your upbringing around money can help you assess where you are right now in your relationship with your finances. It can also help you identify the emotions that are driving your fears about money.
Most of us can categorize our relationship with money in terms of the three main styles of emotional attachment: anxious, avoidant, and secure.
If you’re anxious about money, all of your decisions around money involve saving it or finding ways to make more of it. Money brings up feelings of desperation.
If you have an avoidant relationship with money, you tend to push your finances aside and refuse to deal with things like creating a budget, saving, or setting goals.
A secure relationship with money is just what it sounds like: you believe it’s available when you need it, and you’re open to seeing what it can do for you. Being generous with money feels natural and fun.
Your relationship with money might be a combination of two or even all three of the attachment styles. The important thing to focus on is which one(s) best describe your relationship with money at this point in your life.
For example, if you’re anxious about money, your fears might center around not being able to make enough money to survive or do the things you dream of doing.
If you have an avoidant relationship with money, the idea of managing your money or investing in your future might bring up intense feelings of fear.
Why is it important to find your fear around money? Once you can figure out your root vulnerability, you can express it. You can allow yourself to feel it. And then you can address it. How?
We’ll explore the how in Part 2, where we’ll focus on how to create money goals—and how to make a plan to reach them.
Do you want to learn more about how to have a healthy relationship with money? In my new book, Life Launch, I give you additional guidance on how to assess your current relationship with money—and how to transform your finances into a tool to build the life you want. Download a sample chapter here.