What shapes your beliefs about money? How do your childhood experiences influence your current financial decisions?
Your relationship with money stems from deeply rooted beliefs formed during childhood. These beliefs create patterns that affect everything from your spending habits to your earning potential, often operating below your conscious awareness.
Keep reading to discover how your early experiences shaped the way you relate to money.
Exploring Your Relationship With Money
It’s important to understand how your money mindset developed and how it impacts your relationship with money. This information clarifies why cultivating an empowering money mindset is key to improving your financial situation.
According to self-made millionaire T. Harv Eker (Secrets of the Millionaire Mind), your money mindset is a construct made up of all of the beliefs you hold about money. This construct programs the way you relate to money because:
- Your thoughts and beliefs determine how you feel.
- Your feelings determine the decisions you make and how you act.
- Your actions determine the results you get and how much money you have.
Therefore, this programming leads you to develop certain habits and behave in specific ways that create results aligned with your money mindset.
We’ll explain where your beliefs about money came from, how they determine your comfort level with money, and why you might find it difficult to improve your financial situation.
You Didn’t Choose Your Beliefs About Money
Success coach Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass at Making Money) says that you’re probably unaware of all of your beliefs about money—while you might think you have productive beliefs, your money mindset likely holds contradictory beliefs. This is because you never consciously chose your beliefs about money. Rather, as you were growing up, you unconsciously absorbed the beliefs of the people around you.
For example, if your parents worked hard but never had enough money to enjoy themselves, you may have absorbed the belief “I’ll never have enough money, no matter how hard I work.” On the other hand, if you grew up in an environment where money wasn’t a cause for concern because there was always enough, you might have internalized the belief “I’ll always have enough money to live comfortably.”
Your Beliefs Reflect How You Interpreted Your Upbringing
Eker clarifies that while your money mindset is a result of all the beliefs you absorbed growing up, you didn’t necessarily adopt those same beliefs. You may even have adopted entirely different beliefs depending on how you interpreted what was going on and whether you chose to conform or rebel against your upbringing. In either case, your interpretation of your upbringing defined your beliefs about money and determined the way you manage your money.
If you accepted your upbringing, you likely conformed to the financial beliefs of your role models. As a result, your money mindset now leads you to act in ways that replicate your upbringing: If your role models struggled to make money, you now struggle to make money. If they felt comfortable managing their money, you now feel comfortable managing your money.
If you didn’t accept your upbringing, you likely rebelled against the financial beliefs of your role models. As a result, your money mindset now leads you to act in opposition to your upbringing. For example, perhaps your role models lived in poverty and you now make the conscious decision to pursue wealth and live in luxury. Or your role models were wealthy but withheld affection from you, so you unconsciously associated money with a lack of love—which now makes you feel uncomfortable around money.
Similarly, Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics) argues that the way that you identified with your formative experiences determined the beliefs you formed. For example, if your parents couldn’t afford to buy you something you wanted, you could have identified with this experience in multiple ways—you might have appreciated your parents for doing the best that they could, or you might have felt anger and disappointment because they couldn’t provide for your needs. Whatever emotion you experienced created corresponding beliefs in your mind.
Exercise: Analyze Your Relationship With Money
Experts suggest that analyzing your beliefs about money helps you understand how they impact your finances and guides you toward adopting a healthier relationship with money. In this exercise, you’ll practice analyzing and reframing one of your unproductive beliefs about money.
- Consider your beliefs about money. Write down one disempowering belief that you have. (For example, you might believe that you’re not smart enough to earn more than the minimum wage.)
- Reflect on when you first came across this idea and write down any experiences that come to mind. (For example, you might recall your parents saying that without perfect grades, you’d never earn more than a minimum wage.)
- Consider how adopting an opposing belief might impact you. Write down at least one way this might change how you relate to money. (For example, if instead you choose to believe that you’re smart enough to earn more, you might take more proactive steps toward finding a job that pays more.)
- Write down at least one alternative belief that might empower you to improve your relationship with money. (For example, “I’m more than capable of earning a higher wage.”)
- Choose one of your reframed beliefs and write down at least one action you can take to align your behavior with it. (For example, you might revise your CV or sign up with a recruitment agency.)
