Why is it important to know what influences your financial decision-making?

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[MUSIC] Hi, let's talk today about what influences our financial decisions. Do you spend and save money the way your neighbors do, your friends or even your siblings? Have you ever wondered why some people are big spenders and others tend to be extremely frugal? Let's take some time today to think about what influences our financial decisions and how that might become a part of our financial management in the future. Of course, there are some things that we need to purchase to take care of our basic needs, like food and shelter. But once our needs are met, then we have other financial decisions to make. So what is really influencing us when we make those decisions? So think about this. If you were given $1,000 as a gift, what would you do with it? Your answer would likely be influenced by your values and by the things that are important to you, the things that you want to prioritize. You can see on the screen a list of values that someone might have. If you are asked to prioritize these and make them a list, what would be your top three values? If security was your top value, then if you are given that $1,000 as a gift, you might be inclined to save it away for some future needs. But if friendship was a top value for you, then may be you'd want to spend it on some activity that you could do with your friends. Maybe take a trip or do something else that was special. Values are very personal and there's really no right or wrong to them. And there's of course, many more than are listed in this list that we see here. But it can be helpful to clarify your values and what's important to you as the first step in financial planning. When you understand what is important to you and what you value, then you can be sure that what you're doing with your money is helping you work towards the things that are important to you and supporting the values that you want to support. So how do we gain these values? How do they become part of us? Well really they evolve over time. Probably the first place that we are influenced is with our family and as we're growing up. But then they can change as we meet new people, we make new friends, our friends also have an influence on our value. If you think about it, the things around us in our environment like our own society, maybe our spiritual beliefs, these also come into play with our values. And then of course, media, how could we forget media in today's world? We're always hearing things on different forms of media and often it's in advertising. Telling us, typically to buy, buy, buy. These things all come into play and start to influence our values and perhaps our financial decisions. So if you think about it, as we mature and we have more practice in spending and saving and handling money, we develop habits and attitudes about finances and these things affect our decision. Sometimes these habits and attitudes, actually they're good, and they help us achieve our goals and they're very efficient, and other times they might hold us back. So it's good to be conscious of these habits and attitudes and to think about them at the conscious level and not just react. Let me give you an example of this. Let's say that your attitude, or somebody you know, might be that they think that taking on debt is really a very bad thing. Maybe it's even almost to the point it's extreme or it's evil. So when an opportunity comes to take on debt, to maybe take a loan of some type, that person's first reaction would be no, I don't want that, I'm not doing that. Well, that could be good in a lot of situations. It probably means that somebody who's avoiding debt doesn't have a lot of credit card debt and they're not going to be paying out a lot in interest fees over their lifetime. So that's an advantage to it. But it could also be a disadvantage in other situations. If you think about it, maybe that person thinks they would like to start their own business, or go back to school and get more education. But that would require a lump sum of money and involve taking on debt. If that person just reacts and uses their developed habits and attitudes without thinking it through, that attitude of avoiding debt could be a negative in that situation. Maybe taking on that debt's a good idea, maybe not, but thinking about it and thinking through it is probably a good idea. So, much research and discussion has taken place over time about this idea of habits and attitudes and how they affect our financial decision making. And to help people really think about this, people start talking about money personalities. And they categorize these different personalities so to help us kind of think what are these personalities like? Is this something that I recognize? So we're going to talk about those personality types today and we're going to use some categories that have been developed by Olivia Mellan, who's a really well-known professional who works in the area of money and relationships and helps people with conflicts that come up or might come up because of money personalities. So the money personalities we're going to move on to here, they're titled to show the extreme and typically undesirable qualities of these money personalities. And this is really done to help us understand how these attitudes could negatively affect someone or people that they're involved with, people that they care about and interact. But remember, most people aren't one of these extremes, we're usually a mix of money personalities. But this is just used as a way to help us understand a bit and to think about it. So let's take a look at what some of these money personalities might look like. The first one we want to talk about is money hoarder. Now the money hoarder is somebody that really likes to save money. And actually they're probably a person that likes to create a budget and maybe play with it daily, weekly, a lot, all right? Now, they may also find a hard though to spend money on themselves or especially to buy gifts for other people. And things that other people might think purchasing an item would make sense, they might see those purchases as unnecessary or maybe even frivolous. So if you can think about it, money hoarding might not cause a problem for somebody. It kind of depends on their relationships with other people and how they feel about it. But if a person feels too worried or anxious about spending money all the time, then it may be a good idea towards modifying this behavior and attitude somewhat and finding a balance in their life. Okay, so that's the money hoarder. What about the spender, okay, kind of the opposite effect here. This is somebody who likes to buy things and they like to enjoy them right now. So they're going to be spending likely, probably all the money they earn and they're not going to necessarily be able to save any money. In fact, they might even find that they carry a lot of debt. So again, this is a really good example of when somebody can be kind of conscious of their money personality and they say maybe I fit into this spender. It can help them if they want to change their spending and saving behavior just by recognizing it. Now we're going to talk about the money worrier. The money worrier tends to worry about money pretty much all the time. They want to have control of their money and so they may spend a lot of their time checking account balances, seeing where their money is. Interesting enough, having more money doesn't tend to make them worry less. So that's kind of an interesting aspect to think about. So again, being concerned about money and knowing where it stands, that can be healthy. But if the worry takes over your life and you find that you're doing it all the time, then it might be a good point in which to think about whether you want to take some steps and take control of these feelings so that it isn't something that is overwhelming you. Okay, what about the money avoider? You might know people like these, I know I do. A money avoider is somebody who's probably late paying bills because they don't want to have anything to do with money and they don't want to think about it. They likely don't know how much money they have, nor do they know how much money they're spending. And really to them if you ask them, money sounds boring and maybe overwhelming too. In fact, they may not feel competent to really manage their money. So, but what we do know is that with education and practice, a money avoider can gain confidence and the competency to handle their own finances and kind of find that balance again, so they're not in trouble with paying their bills late. The money monk, I think this one is one of the more interesting ones. At first you might think, who would feel this way? But if you think on it, I think you might recognize some people. Money monk believes that money is bad and the cause of all problems. They don't want to accumulate money. In fact, it can be very challenging for them if they, for example, inherit a lump sum of money or they get a promotion and get a higher salary increase. That could make them feel very uncomfortable and they likely avoid investing money. On the flip side, we have the amasser. They like to have a lot of money. And in fact, they're always working to accumulate money. And that might make it difficult to find a life balance, if you think about. If they're always working to create more wealth, they may not have enough time to spend with others that are important to them. And they may really only feel fulfilled when they're working to make more money and to accumulate it. They might, as you can imagine, find it difficult to spend money as well. So these money personalities that we've gone over very quickly just give you a taste of sort of the extremes that affect people's financial spending and saving behaviors. We didn't discuss all the different kinds of money personalities that are out there in the research. For example, some people are status seekers and that affects their financial decisions. Others may be types of people who really want to always be buying things for other people to try to make them happy. So there's lots of different possibilities. And remember these money personalities typically have both good and not so good attributes to them in how they affect our financial decisions. So we're not saying that one is better than another. What I'm saying is, think about what is the piece that might sound like you? Bring it to your conscious level when you're making financial decisions and make sure it's a good fit. And that you're making decisions that help you move towards your goals and not just reacting because that's the habits and the attitudes you've developed over your lifetime. So as we end this particular piece, think about, did you recognize yourself or any others in these money personality types? Is your money personality helping you reach you goals or is it standing in your way? [MUSIC]