What affects your "money personality?" How come we can be
thriftier at some times in our lives as compared to
others?
Insights on your "money personality"
Attitudes
Our attitude regarding money has its roots in a) our
personality and b) the attitudes about money that we learned
as children from our parents and significant others. Our
money personality, like everything else, is half nature and
half nurture. If we're generous, gregarious, fun loving
people by nature, we'll probably spend more than if we are
more simplistic, easily pleased, self controlled or thrifty
by nature. If we grew up in a house where money was no
object, we may still spend money that way or if we grew up
feeling deprived, we may spend a lot now to buy the things of
which we always felt deprived. Money is less a physical
currency and is more indicative of emotional psychological
and spiritual perspectives of a person or family.
How we were affected by what we were taught about money,
matters less than the knowledge that we have been affected.
That knowledge in and of itself is priceless because it
affords us choices we may not have known we had before.
Though our innate characters may be harder to change, we can
relearn new attitudes about money that are healthier for us
in our daily lives.
It also doesn't have to be just one way. We can also
alternate our perceptions of earning, spending and saving at
different times in our lives to match our different levels of
affluence and need. The spending of students, newlyweds and
pensioners is expected to be different than that of people
who have established themselves in professions or are raising
families. How come we can be thriftier at some times in our
lives as compared to others? How come we feel we have more
money to spend at others? How come we somehow come up with
the down payment on the car or apartment or tuition for the
school when we didn't have it before? These spending patterns
don't always reflect our true financial situation. It's more
a matter of perception.
Appreciating Money
Do you see money as positive or negative? Do you associate it
with debt, extravagance, stinginess, poverty, arrogance and
materialism or do you associate it with charity, pleasure,
humility, philanthropy, success, modesty (you have to have
something to be modest about it)? How much do you really
believe you can't do without the thing you're trying to
finance? Think of all the good that you can do with money.
Like money and you'll have more money. Believe you really
need it and somehow you find it. We shouldn't be afraid of
money, either having it, spending it or needing it. The way
money works isn't that hard to understand. In the old days,
poeople traded sheep, camels and grain. How difficult is a
sheep to understand? Money is a commodity. Once we understand
how it works, we can get it to work for us.
Rochel Frumin, a therapist practicing in Jerusalem and Bnei
Brak, says that it is written that whatever one has, one has
to keep beautiful. If you have a dirt floor, sweep it. If we
don't appreciate what we have, we're standing in the way of
receiving more.
"Who is wealthy? One who is happy with what he has." This is
true in two ways: if you're happy with what you have, you
don't feel a lack, and if you're happy with what you have,
you're grateful and therefore Hashem, and even your friends,
will be happy in giving you more.
Guilt Feelings
Many people feel, "I don't believe I'm allowed to, or worthy
of, having it." But success, maintains Frumin, is an
agreement with Hashem that you're going to use what He gives
you well. She says, "Believe that you're a truly capable
human being in order to earn more money and if you feel that
you're not capable, discover where you're weak. Your weakness
can be your lack of honesty, reliability, consistency --
these are all part of capability. You need to remove
obstacles from what Hashem wants to give you." Whether these
are psychological, "I don't deserve this," or moral, "So what
if I cheat on my taxes... or find loopholes for strict
maaser of my income...?" or emotional, "How can I have
all this when there are so many people who don't have?" We
can't help others if we don't help ourselves and depriving
ourselves doesn't mean that others will have. In fact, the
opposite is true. In money as with love, we can't give what
we don't have ourselves. But if we only keep it to ourselves,
we can't generate more.
The work we do should also be an expression of our talents
and gifts. It should be enjoyable, not akin to slavery. Work
is the medium by which we earn our money, but it is not the
source of it. The source is Hashem. Our parnossa is
decided on Rosh Hashona. We're going to get the money anyway,
so we might as well enjoy how we get it. That means we have
to find work that allows us to use the gifts Hashem gave us
to the best of our ability and serve Him with the tools He
gave us. We have to maximize our potential and then work
becomes joyful. When work is joyful, it is easier to make
money. We don't have to feel overworked and overburdened to
feel we are making a living. Using our talents, be they
physical, mental, emotional, artistic or spiritual is the key
to prosperity. When you love who you are, you feel deserving,
which opens you up to receive not ony a salary but bonuses in
work and in life. And then you have the tool of money to
further serve Hashem. It's a never ending cycle of prosperity
and joy, giving and receiving, owning and letting go.
Our beliefs and our attitudes about money and work (as well
as everything else) come from the beliefs we learned as
children. If these beliefs aren't working for us, we have to
change them. We have to make sure our own children have
healthy beliefs about money. We need to give our children the
feeling that they are loved and deserving and can trust the
world and the Higher Power running it to take care of them.
We need to do what is required of us in every arena to be
worthy of goodness and we have to convince the child within
us that we are worthy of receiving and translate that feeling
into readiness.
There are taboos associated with money. "There are
definitely a lot of people who are afraid of success,
especially women," says Amy, a friend of mine who used to to
run her own business. Feeling deserving, willing to give
to others, working at what we enjoy and giving 100% of our
work, asking Hashem to supply our needs, taking care of the
things we have and being grateful for them are some of the
ways to maintain a healthy relationship to money. We have a
relationship to money in the same way we have a relationship
with people and all our relationships with people also in
some way involve money. Redefining our beliefs and living by
our new ones will ensure that we live in prosperity and don't
taint our relationships through the misuse of money. There
are rich people who feel poor and poor people who feel
rich. What kind of lifestyle you have and what kind of
home you own often depends on what state of mind you have.
Also, living in tune with our true nature as long as we
recognize the difference between our true nature and what our
yetzer hora wants us to think is our true nature,
helps us utilize our resources in the best way possible.
[Next week: 14 sensible, practical tips on money management
that are rooted in perception more than in quantity and
quality.]
