The Stories We Inherit About Money and Worth
Three of the four beliefs most of us hold about money are associated with lower net worth and lower income. Not lower confidence. Lower actual money.
That is not a saying. It is the finding of the financial psychologists Brad and Ted Klontz, whose work describes four core money beliefs and what each one does to the people who hold it. Their description of where the beliefs come from is the part worth reading twice: they are "typically unconscious, developed in childhood, passed down from generation to generation within families and cultures."
So the rules you follow were written by somebody else, for a different life, and handed to you before you were old enough to question them. They rarely announce themselves. They show up as a feeling: the small flinch before you say your price, the reluctance to open a balance, the certainty that asking for more would be grabby.
None of that is a personality trait. It is inherited instruction, and instruction can be examined.
A quiet brand image rather than a dashboard. This is the one post of the month with no product screen in it.
Five rules, and what they were protecting
The rule | What it was protecting | What it costs now |
|---|---|---|
We do not talk about money | A household where talking led to an argument | You negotiate alone, with no idea what anyone else charges |
Debt is shameful | A generation for whom debt genuinely was dangerous | Shame keeps the balance unopened, and unopened balances grow |
Saving is virtue, spending is weakness | Real scarcity, where every dollar out was a risk | You cannot invest in the business, because spending feels like failing |
Asking for more is greedy | A world where a woman asking had consequences | You price for permission rather than for value |
Somebody else handles it | A marriage with a clear division of labour | The first time you look, you are fifty and it is urgent |
Every one of those rules was sensible for the person who wrote it. That is the part worth sitting with. They were not stupidity or superstition. They were the correct response to a set of conditions, and the conditions changed.
What the research actually found
The Klontz work sorts money beliefs into four, and the findings are not evenly distributed.
The script | What it believes | What the research associates it with |
|---|---|---|
Money avoidance | Money is bad, wealthy people are greedy, I do not deserve it | Lower net worth and lower income |
Money worship | More money fixes everything, there will never be enough | Lower net worth and lower income |
Money status | What I am worth is what I own | Lower net worth and lower income |
Money vigilance | Be careful, save, do not discuss it | The healthiest of the four. Associated with avoiding credit card debt |
Three of the four are working against you. And the one that is not is the least glamorous belief on the list.
The complication worth being honest about
Look closely at money vigilance and you will find something awkward, and we would rather point at it than tidy it away.
It is the healthiest script and it contains "being discreet about how much money one has or makes", which is very close to we do not talk about money, the first rule in the table above and one we listed as a cost.
Both things are true. The carefulness protects your net worth. The silence isolates you, so you negotiate alone, price alone, and assume your situation is unusual when it is ordinary.
The useful version is to keep the caution and drop the secrecy. Be vigilant with the money and open with the people. Almost nobody is taught that combination, because the two arrived bundled together.
What stands out
The three unhealthy scripts have nothing in common on the surface. One thinks money is dirty, one thinks money is salvation, one thinks money is identity. All three cost you, which suggests the problem is not what you believe about money but that money is carrying more meaning than it can hold.
The healthy script is boring. No transformation, no abundance, no manifesting. Save, be careful, do not spend to impress. Boring is doing the work.
Avoidance and worship look like opposites and behave the same. Somebody who refuses to look and somebody who believes the next number will fix everything are both avoiding the current one.
Nobody holds exactly one. Most people run two or three at once, usually inherited from different people.
Finding your own
Not by introspection. By noticing the disproportionate reaction.
A number should be information. When a figure produces shame, dread, or a flush of defensiveness, that reaction is not coming from the number. It is coming from a rule attached to it, and the rule is old and belongs to someone else.
A few places it usually surfaces:
Saying your price out loud, especially to someone you like.
Opening a statement you have been putting off. Notice whether you check the balance or the date first.
Somebody else's money news. A friend's raise or a competitor's prices. What moves in you tells you which script is running.
Spending on yourself versus on the business. Many women find one of these easy and the other almost impossible, and the split is rarely about the amount.
The tell
You can usually find your own by noticing where you feel something disproportionate.
A number should be information. When a number produces shame, or dread, or a flush of defensiveness, that reaction is not coming from the number. It is coming from a rule attached to it, and the rule is old.
That is not a reason to feel bad about the reaction. It is a reason to stop treating it as a verdict on you.
What changes it
Not insight. Repetition.
A person who looks at her numbers once a month for a year does not become braver. The numbers become ordinary, and ordinary things do not carry charge. The rule does not get argued with, it gets outlived.
This is the same thing looking at your numbers is really about. The practice is not financial. The practice is making a thing ordinary that used to be loaded.
The one we would add
If you take one rule from this article and hand it to somebody younger, make it this one.
Knowing a number is not the same as being judged by it. You can look at a balance, a debt, a net worth or a price, and the looking costs you nothing. It is the not-looking that has been expensive.
Bring it to the Collective
This is the conversation the Money Mastery Collective is actually for, and it happens there more often than any technical question. The discussion feed is open on the free membership, and nobody is asked to share a figure.
Questions we hear
What are money beliefs?
Assumptions about money that are usually learned in childhood and held without being examined. The financial psychologists Brad and Ted Klontz describe four core types.
What are the four money scripts?
Money avoidance, money worship, money status and money vigilance, as described in the research of Brad and Ted Klontz.
Can I change a money belief I inherited?
Yes. Noticing it is the first step. Once a belief is put into words, it can be examined and tested against your own numbers.
Why do I feel uncomfortable saying my price?
Often because of an inherited rule about not talking about money or not asking for more. The feeling was learned, and it can be questioned.
References
The four money scripts, the finding that money avoidance, money worship and money status are associated with lower net worth and lower income, and the description of these beliefs as "typically unconscious, developed in childhood, passed down from generation to generation within families and cultures" are from the work of Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz, as set out in How Clients' Money Scripts Predict Their Financial Behaviors in the Journal of Financial Planning.
The five inherited rules in the first table are ours, not theirs. They are how those scripts tend to sound in an ordinary family, rather than a finding from the research.
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A note on what this is
This article is educational and reflective. The Money Mastery System is an educational tool, not financial software, and nothing here is legal, tax, investment or financial advice, nor is it therapy. If money carries something heavier than inconvenience for you, that is worth taking to somebody qualified to help with it.
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