Mind Over Money: Unpacking My Personal Financial Paradigm
The following is a personal exploration into the complex world of behavioral finance, adapted from an academic paper I wrote. It examines how our history, culture, and beliefs shape the financial decisions we make every day.
Behavioral finance refers to the ways in which people make decisions with money in accordance with their social/cultural and psychological influences. My personal money paradigm is a collection of beliefs and ways of spending/earning money influenced by my culture, family, childhood-history, traumatic experiences, and spiritual/religious beliefs. Throughout this post, I will explore my personal money paradigm and how it arose using Klontz and Klontz's (2009) concepts of money scripts and money disorders. I will then explore how my personal money paradigm is influenced by transpersonal concepts, race and gender expectations, and college student culture.
Understanding Money Scripts
Money scripts are beliefs about money acquired from childhood experiences and passed down from generation to generation. Klontz and Klontz (2009) describe how intense emotional experiences relating to money, or "financial flashpoints," shape these scripts. Generally, we are not aware of how money scripts impact our financial decisions because they are kept in our unconscious mind.
Through exercises like the Klontz Money Script Inventory-II (KMSI-II) and the money atom exercise, I identified several of my own scripts. The two I exhibited strong characteristics of were:
Money-worshipping: the belief that money is the key to happiness and the solution to problems.
Money vigilance: the belief that money should be earned through hard work, saved, and not handed out freely.
My experiences living in foster care, experiencing homelessness, poverty, and abuse have shaped my beliefs. Because I've often lived where money was lacking, I developed the belief that money is scarce. For that reason, whenever I have money I save it. When I receive large sums of money, I deposit it into my savings account and refrain from using it, even when I'm behind on bills. My belief is that if the money is used up, I will not be able to obtain resources for basic needs like food, water, and shelter.
Identifying Money Disorders
Of course. Based on the paper you provided, here is how I would structure and format it as an academic blog post.
I have preserved your original wording and voice. The changes are purely structural, designed to make the content more accessible for online readers by using a clear title, a brief introduction, and distinct subheadings.
Blog Post Example
Mind Over Money: Unpacking My Personal Financial Paradigm
By Ashley Wilson-Dixon
(The following is a personal exploration into the complex world of behavioral finance, adapted from an academic paper by the author. It examines how our history, culture, and beliefs shape the financial decisions we make every day.)
Behavioral finance refers to the ways in which people make decisions with money in accordance with their social/cultural and psychological influences. My personal money paradigm is a collection of beliefs and ways of spending/earning money influenced by my culture, family, childhood-history, traumatic experiences, and spiritual/religious beliefs. Throughout this post, I will explore my personal money paradigm and how it arose using Klontz and Klontz's (2009) concepts of money scripts and money disorders. I will then explore how my personal money paradigm is influenced by transpersonal concepts, race and gender expectations, and college student culture.
Understanding Money Scripts
Money scripts are beliefs about money acquired from childhood experiences and passed down from generation to generation. Klontz and Klontz (2009) describe how intense emotional experiences relating to money, or "financial flashpoints," shape these scripts. Generally, we are not aware of how money scripts impact our financial decisions because they are kept in our unconscious mind.
Through exercises like the Klontz Money Script Inventory-II (KMSI-II) and the money atom exercise, I identified several of my own scripts. The two I exhibited strong characteristics of were:
Money-worshipping: the belief that money is the key to happiness and the solution to problems.
Money vigilance: the belief that money should be earned through hard work, saved, and not handed out freely.
My experiences living in foster care, experiencing homelessness, poverty, and abuse have shaped my beliefs. Because I've often lived where money was lacking, I developed the belief that money is scarce. For that reason, whenever I have money I save it. When I receive large sums of money, I deposit it into my savings account and refrain from using it, even when I'm behind on bills. My belief is that if the money is used up, I will not be able to obtain resources for basic needs like food, water, and shelter.
Identifying Money Disorders
Money disorders are defined as "persistent, predictable, often rigid patterns of self-destructive financial behaviors that cause significant stress, anxiety, emotional distress, and impairment in major areas of one's life" (Klontz and Klontz, 2009, p. 104).
According to the Klontz Money Behavior Inventory (KMBI), I exhibit characteristics of financial infidelity and compulsive buying.
Financial infidelity involves secrecy and dishonesty about financial behaviors. For example, I often lie to close friends and family about the price I pay for things because I do not want them to feel as though "I have a lot of money".
Compulsive buying includes irresistible urges to buy things and losing control over spending. After a traumatic experience, I noticed I was getting boxes of things I ordered online delivered almost daily. I was using shopping as a way to cope with everything I was going through.
Transpersonal & Cultural Influences
My personal money paradigm is also informed by transpersonal, cultural, and social factors.
Spiritual and Religious Beliefs I was raised in Christian-faith homes, which instilled values like the importance of giving money to those less fortunate. I was taught that tithing was necessary, and if I gave my last $20, God would double or triple my offer in other ways. More recently, I have started engaging in manifestation practices—the belief that whatever you set your intentions on, the universe will supply. My spiritual beliefs focus on setting intentions to receive and attract money, which ultimately increases my cash flow.
Racial, Gender, and Social Expectations My personal money paradigm is both supported and negated by my culture. Beliefs that it is important to work hard and that money is the key to happiness stem from living in low socioeconomic households. However, the belief that money should be saved is negated by my culture, where people are often barely making enough to provide for basic needs.
Being a college student since 2011 is another big factor. My beliefs that money should be earned through hard work and that it is important to have a high-paying job are supported by college student culture. As a student, I often have to make decisions based on how they will impact my student loans, such as working in the non-profit field to qualify for a loan forgiveness program.
Conclusion
We are taught how to think, act, and behave with money through our culture and society. Generational money patterns persist without the right education. Through a deep exploration of our unconscious mind, we can identify significant events that shape our current money behaviors. With this knowledge, we can reconstruct and create new patterns. I am now more aware of when I engage in compulsive buying, and this insight allows me to make a conscious decision to stop and use an alternative coping skill. I hope that my knowledge will be passed down and that as a society, we will collectively begin to create a healthier relationship with money.
References
Ariely, D. (2010). Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Klontz, B. and Klontz, T. (2009). Mind over money: Overcoming the money disorders that threaten our financial wealth. New York: Broadway Books.
Klontz, B., Britt, S.L., and Archuleta, K.L. (2015). Financial therapy: Theory, research, and practice. Seven steps to culturally responsive financial therapy (pp 87-99). Springer.
Tabbi, M. (2013, August). The college loan scandal. RollingStone.
Your Mental Wealth Advisors. (n.d.). Klontz Money Script Inventory-II. Retrieved from: www.yourmentalwealthadvisors.com
