The term personality refers to the set of traits and patterns of thought, feelings, and behavior that define who you are as a unique individual or that make you who you are.
It’s generally a product of both biology and environment and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
As a wealth seeker or one who desires financial freedom, it is most important for you to understand that your personality can determine your financial results in life.
Personal Finance Is Dependent Upon Your Behavior
This is essentially because nothing influences your thought, feeling, behavior, or response towards money like your personality. And don’t ever downplay the ultimate effect of all of these in your quest for financial freedom; because they ultimately determine your financial results and well-being.
More than habits, the way you manage your money is majorly a reflection of who you are. If you fear and hate financial embarrassment, then there is a great tendency for you to be inclined toward saving money.
Please, it is important to understand that one of the key reasons some people seem to be good at managing their money and always having surplus money, while others are always struggling with their finances is their personality.
Your money personality plays a key role in your ability to handle and manage money.
What Is Money Personality?
Your money personality essentially defines how you relate to money or handle money. It is made up of the way you think about money, the belief system that guides your behaviors and actions.
Your money personality is not limited to how much money you have, but much more about how well (or not so well) you manage what money you might have.
The truth is that we all have our unique set of traits and characteristics that influence how we manage our money. Our key task is to be aware of these traits and see how to manage them so they don’t hinder our desire to build wealth and live in financial freedom.
Your personality, and the way it may or may not align with your financial goals and actions, can be one factor in determining how much money you have at any given time.
Each money personality type has a unique way of talking about spending, saving, and investing.
So the question is this: Have you given serious thought to how you behave regarding your finances and how that behavior affects your financial results?
It can be very enlightening when you understand that your behavior is a reflection of who you are, and your personal finance ultimately depends upon your behavior.
Consequently, understanding your money personality will help you shape your approach to spending, saving, investing, and the overall management of your finances.
Basically, there are four money personality types. Your key task is to find the type that most closely matches your behavior. The major profiles are spenders, savers, avoiders, and investors.
Let’s take a look at each of them.
1. Spenders: These are compulsive shoppers; a class of people who enjoy spending money. They find joy, excitement, and fulfillment in shopping and buying stuff. They like to spend their money on luxuries and other short-term pleasures. They have trouble saving because they’re so focused on enjoying themselves now.
Spenders derive their pleasure from the act of buying stuff, and not necessarily from the possession or the having of the stuff.
Because they get their kick from buying things, they go to any length to achieve this, even debt. For them delayed gratification is alien to their nature.
At times they go shopping just to escape boredom, change their mood, and catch some fun.
This behavior tends to make spenders struggle financially. Due to their impetuous nature, they’re generally not good with money. They can’t save, or keep to a budget or a spending plan. Their wealth is easily sacrificed on the altar of their inordinate spending habits.
In marriage, this brings stress, quarrels, and financial conflicts that can ultimately lead to a divorce. Every attempt by the spouse to regulate, restrict or prevent impulsive spending would be seen as an attempt to deny them joy and pleasure.
Generally, this behavior does not encourage or support wealth building. Achieving financial freedom with this behavior or personality would be difficult.
If a person really loves to spend, it could be difficult to stop them. What they need whenever they make purchases is to always try to spend on things that give long-term value and not just short-term satisfaction. They should always find out what the purchase is going to mean to them in terms of value a year or two down the road.
2. Avoiders: This is a group of people who avoid their finances to stay away from emotional distress or pain. Money avoidance happens when people avoid looking at their finances.
This can take the form of avoiding looking at what money they have left, the expenses they need to meet, and what debts they owed.
The ways people do this and the reasons why can vary, but the outcome is often the same; debts can pile up and bills can go unpaid.
Avoiders simply don’t spend much time thinking about their money and therefore don’t keep tabs on what they spend and where they spend it. They would rather have someone else to handle their money stuff.
They get fearful and or aggressive when they feel pushed to see or talk about what is going on in their finances.
3. Savers: This group of people has a keen sense of financial security. Their financial security is everything to them, as such they would not play with it or trade it for fleeting enjoyment or instant gratification
They find joy in keeping money for the “raining day.” Seeing their savings grow is a top joy for them. This assures them of a secure financial future, which is everything to them. To them, this is more gratifying than spending.
Savers naturally have the aptitude to save money and focus on the long-term goal of financial security. Consequently, they pride themselves on their ability to save a part of their earnings for the future.
The key challenge with this group of people is the tendency to live in deprivation and fear.
Their life and joy tend to be tied to their savings. As a result, they would go to any length to deprive themselves of anything just to meet their saving goal. Spending money on themselves can be very challenging.
Ben Franklin once recommended “moderation in all things. So to this group of people, I recommend moderation. It’s good to save but it should be done moderately.
So catch fun and enjoy life even as you try to save for the future.
Also, the fear of losing their money would not allow them to invest their savings.
As a result, their ability to grow their money would be capped and hindered. Ultimately, the fear of losing their money might end up hindering them from achieving financial freedom.
4. Investors: Investors, invest their money to build wealth and achieve financial freedom. They love to have their money working for them. They believe this is the key path to building wealth.
They are motivated by the potential return on investment. As a result, they keep an eye on the markets seeking to take advantage of investment opportunities that would show up.
They would rather delay gratification to increase their net worth through investing than spend their money buying appearances of wealth. They love to read, research, and analyze investments to make informed decisions.
They can be too careful and concerned about their financial future that they end up depriving themselves and their loved ones of the good things in life
Now that you have a better understanding of how personality affects money decisions. While you may not be able to change your money personality, it is of great importance to understand that self-awareness is crucial in money management. You need to come to the awareness of which of these personality types describe you the most.
This will help you put some thought into how you approach and handle money. And to make changes and adjustments that will help you in your quest to create wealth and live in financial freedom.
Whether it’s saving some money or spending more on what matters most, knowing your personality type is key.
So, what is your money personality type? What personality type do you think makes the most money? Share with us in the comments.
To Your Prosperity
Sharon Akinoluwa
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