Rather than telling my clients what financial decisions they need to make, I help them identify why they’re not already making them. That’s a big difference.
It’s the same with weight loss. It’s not enough to be told you need to drop pounds; you must identify your relationship with food—in other words, why you’re not losing weight. The problem isn’t what you’re eating; it’s why you’re eating it. Likewise, the problem isn’t what you’re buying; it’s why you’re buying it.
You won’t make any significant financial progress until you understand your relationship with money or your Money Why. This will explain why you do the things you do financially. To get started, let’s explore the two biggest influences on our money personalities.
Nature: The DNA of Dollars
Could something as small as an almond be driving your decisions? It sure can. Meet your amygdala. It’s one of the oldest parts of the brain. Much older than the prefrontal cortex, which is the reasoning, planning, and decision-making part of the brain. The amygdala is where our primitive fight-or-flight response resides.
The fight-or-flight response is very useful. In fact, your amygdala is why you’re alive today. If your ancestors hadn’t had one, they’d have been squashed by a woolly mammoth. When a mammoth is stampeding toward you, you don’t have time to think.
You just need to react (i.e., run like crazy!). The amygdala kicks in automatically, and all the physiological reactions that follow (adrenaline rush, increased heart rate…) are designed to help you survive.
While the amygdala is best known for sending distress signals, it’s also involved in reward processing and releasing dopamine, the feel-good hormone. You’re in a store, or you’re online, and you see something you like. It’s very expensive. You know you can’t afford it. But you buy it. In situations like this, it’s your amygdala that’s controlling you. You’ve been hijacked.
Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack” in his book Emotional Intelligence. It can be triggered by stress, fear, anxiety, jealousy, guilt, anger, need…all sorts of things. Most people don’t make financial decisions based on logic; they make them based on emotion.
In fact, researchers have found that our “thinking brain” (the pre-frontal cortex) is only responsible for five to 10 percent of our decision-making. The rest is handled by our “feeling or reptilian brain,” the amygdala.
So, that’s the physiological part of financial decision-making. There is also a psychological part. This stems from the money environment in which you were raised. That doesn’t mean if you are rich or poor.
It means whether your parents discussed money openly, if they argued about it, how they made financial decisions, who paid the bills, etc. Chances are, you’re the way you are financially because of the examples your parents set.
I surveyed my clients, and 45 percent admitted to never hearing their parents talk about money. So, what do they go ahead and do in their relationship? They don’t talk about money. Some don’t come to see me until the eleventh hour when there’s a health crisis, or they want to know if they have enough money to retire.
What Is Financial Happiness Anyway?
For me, it’s having enough money to purchase the things that create pleasure today while knowing that your financial future is safe. To achieve this, you must learn to recognize when your amygdala is getting hijacked (nature) and understand your money influences (nurture).
Together, they make up your Money Why.