- The idea that one-size-fits-all for money advice
is just terrible.
We all have different personalities.
We know this intuitively, and we all have different values.
Not everybody wants or needs to own a home.
Not everybody wants or needs to have children.
- Everyone has different attitudes
and hangups about money.
So how do we get to know our money personalities?
- To me, you gotta dive into your psychology.
You have to understand why you think the way you think
around money, and how that's manifesting in your life,
in order to change it.
- We are diverse in so many ways.
So therefore, when we think about financial advice,
it should also be unique for the person,
for their background, for who they are.
- Everything else in our lives
is customized to our preferences.
Why shouldn't our financial advice be?
This is "Your Brain On Money."
Meet neuroscientists Dr. Joseph Kable
and Dr. Moran Cerf.
They're here to explain how much of our personalities
are actually built into the structures of our brains.
- We can see structural differences in the brain,
specifically in the areas of the valuation circuitry
of the brain, the areas of the brain
that are important for decision-making,
as well as functional differences
in terms of how those areas of the brain are connected.
If you go in and get an MRI,
that MRI of your brain, you know, contains some
information about whether you are more likely
or less likely to be a risk-taker.
- How much of our personality are we born with,
and how much develops over time?
- The kind of, really a little hand-wavey answer
that scientists landed on,
is that about 50% of our personality is DNA.
You're born, and we can look at your DNA as a baby
and predict that you're gonna be an extrovert,
or predict that you're gonna be neurotic.
And then of the other 50%, about half, so 25% of the whole,
is determined by your parents
and your childhood experiences,
and the other 25% by your peers.
- This is Dr. Klontz.
He's here to explain how our personalities manifest
in the way we deal with money.
- After studying tens of thousands of people,
we've identified four patterns of beliefs around money
that people manifest:
The first is money avoidance.
This is where we have a
negative association with money.
Now, no surprise,
if you have a negative association with money
that is strongly held, it is gonna have a negative impact
on your financial outcomes.
The second is what we call money worship.
This is the opposite—
this is where you're putting money on a pedestal.
"More money's gonna make me happier,
it's gonna solve all my problems."
The third is what we call money status.
This is the 'Keeping up with the Joneses effect,'
where we equate our self-worth with our net worth.
The fourth is what we call money vigilance.
This is the money personality of the wealthy
and the self-made wealthy and the ultra-wealthy.
Interestingly, there is a downplaying
of how much money they have.
For all of these money personalities,
there are elements of truth in all of them,
and there's elements of dysfunction.
- This is Dr. James, a financial therapist,
and he's seen how these money archetypes
can impact our behavior.
- There's some people who, maybe they're impulsive—
they're someone who wants to do something,
and that impulsivity can have good options and good times,
but maybe that also makes them buy things or try things
or start a new business
without maybe fully looking into everything.
- If you're really money vigilant,
you're afraid to do that and spend money.
It's important to be vigilant, honoring that part in you,
saving and investing, but, what's the point of all that
if you're still living a life of deprivation?
You don't deserve that. Nobody deserves that.
Trying to find balance around all of these beliefs
is very, very important for not just our mental health,
but for our financial health.
- Or maybe someone who's a little bit more risk-tolerant.
They don't like to take on risk,
so maybe they're more of a saver,
or maybe they're someone who is not gonna invest
in the thing right away, they wanna see it proven.
So, I think there are ways that those things
become part of our internal narrative
of how we think about money,
how we think about chance or risk or opportunities.
And if we are aware of that,
we can make better decisions for ourselves.
- As a financial therapist,
Lindsay helps her clients understand themselves
so they can understand their relationship with money.
- Personal finance is named such for a reason.
Personal finance is personal,
but the financial literacy industry
has really said,
"Actually, you're not that special.
We all need to do this one thing."
And we just know that that does not work.
- I think really good financial planners,
they actually give personality tests
to really check to see who you are,
to see where you are on how you handle risk.
And from there, they tailor their advice
or the information they share with you.
The more you know yourself— knowing your personality
and even knowing your money personality—
can shape your decisions.
So make that investment.
Learn, grow, reflect, and it could actually change
whatever decision you wanna make financially in the future.
- If I were to kind of go back and analyze myself,
I would rather not think about money.
When I was struggling financially,
I was forced, rather, to face the music
and deal with my financial situation.
I'm a huge fan of automating.
I am automating paying my bills,
I am automating saving money
in my different savings accounts,
and I am automating putting money
into an investment account for my retirement,
because if it was up to me to manually move money
every now and then, there's just no way I would do it,
or I would do it far less frequently than I should.
This is the other thing,
we all think we need to learn more about money—
and we might—
but most of us kind of know what to do.
So what are the tasks that you're putting off,
and what are the feelings that are getting in the way
of doing that task?
Start there.