Money is a personal subject for many people, and we all have some kind of emotional response to it. When it comes to managing your money and achieving your future financial goals, it’s necessary to identify how you feel about money so you can create a plan and budget that works best for you.
If you’re looking for some extra help, Wonga offers tips and tricks to help you manage your money, create a savings plan, and compare offers for personal loans. But first, you need to consider your own emotional response to money.
Money and emotions
It may surprise you that fear, shame, and anger are the most common emotions surrounding money according to financial expert Suze Orman. You may think that you don’t have a strong emotional attachment to money, but consider the embarrassment you’d face if your card was ever declined at a store, or the fear you’d feel if you checked your bank balance and saw that there was far less there than you had thought? Or the opposite – if you should have a financial windfall or win the lottery, one of your first emotions might even be relief.
Our feelings about money often stem from childhood, and how our parents handled money provides the foundation for us later in life. You can inherit bad money habits that are so ingrained in you that they are difficult to break.
How we approach money
The problem is how we approach money as a concept. Those who think negatively about money and how to handle it are usually plagued by money issues, whereas those who see money and spending as something within their control usually manage their finances successfully and become richer over time as a result. Educating yourself about money and making the effort to understand your own spending habits is key to ensuring you fall into the latter category.
Money is essential for life in the modern world, and more money allows us to access better services and to become more comfortable. However, beyond that, the tragic pursuit of more and more money to satisfy an emotional need is the key to disaster, as many wealthy people find out too late when more money does not bring them any more happiness.
Having money at the centre of your life is not healthy. Whether rich or poor, money should be seen as something you control, not something you chase. This is all tied to how we feel about money, and more importantly, how money makes us feel about ourselves. More money makes us feel successful, desirable, and worthy. This validation we get from money needs to be found elsewhere in order to have a healthy relationship with money and finally feel in control.
To read more on topics like this, check out the lifestyle category.
