077 - What The #!$@ Are Money Scripts And Why They're Ruining Your Life

Money is more than just a tool for transactions; it’s the lifeblood of our dreams, ambitions, and often, our anxieties. 

Think about it; your relationship with money shapes everything from the decisions you make daily, to your most profound definitions of success and fulfillment. 

It’s about more than just dollars and cents; it’s about what those dollars and cents can enable you to do and feel. 

That’s why achieving a healthy relationship with money is fundamental not just to your financial well-being, but to your overall quality of life. 

When you get this relationship right, you unlock the freedom to live life on your terms.

So today we’re going to talk about where money scripts come from and the most common unhealthy ones that might be thwarting your prosperity with money.

We only covered a few money scripts in this episode, but here's a resource with many more that may help you uncover your own.  

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**DISCLAIMER**
Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. Money is more than just a tool for transactions. It's the lifeblood of your dreams, ambitions, and often your anxieties.
Think about it. Your relationship with money shapes everything from the decisions you make daily to your most profound definitions of success and fulfillment. It's about more than just dollars and cents.
It's about what those dollars and cents can enable you to do and feel. That's why achieving a healthy relationship with money is fundamental, not just to your financial wellbeing, but to your overall quality of life. When you get this relationship right, you unlock the freedom to live life on your own terms.
So today we're going to talk about where money scripts come from and the most common unhealthy ones that might be thwarting your prosperity with money. All right, guys, welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about money scripts because I was, um, I was like, I was researching to find something cool to, to present for this week's podcast.
And then I got an email from, I want to say, um, Luke Lango again, but I don't think it was Luke Lango. It might've been like Jack Carter or something like that. It was one of the people I subscribed to.
They sent an email and they were talking about, um, how they felt about money. There wasn't anything more than that, but that like, whatever, how you feel about money kind of stuck in my head. So then I started researching a couple of things and it came, came this.
And it's very deep, very in depth, like there's a lot going on here. And like Tim and I were having a discussion even just about our own money scripts and how they fit into like the information we uncovered. And if you aren't aware of them, and we talked forever ago about knowing thyself, investor, know thyself, but your money scripts can be something that you either believe or the possibly that have been ingrained from your childhood or your society or whatever, whatever.
And they can be hijacking you if you're trying to be doing something different than that. So that could be why you continue to get derailed. Well, finance, what it basically boils down to is there are a small portion of the world that view money as a tool.
And there's a large majority of people that view money as money. And it's like a, it's an anxiety, it's a problem. And if you look at the numbers for people who are successful with money, it's a very small proportion and the people who struggle with it are very large.
So there is some correlation there. So like money is to us now, I'm hoping that other people out there feel this way or they can get to feel this way. But money to us is more than just a tool for transactions.
It's like the very essence of everything. It's how you afford your dreams, how you fulfill your ambitions. And and basically that's how you live the life that you want to.
So then you like this is going to be like a deep dive type thing. You're going to literally have to like sit down and look at yourself and look into yourself and be like honest with yourself, which could cause some embarrassment or some vulnerability. That's fine if you do it amongst yourself.
That's actually good. That means you're getting to something that's going to change something. So don't don't steer away from that.
Lean into it because your relationship with money shapes everything, every day from from everything, like every decision you make, everything. So the decisions you make daily to definitions of what success and failure and fulfillment are, it's literally just it's about way more than just dollars and cents. But that's where a lot of people are stuck in.
They're stuck in. They're stuck in the oh, I have eight hundred dollars in my checking account. That's not that we kind of want to get away from that.
Look at it like I have. Oh, I have eight hundred dollars in my checking account, not making any money. That's kind of like where I've been trying to steer people to in the last year.
Like you always want your money to be making money. And if it's in a checking account or a savings account, it's not making you money. So it's like it's at that point.
It's just it's like a rusty. I don't know. Rusty hoe or rake you have in the garage that you never use.
Rusty hoe or rake. Yeah, that's that's a heck of an analogy. Yeah, what it basically boils down to, the reason it's about more than just dollars and cents, it's about what those dollars and cents can enable you to do and feel and achieve.
And like so like it's you need to basically reprogram your mind. And like when we get into the script part here later on, you'll see that like this shit is all formed in childhood, like your observations in childhood and your and like what's going on with like your family, what's going on with your friends, what's going on with your teachers, all that. It's a it's a childhood.
Now, I don't want to say a trauma, but there is a lot of trauma components. Yeah, there can be if your parents actually had struggles with money or addictions with money. And like the huge takeaway that I want you to like to it's because it's going to be uncomfortable.
But the huge takeaway is if you can actually achieve a healthy relationship with money, it's actually fundamental, not just your financial well-being, but your overall quality of life. Yeah, it's going to help you prosper in more ways than when you get that relationship right. You can unlock the freedom to live the life you want on your terms.
And that's what the whole podcast, the whole point of everything we do is all about. So the fact that took me, I don't know, a year and a half to get to the what is it, the relationship with money? I don't know. My bad.
Yeah, because Tim used to be a very big. Spender? I don't know if spender is even the right word, but like an unconscious spender. Um, I was I was a habit spender.
I like my smoked cigarettes. I've always buy cigarettes or I, uh. Convenience spender.
I chewed gum. So I'd always buy like packs of gum. Like it was just, I was like, I was like a zombie.
Walk to the Mexican restaurant. Like there was like a couple houses down. Which reminds me of one of these points we're going to have to tell you the zombie story because there's a zombie story that's freaking hilarious.
And I have a lot of, uh, personal experience with the different money scripts. Well, they're not, they're not actually zombies, but. You'll see.
And you'll know what we're talking about because it's really funny. Reminds me of like, uh, The Walking Dead, but okay. If you've never done so, um, I want you to take a little bit of time now to think about your relationship with money and how it was formed.
Okay. Hold on a second. Hold on.
Because this episode is going to be probably pretty long. We're going to more than likely end up cutting this into two different segments. It's going to be two parter.
So what we're going to do is we're going to cover the money scripts in the first one. And then in the second episode, we're going to do the week after next week. We will talk about what you can do to either improve or figure out.
What you can do to improve. And then what an actual, like, um, healthy relationship looks like according to the experts, according to people who don't have struggles. Experts.
Yeah. We don't like that word. Okay.
So back to what I said, take a little bit of time to think about your relationship, your individual relationship with money and how it was formed. And then I want you to also think about how, if you have children, how your children view money. And if you're married or you're with a longtime partner, how your spouse or partner, what their relationship with money is.
And even now, as an adult, if you can, if you spend time with your parents, sometimes it's harder to see things in yourself, but it's easier to see them outside of you. So if you're around a lot of people, typically you'll be surrounding yourself with people who have very similar money scripts because that's just how it tends to work out. So you'll be able to reflect that way, possibly through third POV versus to get you started.
Right. Right. And a couple of examples of questions that you can ask yourself for your children or your spouse or your parents or whatever is where do money values come from? I know personally for me, we didn't have anything.
I grew up dirt, like dirt, dirt, dirt poor. I mean, I was like poorer than dirt on the plains of Colorado. So I never viewed money as anything because we never had it.
I never even like, it never was a concern. Like I had handed me down shoes. I had handed me down clothes.
And if I ever got new things, they were like $2 shoes from Walmart that I got made fun of unmercifully for. So my money values were pretty weak going into my teenage years and my early adult years because I had no idea what money was, how to make money, how much money was necessary for anything. And I always saw money as a hindrance to what I wanted because in my family growing up, everything revolved around my father and my father's needs and spending habits were all about him, his business, because his business basically consumes his life and everything that I wanted costed money.
But somehow that was never something that cost money. You messed up my role, Tim. Jesus.
But everything that I wanted cost money. And I was seeing that money was a hindrance to my fulfillment, which again, probably is a continuous money script for me that right now I'm still not quite at the point where I can have the freedom that I want because money is slightly of the hang up. So that is interesting looking back.
So now if you can actually identify where your money values come from, the path forward is pretty simple. So currently, does money cause feelings of confidence or insecurity, anxiety, things of that nature? Unhappiness. For me, it doesn't.
But then my money values, I never really cared about money. So it kind of makes sense that I don't have any feelings about money. Yeah, no, I do understand that.
But mine wasn't that. It's money itself. But money, not being able to have money to do what I want to do is creating the unhappiness component.
So mine is like a secondary correlation. I mean, for me, I can see a linear progression from the fact that when my first memory of money was my parents were fighting about the house was going to be foreclosed on. So they're fighting about money.
And I was like, oh, I guess we you guys should work more. And they're like, oh, we work like 60 hours a week, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like, so we never had money.
So I don't have any feelings about money. I've never had a history of making good financial decisions until recently because I never had money. So when I had like a thousand dollars, I blow a thousand dollars and I'd be back to where I was comfortable, which was having no money.
So it was very difficult for me in my 20s and my early 30s, like having a mortgage and having car payment and all that stuff because I never had a relationship with money at all. So I was always like I was in debt a lot because I would take on more than I made at whatever job I was working at the time. And I would use my paycheck to basically pay for my habit spending and then like for all my things in life, house, car, food, dogs.
I had plenty of dogs. Like, so it's like, well, I think one of the biggest like disconnects with most people and money is the fact that like most of us don't have parents who are good with money. So we never really are taught the basic foundation skills to be good with money ourselves.
So we kind of just wing it and figure it out as we go. And that has actually backed up by the day that we presented a while back with like the amount of boomers that have like zero money for retirement. Like they actually have no money going forward for their retirements.
I mean, in their defense, the retirement plans and stuff didn't really come out. They're going to be a burden on everybody here in like the next five to 10 years. Yeah, the system changed well before like, because they were never in the whole setup that we were in.
So they kind of got weird stuck in this like transition issue. And that's a whole other episode we're going to talk about. But then like you can see like it's so like for my case, like in my case, I've never had many money.
So my money value is pretty weak. There's other people that they've had plenty of money their whole life. So that and their whole life is revolving around like status.
They have to drive like the new BMW. They have to have the super nice house. They have to have all the nice clothes.
And their money value is I have to look the best that I could possibly be to show everybody that I'm successful, quote, successful. So they tie their money, their finances to success. So like there are different people.
We'll get to the at some point. There's four different categories, four groups of people, main categories, I guess we should say. Okay.
Another question to ask yourself is, is there hesitancy to take action when there are issues regarding money? Like do you like, like we had a pair of paralysis analysis type podcast. Well, when it comes to actually taking steps to either make more money or pay stuff off or to invest money, is there hesitancy? Does it cause anxiety? Like that's, that's a very unhealthy thing where like, if you have say $2,000 in bill and you, and you have like $3,000 in the bank, but you like, you get like stuck and you can't like spend the money. That's a bad relationship with money as well.
I have some of that. And I know where mine stems from. It's because I don't value the thing that I have to spend money on.
And then here's the, like the, the, the one where I was just basically just getting out of my twenties and thirties, is there impulsiveness with money? Or do you have the discipline to say, no, I so impulsive still to this day, but I actually have developed the ability to say no. So I'm still like, I still want to buy what I want to buy, but I'm like, no, that doesn't make sense with what I'm trying to do. Impulsiveness isn't always bad as long as it's in one of the categories that you find fulfillment in, in life.
But if you're impulsively spending to sue the black hole that never gets filled, that's a different, and that that's like real bad, real, real bad. So there's just five questions. And if any of those questions cause tension or anxiety among you, um, your children, your spouse or partner, um, then there's a super high probability that one of you, or maybe all of you have an unhealthy relationship with money.
And that's just an opportunity to work on this, to get your life in a better direction. And so like, say like you asked, you, you answered the questions and you think everything's fine. Well, I'm going to actually point out, uh, what's it look like here? Seven red flags that actually illustrate a very troubled relationship with money.
The first red flag is constant financial strain. You always find yourself broke, struggling to keep up with even the most basic expenses. So if you can't like afford your rent and your car payment and the gas to put in your car and the insurance for the car, or like the food, if you can't basically your basic like living expenses, like if it's a struggle, you have a unhealthy relationship with money.
And we'll explain that one specifically going forward. And it's something like, I think people get messed up in their values or their moral compass. That one can be very insidious.
Um, red flag number two is fear of spending, spending any amount of money, fills you with anxiety, preventing you from enjoying the fruits of your labor or investing in your future self and growth. So if you like have a decent job or you have a job and you still have fear of spending money, even though you have more than enough in the banks, I would say more than enough would be more than like an emergency fund is six months and you're like, you're scared to spend any money. That's an unhealthy relationship.
So the one book I was just reading was talking about a guy who had $62,000 saved, but he not only had it saved, he had it in his backyard in like a cache. Like that is a fear, a money fear. Like that's in the land of money fear.
Like something's going on in the fear realm. That's, that's not good energy. The third red flag is limiting beliefs.
This basically means that you're held back by negative thoughts or of assumptions such as you think to yourself, I'll never be good with money no matter how much or how little I have, which, which in turn actually creates a self fulfilling prophecy that if you think you're going to be bad with money, generally you'll be bad with money just because you psyched yourself to the point where it's not even just that when you say those things, you etch a belief and that belief becomes part of your identity. So then you affirm it with the actions that, that like, that's just how our brain slash bodies are programmed to work together. That's that whole affirmation thing.
If you say good things better, you make better decisions and then like good things come. Self-fulfilling prophecy both ways. Negative is bad.
Generally. Red flag number four, money as a source of stress. So if you don't see money as a tool towards your freedom, instead it's a constant source of worry and anxiety and sleepless nights.
That's obviously a huge red flag, troubled money relationship. Red flag number five is negative perceptions. This is a huge one because when I, like when my grandparents adopted me, they will just say they're very religious and one of the components of most Christian religions is that money is the root of all evil.
So negative perception is believe in money is evil or that pursuing wealth is a greedy and creates a self-limiting narrative. So if you think that money is evil based on like your religious teachings or your, your parental teachings, that's actually an unhealthy relationship with money. Very unhealthy.
Money is neutral. Nothing. It's not neutral, not good or evil.
It's like, again, back to the hammer. You can use a hammer to bludgeon somebody to death and you can use a hammer to build a house. It's how it's used and the person who's using it, not the thing itself.
Complete sidebar. Like there's a lot of people that think if you pursue wealth, it's being greedy. Like if you actually look at, I think probably eight of the top 10 Christian religions in America, they actually pursue wealth on the down low.
So it's not actually a bad thing to actually pursue wealth. They all do it. And the more money you have, the more you can donate.
So I don't help people. You can do whatever. Um, this is a huge one for like, uh, this is probably going to be the biggest red flag, especially with that statistic.
I read for most people it's dependency on others. You often will rely on your family or friends to bail you out financially to actually avoid addressing the mess that you've created and taking responsibility for your financial situation. So like if you ask your parents for money or if you ask your friends for money or your friends ask you for money or your kids ask you for money, like that's all just the negative, a bad, a bad relationship with money.
Like you shouldn't be dependent on other, you should actually have your own money and creating money for yourself. Yeah, that's a codependency flag. This is a huge one.
This is probably the most prevalent of the seven I'm 11% right now. Well, in that statistic that I read, I think it was 40, 54% of people after their 40 years of their working life end up being reliant on family, friends, or the government for income. Oh, I forgot the government.
Yeah, good call. That's disturbing. Most people are like most people actually will.
And that's social security falls into that category. Like if you're solely depending on that, that's okay. That's, but that's like, that's a gray area because social security, you actually are paying it even though you don't want to, you're paying it your whole life.
So like it is part of your investment. But if it's the only thing you're relying on. Well, that's bad.
That's bad. I mean, that's not bad from a money relationship perspective, but that's bad from 18 other points that we've made throughout the last year and a half. But that kind of is completely relevant to this episode.
Okay. And the seventh red flag is habitual overspending. This pertains to a lot of people I know.
Despite financial constraints, you consistently spend beyond your means, which leads to a vicious cycle of debt and regret. We actually address the whole vicious debt cycle where you spend to feel better and then you feel remorse and regret because you spent money you didn't have. Well, and I will go out on a thing saying that this isn't completely people's faults because the credit card companies are in cahoots with the government and they basically their whole mission is to brainwash you to become part of the debt cycle.
So there is a lot of programming that happens. But if you're choosing not to choose your own habits like they're choosing for you, like we've said before, that isn't bad. That is another like form of money.
It can be a tool. It can be a tool if it's being used to generate more money. But if you're buying something.
So I'm not saying debt's bad, but debt can be bad depending on your financial situation. If you're just using it from a consumerism standpoint and it's like there's never a reason that you're taking on debt like that's bad debt. But if you're taking on debt, say you have a house and you take on debt to actually get a rental house, which should generate you more money.
That's actually in my eyes, in my humble opinion, that's actually good debt. It's a more responsible form of debt. You're creating a passive income stream.
If you're using it to start a business, it's going to generate you income. That's a good form of debt. So, but if you're using it to buy like a new car, that's stupid.
Okay. Like clothes that you don't want. Yeah.
So as we said, where do these beliefs about money come from? These, yeah, they're created in childhood. And most people have no idea that they have certain beliefs about money because people don't actually revisit their childhood very often in adulthood. I'm a perpetual like eight year old.
So I'm always in my childhood mindset. I'm like, oh, that looks fun. Oh, this, can we do this? Oh, can we do that? So I'm like, I'm a, I'm an aberration to most normal adults.
I feel like I'm the same. That's probably why we get along. So, but that's me.
Other people actually, they've heard they're grown up and they like, don't remember their childhoods. That's why it's like a, it's. Well, it's natural.
We avoid the pain. So if our childhood was painful, we avoid the pain. Well, this here's an exercise in like remembering basically.
So, but if she, Carmela brought up money, money scripts, and this was actually first coined in 2011 by a financial psychologist named Brad Klontz. Nice. Whose studies revealed distinct money belief patterns or scripts formed in childhood.
He described these money scripts as typical, as typically unconscious and they're formed in childhood and they drive financial behaviors in adults. So it's like something that you carry with you in childhood unconsciously that applies to your adult life. It's just like a belief of, I don't know, like in God.
If you had like, if you were like in a, in a household that was very religious, like there's a lot of people that believe like in Catholicism because they were raised Catholic, but they actually, when they get older and they start thinking about that, like, well, Catholicism is not quite what I want to do. And they'll actually do free thinking at that point and actually become members of different churches. Like it's, there's a lot of it.
Until they actually hit that point of realization though, there's cognitive dissonance, which creates this internal conflict. And that's where you, when you're in the middle of an internal conflict where you actually kind of believe two opposite things that don't correlate, you have this internal stress or struggle situation that happens. And that can be very prevalent through some of these beliefs because it's like if you were taught that money is evil, but you actually believe it's like the key to happiness.
Like you have this internal thing that's happening and you're just like you, you beat yourself up constantly on both sides of the fence. I didn't actually find the research on this, but I'm fairly confident. It's pretty high that most people's beliefs and opinions formed in childhood are their beliefs and opinions in adulthood.
Well, typically they are. If you're not putting an effort to, it's just easier to keep your certain beliefs your whole life than it is to actually make your own decisions, question everything that you've learned. Like that's very difficult.
That's a really shitty and actually it should be an ongoing process. It is. It should be, but it's really not.
So like, um, some examples of money scripts that, uh, Mr Klontz, um, put forth in his readings, money is bad or money is bad or evil. That's a big one. A lot of, um, another one is things will get better if I have more money.
Another one would be rich people are greedy. This is a huge one with a lot of people that I don't understand. It's not polite or nice to talk about money.
Yeah. I don't like money. You should always be discussing it.
The reason I say you should always be discussing is not to like rub it into other people's faces. All I have more than I need, but it is, it's like ripping off a bandaid and you're talking about a taboo subject. Yeah.
It's definitely in this society and other people, other people have other, um, upbringings and mentalities about money and how to make money and what's good and what's bad. So like, it's always good to like get out of your comfort zone and actually talk about things that you don't really care to or want to talk about. Well, and especially if you're in a relationship with somebody, if you're not having open conversations and discussions about money, do you have money problems? Because if you are not having discussions and you have money problems, right, there's one of the reasons.
Uh, another script would be, there is never enough money. And the last one is one that just tickles me for some reason. I don't know why, but there's a lot of people that fall into this script where money equals love.
That's like a, that's a huge one. They have to have the freaking love language of gift giving. I swear to God.
Like if you remember, remember your past relationships were like, they required like flowers if they were, if you're a dude and you had to buy flowers for the chick or you had to buy like teddy bears and dumb shit like that. Like to, to show your love, you had to buy cards and flowers and chocolate. That is, that is the love language of gift giving.
Some nonsense like that. But okay. Um, during the course of this research, I came across a Seattle based money coach named Michelin Valterra.
And um, she says that money scripts actually run on autopilot in the background and people are mostly not aware of them, which actually correlates with the unconscious thing. Valterra points out that people tend to reenact what they saw as childhood, or sometimes they rebel and do the opposite. So like in my, like there is cases where people that grew up in my situation where they had no money, they do a complete three 60 and they become ones that have to have millions of dollars until, until they're happy.
Whereas I'm perfectly comfortable just being in a van in the middle of nowhere with nothing. There's the, the exact opposite of my coin would be someone that actually has to live in New York City driving like a Ferrari with a penthouse apartment. Well, I do think you went a little opposite, not necessarily rebel aspect because your parents cared so much about the fact that they didn't have money and you don't care that you don't have money.
So it is like it's a, it's an opposing thing, even though it's on the same side of the coin, if that makes any sense. The same execution may be from a different reason. Okay.
So we've discussed money scripts. So how are they formed? Okay. So just hearing and watching those around you deal with finances isn't enough to make a money script stick.
So if you're just like, if you remember your childhood, just hearing your parents argue about finances, it won't make it stick for it to become part of your mental programming. There has to be a strong, there has to be a strong emotion associated with it. So in my case, whenever, um, I'm some of my, like, I don't have a lot of very fond memories of childhood.
We've addressed that previously, but one of them was when we actually had like, say $25 left over, we go to this sub shop and we get like this, um, three foot long stuff. And that is something that's stuck with me forever. It has a strong emotion associated with it.
So maybe that might be why I am the way I am when it comes to spending money on food. I'm like, Oh my God, food makes me feel so good. Well, I was going to say, so a lot of times, I don't know what the heck you have after this, but when we're talking strong emotion, when you're a kid, you're, you're a child who's trying to get your needs met.
So if you're not getting love, you're not getting attention. You're not getting, um, I don't know, physical like touch. Cause that's a part of actual health, healthy children rearing.
If you're not getting one of those things because some kind of financial situation is like blocking that or interfering that or distracting your parents from that, that strong emotion or that void that's created from that lack is typically when those beliefs are going to get etched in, or I can't have love because I don't have money or I can't get love. Or I, I, people don't care about me if, if money is a problem. So it's like, it becomes these like expounded and elevated.
Like it just, it's a big gnarled mess. It's some deep shit right here. It's very, well, what, what, uh, this Volterra lady says is it's just the way the human brain works.
If you hear the same thing said enough, and there's a strong feeling around it, positive or negative, it becomes lodged in your memory and it becomes unconscious. So if it like just has seen a conversation or an argument about money is not enough, but like say your dad hit your mom, well then it automatically would like that most of the time will become a negative, strong feeling associated with the money conversation. Well, yes.
You might actually think that there's physical pain coming if you actually discussed money. So like if you saw your parents fighting about money and there was a physical beating to happen, like that would terrify you and you'd probably not feel comfortable talking to your in your relationships about money for the fear of physical pain. I watched that happen a few times where my mom or my dad hit the other one about the money conversations and I didn't actually have a strong feeling about it.
I was like, uh, all right. Well, you also didn't have a deep connection with your parents. It's going to be one of those nights.
Okay. And we are bringing up the, we're bringing up the example about watching their parents fight about money. Um, Volterra says, it's really stressful for a kid because they don't quite understand what's going on.
So exactly. Children who witnessed the unhealthy dialogue around money may come to feel that money causes fights or pain as they grow into adults. They may Harbor the script, not remembering where it came from.
That might also be why a lot of people don't want to talk about money in relationships in general because it just causes turmoil. Well, I think a part of it is because there's like a childhood trauma sometimes, but then a lot of times it's because we've been instructed pretty much our whole life that money talk is tight taboo. You don't discuss money.
It's just, it's, it's not, um, not polite. Not, it's not what is the word, but it's one of those things. Oh yeah.
Polite's the thing. Etiquette is improper. It's improper etiquette to discuss money.
Like I've actually seen like, um, her, um, dad does like, uh, the landscaping for higher income clients. And like, they actually have this where they like, they don't like to talk about money, even though like, like they'll like, for example, like we'll be doing a property and the owner will be, oh, this all looks nice. And then one of the neighbors will come up and say, oh my God, that looks nice.
How much does that cost? And they don't like, they refuse to discuss it. It's very interesting. That is really weird.
Well, I was even just talking with somebody the other day who said they were getting married and I was like, oh, I was like, how much is the wedding going to cost you? And you could tell right away, they got all like weird about it and they got all clammed up. And, and, and I was just curious to know, like, I think part of that, like there's some instances where it's like taboo and there's other instances where there's an embarrassment type thing. Yes, there was a little bit of that.
And I was just trying to gauge like what the general cost of like marriages right now versus like where they're at. Are they leaning towards spending more, equal, or like less than that? But then he like round-a-bouted it to basically like they're trying to cut as many costs as possible. Now, he didn't exactly say, but had somebody asked me that question, if I was in that situation, I'd be like, our budget is this. It's going to be hard to come into that.
So we might have to cut here, here and there. But I'd be completely upfront and transparent because to me, money is like data and like data doesn't have a negative connotation. First of all, money is a tool and there is nothing to be gained from a wedding.
So it'd be cost zero. Well, okay. So aside from our belief that marriage is a waste of money.
Like it'd be the courthouse is all that would be. On the flip side of the coin though, a child can also develop positive money scripts. If healthy financial habits are modeled for them.
An example of this would be if parents actually were open and honest and talked about when they talked about money, this actually will demonstrate the importance of communication in the relationship and using money as a tool to reinforce values. Now, how many of you had children, childhoods like that? I highly doubt. When I was, when my grandparents adopted me, one of the people that I hung out with, their parents were like that.
They would actually have a weekly budget meeting and they would discuss with this person. It's going to say, I'd be curious to see how they turned out. They actually, like they, uh, they had a budget meeting every week and then they'd say, here's what I spent this week.
So like the kids would have to document what they spend though the wife would, the husband wouldn't, they would sit down and have a, like a round table about it. And they discussed what they spent, what they, what they saved, what it went towards. And then they would say, was, then they discuss like the expenditures, like, was that necessary or was it just like a want? Like it was very healthy relationship and very healthy relationship with money.
But where I came from, it was fucking weird as shit. I was just going to ask, did you pick anything up from it or did you just judge him and like run away because it was like weird as hell. I was like, what are these, what are these people doing? Oh my God, that is so funny.
Well, when you were just talking about the modeling component, like if you understand how, like you can watch it in your animals, you can watch it in your children. If you do not have the capability for them to verbally understand and whatever modeling and mimicry, that's why we have really, really high mimicking, like portions of our brains that light up like mimicry is one of the ways to make us survive. So in the absence of being able to replicate through verbal language, like mimicking is what happens.
So if you never talk about money, but you're seeing money habits happen, you're going to model them. That just 100% is how that, how that goes. Unless you're a rebel.
Okay. Like your friend, apparently. So we, um, throughout the course of my, uh, research, uh, in, uh, what the hell was her name? Volterra and, uh, the, the Klontz I came across, uh, there was more than four ties, but like they, both of them actually said there's the fourth.
There's probably a lot more than four, but these are the most common. These are the four most common money scripts. The first one being, um, money avoidance, um, money avoiders view money as a source of anxiety and disdain.
They believe that money is bad and view wealthy people in a negative light. They also feel undeserving of money, which can actually lead to them sabotaging their own financial efforts. I've known a few people like this.
Um, mainly they were religious people. Money was bad. So, and I do believe they were programmed to do that because there were parts of church, parts of religious churches that said, you have to pay like 10% of your money for us in tithing.
So they had no problem giving away like 10% of their, of their take-home pay, which at that point would only be like 78%. So they're down to 68%. And so like, it was, it was just weird seeing people that view money, which is a thing.
It's nothing more than just paper or zeros and ones in your bank account. And they view it as actually a bad thing. I actually have heard in a lot of those finance books that I read that there's more women in the money avoidance category because women have been taught from an early age that talking about money or having more money than men is distasteful or it like it messes up the female masculine paradigm and it makes you less worthy, less lovable.
Like it's, it's this really weird negative woman from actually saving up all of her money, but then just playing into that paradigm and just having men pay for everything for her. Then like when it's time to like, when she's like, when, but that's not part of the money script. It's like you, that's a, that's a conniving strategizer.
Like that's completely different. They wouldn't have the money avoidance beliefs. They'd have like a, that'd be a gold digger, a nest egg of like five, $5 million when their husband dies, be like, Oh, I've been saving this up for 40 years.
We actually have a client that's like that. All my, my dad's one client, the wife, I'm honestly not sure how these two are married because the husband is pretty intolerable, even from everybody else who hangs out with him. They don't go back for seconds.
She made a comment the one time about how she lets him pay for everything. And she's kind of sitting on her own stuff so that, well, I'm saying what's to stop women from actually playing into that, that, that whole stereotype that, Oh man, like you can't make as much as men. So they just hide your wealth.
And then when it comes time, when you're single or widowed or whatever, you just have your nest egg. But back to the money avoidance component, like I think a lot of women are taught to be less than, and I think that there's a commonality too, with like the race thing, where people were always taught, you might not be consciously or like overtly, but they're basically taught that they're less than in some way. And that belief gets etched in that subconscious.
So they take actions. And I think that's why there is the issue with the women making as much money. And there just really is this whole paradigm thing.
The part that strikes me as uber freaking weird in this, this, this money script is that you feel undeserved of money. Again, money's a thing. But that's the belief you're, because it's a tier system, the way that that belief gets etched, you're saying that men are superior to women.
So women therefore cannot make more than men because it makes men feel threatened. And then that will could potentially cause a whatever, but it's also saying that you're undeserving unequal. So it's this really weird thing that gets warped and, and like subconsciously imprinted in the brain that like you're undeserving, you're less than you don't deserve as much, or you don't deserve as much pay.
So then you start acting that way. So then you start attracting less money, less opportunity, less this, less that. And it does become its own self fulfilling, sabotaging prophecy.
And it comes a lot from like mother. So I'm actually very grateful for myself that I hang around with a lot more men. And I didn't have that like women etiquette thing shoved down my throat because holy hell, like I feel I feel really terrible for women that have that, that belief system.
It's, it's very sad. It does seem bad. Second script is money worship.
Yeah. Here's the other completely flip side of people with this type of script believe that money will solve all their problems. And I know we all know people that think my dad and my brother fall pretty hard into this fall into this where like, if I have a, I can just make more money and it's the only source of their happiness is having money worship.
So you tend, if you're one of those people, you tend to revere people who look like they have more money than you status, cars, clothes. Oh, nevermind. Money worship is where you hoard stuff and you overspend or you're prior to prioritize work and status over relationships.
Oh, so this is a hundred percent my dad. So my dad basically like work above all else. I was describing that earlier.
So AKA money coming in above all else. Money is completely tied. Your dad actually suffers from two of the, yeah, two and two, the money status and the money worship thing.
So that's a money worship basically is money is that solves all problems and you can never have enough to solve all of your problems. So you're always striving to make more so that your, all your problems can be solved. And I probably have a little bit of this one probably from that, uh, boxy or proxy situation because like I've always viewed like not having money is like hindering my happiness.
I don't necessarily worship money, but like I want to have enough, but I'm not one of those super greedy people, but that it is like a delicate, a delicate balance type type situation. Then it goes in like, so money worship actually ties to me, in my opinion, money worship ties into the next one, which is money status. I wish they had a different one that wasn't these two together.
Status driven individuals may attach their self worth to their net worth, believing that money and symbols of high status such as designer brands bring more power. Um, these types of individuals are more likely to indulge in risky financial behaviors, accumulate a shit ton of debt and spread spend freely. So these would be the people that are doing like the flashy cars, flashy clothes.
And if you live in a neighborhood nine times out of 10, one of your neighbors is one of these. Honestly, most of the people I think in the high end neighborhoods are these keep up with the Joneses. You have to like, so if you're, if you're, if your neighbor puts in like a, uh, a bush, you have to put it in a better looking bush that just this type of shit.
Yeah, it's this competitive thing because it's like you're comparing yourself to what others around you have and you have to be a little bit above them and at all costs. So you'll spend more money. Even if you don't actually have the money you'll take on debt, you might actually go be very good at advocating for yourself at work to try to get further up the pay ladder.
But the further you get up the pay ladder, your spending goes up. So it's like you do that. We call that the goldfish syndrome.
Yeah, you goldfish. So if you have like $100,000, you buy like a $80,000 house and you fill it up with stuff. And then when you get a raise, say you get a raise like $140,000, well then you trade in your $80,000 house for $120,000 house and you fill the $120,000 house with stuff up to the gills.
And then you just keep doing that repeat over and over and over and over again. And the reason they're saying that's why behavior, like that debt debt for stuff, not for actual business growth is a very risky behavior. That's why leveraging yourself to the hilt.
And when we did the, is it better to rent or own a house? I actually presented that statistic where like most people will only live in their house like 12 years. That's precisely why. They just keep trading their house in for bigger houses.
Now that's not always the case. They say it's because they have kids or they need more space, but it literally is just. But why do they need more space? Because again, they have this lack, they don't have enough status.
And like to me, the money status is the same thing with not having enough. It's never enough. And the complete sidebar on that is I've never seen people that upgrade their house.
So they'll say they'll go from like a 2000 square foot house to like a 2500 square foot house and they'll get a three car, three car garages, a two car garage, but they never parked their cars in the garage. It's fascinating. They're always outside.
They have to show them off as a status of simple. But the garage is full of shit. Yeah.
Well, that too, because it is all of it's, but again, so like this one and I don't, again, the money worship one, I don't know if it goes over my head a little bit or it's just not quite whatever, but, but basically like this one money will solve all problems. Yeah. You think that happiness is tied to the money and the things, but the more you get, the more the void is still like the more the void is still there.
So wait, explain that again for the money worship. This one here is money will solve all of your, your problems. And it's your only source of happiness, whereas this one, the status stuff makes you happy.
So this one is money makes you happy. This one is the stuff that you buy with the money makes you happy. I mean, both of those are fleeting.
I don't know. I think those two are very well tied together. They are.
If you see, generally speaking, if you see someone that falls into money script two, they fall into money script three. Yeah. Typically.
Cause they're prioritizing work over and status over relationships. So that's status over relationships unless the relationship brings status. I've seen those trophy wives.
So let's think about that. So that's, that's my dad. 100% both those categories and my brother with his gold.
So my brother doesn't like gold necessarily for the inflation hedge. He likes it because it is a symbol of status and it's a scarce commodity. So which category do you think he stands in? Number three, money status.
And the fourth and final one is money vigilance. This type of money script can be present with people who are frugal, live within their means and prioritize savings. However, they may be prone to experiencing anxiety and never feeling financially secure.
I also have part of this one. So this is the one where you do everything right, but you still feel insecure financially because you're not sure if you have enough for whatever you're doing down the road. It's like, this is kind of like a, uh, well, and I can actually see that though.
And I can see a lot of people having this, even if they're really good with all their stuff, because the way that, that 4% retirement thing that we always talk about is set up, there is so much uncertainty tied into that because it's dependent on a market condition that is 25 years down the road. You really can't predict that. You can't, unless you implement something like our strategy with the dividend approach, because then you have your month to month thing dialed in.
Now you're still going to have to figure out what the heck inflation is going to do to the value of that money, but it's still a lot more of a secure place. Generally speaking, if you're living, um, dividend to your month to month with your dividends, the inflation is not going to really present that big of a problem because you'll like, just basically you'll alter your spending to fit that, say 1500 or 200 or $2,000, no matter what inflation is. Or the dividend increases will actually keep up with inflation type deal.
So I know like when I think about it, like I know like 10 years from now, everything's going to cost like 30% more, but it's not going to be a problem. Even if we had the exact same payouts we do now, we'll just drive less or we'll, um, eat rice and beans as opposed to getting... Or we'll take one month off to reinvest everything instead of living off of that money. So like this, but it's like, that's... But the diligence, but I'm saying, I think the root of this one is the fact that the current paradigm for retirement... Trying to project.
Yes. This is current. But the current paradigm for the way retirement is set up, I can see why a lot of people have this fear because it really is the fact that you don't have enough information or the system that is currently in place really doesn't actually line up properly.
So what I took from this... With realistic retirement. From these four things, this is what I took. This is whatever it's worth.
Number one is people live in the past. Number two and three are people that live like currently in the present and that's all they live in. And number four is the people that live in the future.
But they're all coming from like anxiety places. Yeah, but like this one here, their past is dictating everything. So they're living in the past.
This one here, everything is about current. Like I currently have a Volvo or I currently have a 4,000 square foot house. A gold chain.
A gold chain. And this one here is I currently have a lot saved, but I don't know what's going to happen in the future. So I'm anxious because I don't think I'll be financially secure in the future.
Like it's fascinating. Well, and number four typically are the people that will save and save and save and save and save and miss out on living. And then they'll either die early.
So that's like one of the things when we first started this journey together, like it was one of the things that we've mentioned was like living now. I never knew it was such a foreign concept to people, but like I want to live now. But you don't want to be living like the money status and worship people either.
So it's like it's a fine line between like healthy living now. Because I don't want to live when I'm 65 because there's no guarantee I'll make it to 65. We actually did an episode on that.
If you recall about like the probability of people to die, they die before they turn 65. There's like 12% or something like that. So I mean, I'm fairly confident I won't be part of the 12% to die before they're 65.
But there's no guarantee. So I'm going to live it up now. And that is the first part of this.
I'm hoping that you guys feel a little bit violated because you're supposed to. I mean, honestly, I hope you feel a little prickly in your stomach or something like this is supposed to be uncomfortable to actually develop a healthy relationship with money. You're going to have to break down a lot of past traumas, past beliefs.
And it's going to be like a violation. It's going to be like, ah, this sucks. But to do it, it needs to be done.
Yeah, those are protectionary pieces of yourself. They're trying to keep you from like figuring it out. But if you want to move past everything, you got to dig in a little bit.
Those pieces of resistance, lean into it. Give yourself some space, some time. I'm imagining maybe we listen to this and see what comes up for you.
And then next week, we're going to actually offer what to do for it. Some tips to improve your relationship. Between this week and next week.
And what a healthy relationship with money should look like. Your homework is to think about these, figure out where you may have money scripts. Even if it's not one of these, you're going to have something in there.
What's wrong with violated? You didn't like that word? That was just really funny. Most people don't say violated. Oh, OK.
If you feel offended or violated, that's usually a sign that you got something going on. My bad. All right.
So that's your homework for next week. Yeah. Next week will be the... Tune in for next week.
The big payoff for all this. We're going to show you what you can do once you figure out what those scripts or what script that you have. Yeah.
So you'll feel better. You feel warm and fuzzy next week. Yeah.
And we'll start getting your money stuff on track. Not so violated. Oh, Tim.
I see you guys.