Exploring Financial Self-Sabotage and Emotional Connections with Money
About the Guest(s):
Amy Irvine is the founder and CEO of Rooted Planning Group, a financial planning firm dedicated to helping clients build a secure financial future. With a robust background in wealth management and a passion for financial literacy, Amy leads her team to uncover the intricate connections between emotions and financial behaviors. Through her podcast, Money Roots, Amy offers insights into the psychological aspects of financial planning, sharing her extensive knowledge and experience to guide listeners toward better financial health.
Episode Summary:
In this episode of "Money Roots," host Amy Irvine delves into the complex relationship between emotions and financial behaviors. Following the positive feedback from her previous discussion with Carrie Friedberg on mastering money, Amy addresses the intriguing topic of why individuals often feel like they're sabotaging their financial well-being. She breaks down the self-sabotage phenomenon and explores the underlying emotional connections that influence financial decision-making.
Throughout the podcast, Amy examines various themes, such as the feelings of inadequacy people might carry regarding money and the hidden comfort found in financial chaos due to one's upbringing. Using relatable anecdotes and expert insights, she encourages listeners to explore their financial patterns and behaviors deeply. In addition, Amy shares strategic steps for shifting self-sabotaging financial behaviors, offering practical advice on how to make small, incremental changes to create lasting habits, thereby addressing challenges like chronic financial stress and the fear of financial success or responsibility. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of how your emotions play a significant role in your financial decisions, and learn actionable steps to take control of your finances.
Key Takeaways:
- Many people experience a feeling of self-sabotage in their financial lives, which is often rooted in emotional connections to money.
- Identifying personal financial mistakes and journaling about them can help uncover underlying behaviors and beliefs.
- Understanding one's financial upbringing can reveal ingrained habits or patterns that might contribute to current financial decisions.
- Small steps and incremental changes are essential when attempting to rewire financial habits and overcome self-sabotaging behaviors.
- Fear of success or increased responsibility can lead to financial self-sabotage, despite the desirability of financial stability.
Notable Quotes:
- "Are we putting our head in the sand? Are we impulse spending and putting our hand head in the sand, are we avoiding bills?"
- "When we use those words with each other, on each other, on ourselves, it's like we're identifying conflicts where we're making ourselves quote unquote bad at something."
- "Is there comfort in financial chaos? I know that sounds like something that would be strange, like why would we feel familiar in financial chaos?"
- "If something has for a long time felt bad, normal, any big shift is going to feel abnormal."
- "Journal them, write them down in your mind. What mistakes are you making or you feel you're making?"
Resources:
- Rooted Planning Group: RootedPlanningGroup.com
For anyone looking to deepen their understanding of financial well being and emotional connections to money, listening to this episode provides critical insights and strategies. Stay tuned for more enriching episodes of "Money Roots," where Amy Irvine continues to shed light on crucial financial planning topics.
Transcript
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Speaker B:Hi, I'm Amy Irvine, founder of Rooted Planning Group, and this is Money Roots, a podcast where my team and I explore the real conversations behind financial planning.
Speaker B:Because life is about events supported by your dollars and cents.
Speaker B:Let's get started.
Speaker A:Hello, Money Root listeners.
Speaker A:This is Amy Irvine, CEO and founder of Rooted Planning Group.
Speaker A:Last, or I should say last recording.
Speaker A:I had a great conversation that was really honing in on basically mastering money.
Speaker A:So it was from financial anxiety due to Zen with Carrie Friedberg.
Speaker A:And the feedback that I got from that podcast was really incredible.
Speaker A:I had a lot of people saying to me, explore more about this, Amy.
Speaker A:We would really love to know more about connection between emotion and money.
Speaker A:So I gave some thought to that and had broke it down into a couple of different categories of things that I think people are most often connected with one of these.
Speaker A:So one is potentially why you feel like you are sabotaging your own finances.
Speaker A:And I really focus on the word feel feels like, because that emotion of feeling like you're sabotaging anything is so, so overwhelming.
Speaker A:And I think when we, when we look at those sort of things, like are we putting our head in the sand?
Speaker A:Are we impulse spending and putting our hand head in the sand, are we avoiding bills?
Speaker A:Are we ignoring our budgets?
Speaker A:If we have budgets.
Speaker A:Good friend of mine Carl Richards talks about the anxiety that he gets when he goes to the mailbox.
Speaker A:And we couldn't figure out why.
Speaker A:And it was tied back to when he was a child and there were some IRS issues with his family.
Speaker A:And he realized finally that, you know, that that was the connection of going to the mailbox is that there was some letter that was going to show up from the irs.
Speaker A:And so sometimes avoiding, you know, going to the mailbox, so avoiding going to see what's in the mailbox, avoiding bills, those could be things that people are doing that are so deeply rooted that you don't understand why you're actually doing it.
Speaker A:Sometimes people will say, I'm just bad with money.
Speaker A:And to me, again, that's those really hard words that people use on themselves.
Speaker A:I'm just bad at anything.
Speaker A:I've heard people say I'm bad at math, I'm bad at science, I'm bad with money, I'm bad with exercise.
Speaker A:I'm bad, I'm bad.
Speaker A:I'm bad.
Speaker A:And your self identifying conflicts with yourself when you accuse yourself of being bad at anything.
Speaker A:Maybe you're not the most athletic person.
Speaker A:Maybe you can't run a marathon at the same pace as somebody who is a bit more built for it or spends more time training on it.
Speaker A:But that doesn't mean you're necessarily bad.
Speaker A:It just means that you're different.
Speaker A:And so when we use those words with each other, on each other, on ourselves, it's like we're, we're identifying conflicts where it's, we're, we're making ourselves quote unquote bad at something because we're accusing ourselves of being bad so we can convince ourselves that we're bad at something like money.
Speaker A:And I think another reason why, why people sometimes have this self sabotage, and again, I, I say think they have self sabotage is because that's where they find comfort.
Speaker A:Again, this could be at the core of the way that they were raised.
Speaker A:So is there comfort in financial chaos?
Speaker A:I know that sounds like something that would be strange, like why would we feel familiar in financial chaos?
Speaker A:But again, if that's the way that we were raised, that might be what's comfortable.
Speaker A:And so we go to that as a resource of is.
Speaker A:I'm using air quote quotes.
Speaker A:Normal.
Speaker A:What is normal for us if, if there's financial chaos?
Speaker A:If we're, if that's what we grew up in, that's all we've had all our life, that's normal.
Speaker A:And so if we change that, something feels abnormal.
Speaker A:And that's why we always talk about small incremental changes being really important when we're trying to make behavioral changes in our financial lives.
Speaker A:Because if something has for a long time felt bad, normal, any big shift is going to feel abnormal.
Speaker A:Another example of that is for people that are under chronic stress, if all of a sudden the stress is lifted, that feels abnormal because you've been under this chronic stress situation.
Speaker A:It can be the same with money.
Speaker A:Money can cause chronic financial stress.
Speaker A:And, and that's what becomes your place, that's what becomes familiar.
Speaker A:And if there's, if that stress is lifted now, it feels abnormal, so you revert comfortable place.
Speaker A:Again, small changes can help with that.
Speaker A:And you know, I know this is gonna, when I say this, a lot of people look at me like I, they're, they just give me this look of.
Speaker A:I don't know why you're saying this, but you know, sometimes there's a fear of success or responsibility.
Speaker A:And so it we, there are times where the, I guess you want to say if we are successful or if, if we feel like we're taking responsibility or we have to take responsibility because we are successful, that can bring a whole another level of fear to the table and can cause us to do things that We've said we don't want to do or be in the middle of something we don't want to be in the middle of.
Speaker A:So I think some things that you have to explore when you're trying to shift this mindset of self sabotage is what are the, what do you believe are the mistakes that you're making?
Speaker A:Just journal them, write them down in your mind.
Speaker A:What mistakes are you making or you feel you're making?
Speaker A:And that's why you're saying, I feel like there's this self sabotage pattern.
Speaker A:What are you doing?
Speaker A:What sort of actions and activities are you participating in that are putting you in that particular position?
Speaker A:And then let's take a step back and maybe even think about journaling about what your upbringing is.
Speaker A:We have a tool that we use with clients that actually kind of does ask some questions.
Speaker A:Not kind of, it does ask some questions about your money story.
Speaker A:What was it like when you were a kid?
Speaker A:What were there, were there periods of times in your life where money felt good or many, many felt stressful?
Speaker A:What was, what was your upbringing around money?
Speaker A:When was the first time that you learned about money?
Speaker A:Was it a good thing?
Speaker A:Was it something that brought you a different level of mindset?
Speaker A:But what were those kinds of things?
Speaker A:And again, I suggest that you journal.
Speaker A:And I'm a. I think personally that if you take out a piece of paper, it can just be any piece of paper.
Speaker A:It doesn't need to be anything special.
Speaker A:But if you take out a piece of paper and you start writing, just write, just start writing.
Speaker A:Doesn't.
Speaker A:It doesn't even have to be specific to like, what was my upbringing?
Speaker A:Just I, I've done it before where I've done just words, like I've thrown words on paper and then they start to grow into sentences and paragraphs and all of the, the information eventually is on paper and I look back and go, wow, you know, this is very helpful.
Speaker A:And then another component to be thinking about is how can you take those really small steps, pick one thing, take one tiny little thing.
Speaker A:And, and how can you take some baby steps to rewire that financial habit that you're calling self sabotage?
Speaker A:What is, you don't even have to completely quote, unquote, fix it.
Speaker A:Just one little tiny step to work towards removing or helping or doing something that you would say works against the self sabotage pattern that you wrote down.
Speaker A:Those quote unquote mistakes that you wrote down initially.
Speaker A:Walking through those three questions, why do people repeat financial mistakes?
Speaker A:How does upbringing affect financial behavior?
Speaker A:And can you rewire financial habits or how can you rewire financial habits?
Speaker A:Those three primary questions are great if you are feeling like you are self sabotaging.
Speaker A:I have four more topics that I'm going to cover over the course of the next few podcasts.
Speaker A:Up next is a topic around Money Shame, so stay tuned.
Speaker A:Tune in to the next podcast in a couple of weeks on Money Shame.
Speaker A:If I'm lucky, I'll get a guest speaker speaker to to come on and actually participate in that discussion.
Speaker A:I have somebody in mind specifically that I'd love to have on for this podcast on Money Shame.
Speaker A:But in the meantime, if you have any questions or thoughts, we'd love to hear them.
Speaker A:And if you like more topics like this or would like me to dig in a little bit more, please feel free to send me an email or respond in the respond to the the messages that go out in in our releases.
Speaker A:We would love to know what's important to you.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening everyone, and don't forget to share if you like what you're hearing.
Speaker B:That's it for today's episode of Money Roots.
Speaker B:I'm Amy Irvine from Rooted Planning Group.
Speaker B:If you found this conversation helpful, we'd love for you to share the podcast with a friend, family member or colleague who might enjoy it too.
Speaker B:And if there's a financial question on your mind, send it in.
Speaker B:Your question could be the topic of a future episode, because at the end of the day, life is about events supported by your dollars and cents.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Money Roots.
