Shift Your Identity, Shift Your Money

Episode Summary: Why do smart people make consistently bad money decisions? The answer isn't a lack of information — it's identity. In this episode, we explore the behavioral finance research behind why your self-concept drives your financial behavior, and how deliberately shifting who you believe you are can change what you do with your money. We cover identity economics, cognitive dissonance, the fresh-start effect, implementation intentions, and give you a four-step framework for rewriting your financial identity from the inside out.

Key Concepts Covered:

• Identity Economics (Akerlof & Kranton)
• Cognitive Dissonance and financial avoidance
• The Fresh-Start Effect
• Self-perception theory
• Implementation intentions
• Loss aversion applied to identity
• The "two-system" brain and money decisions

EPISODE RESOURCES & REFERENCES

• Kahneman, Daniel — Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
• Thaler, Richard & Sunstein, Cass — Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008)
• Akerlof, George A. & Kranton, Rachel E. — Identity Economics (2010)
• Clear, James — Atomic Habits (2018)
• Klontz, Brad & Klontz, Ted — Mind Over Money (2009)
• Dai, Milkman & Riis — "The Fresh Start Effect" (2014), Management Science
• Gollwitzer, Peter M. — "Implementation Intentions" (1999), American Psychologist
• Bem, Daryl J. — "Self-Perception Theory" (1972), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
• Benartzi, Shlomo & Thaler, Richard — "Save More Tomorrow" (2004), Journal of Political Economy

SUGGESTED LISTENER EXERCISE

The 3-Part Identity Audit (15 minutes)

1. Old Identity Statement: Write one honest sentence that captures your current financial self-image. Be unflinching.
2. Origin Story: Write 2–3 sentences on where that identity came from. What did you observe, hear, or experience that formed it?
3. New Identity Declaration: Write your new financial identity statement. Present tense. Behavioral. Specific. Own it even before you fully believe it.

Keep it somewhere visible. Let it work on you.

Transcript

Intro

The Knowledge Gap Isn't the Problem

Identity Economics - The Research

Why Change Is So Hard - The Neuroscience and Psychology

The Framework - How To Shift Your Financial Identity

The Environment Redesign

Common Identity Pitfalls and How To Navigate Them

Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hi everyone, welcome to Personal Finance with Molly, where we talk about all things personal finance. I am your host, Molly Ford Coates. Let's dig in. You've read the books, you've watched the videos, you've downloaded the budget app, probably three of them. You know you should be investing, you know you're spending too much on things that don't matter to you. You know what the right move is. And yet, here you are, still doing the same things with money you've always done, still swiping the card when you said you wouldn't, still skipping the contribution you said you'd make, still telling yourself, next month I'll get serious. Here's what I want to offer you today, friends. The problem is not that you don't know enough. The problem is that you haven't yet become someone different. Because until the way you handle money matches how you see yourself, your identity, no strategy, no app, no budget in the world is going to stick, friends. So today we're talking about how to shift your identity. And in doing so, shift everything about how you relate to money. Let's dig in. I want to start with a story. In the early 2000s, a behavioral economist named Shlomo Benarzi was working with a 401k consulting firm. He kept running into the same problem. Workers would sit through the financial literacy workshops, they'd learn about compound interest, they'd learn about employer matching and the magic of starting early. They'd nod their heads, they understood it, and then they'd walk out the door and do absolutely nothing differently. So the information wasn't the problem, and if the information wasn't the problem, what was? This, friends, this is the central puzzle of behavioral finance, the field that sits at the intersection of psychology and economics. Standard economics assumes we are rational actors. We have a goal, we gather information, we make the optimal decision, end of story. But behavioral finance, pioneered by researchers like Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Richard Thaler, and Shlomo Banartsi, tells a completely different story. Humans are not rational. We are rationalizing. We make decisions based on emotion, habit, social influence, and something much deeper, our sense of who we are. And then we construct logical explanations after the fact. Let's sit with that for a second, friends. We don't decide and then feel. We feel, we act, and then we construct a reason that sounds logical. Now you might be thinking, okay, but I've heard this before. We have cognitive biases, we make irrational choices, what's new here? Here's what I want to push deeper on today. Most conversations about behavioral finance focus on correcting the bias in the moment. Don't buy the latte. Automate your savings so you don't have to exercise willpower. Use a spending tracker so you can see where the money goes. And yes, these are all useful tactics, but they're treating the symptom. They're trying to change the behavior without changing the underlying driver of the behavior. And that driver, the deepest driver of human behavior, is identity. Think about the last financial decision you made that you felt bad about. Maybe you made an impulse purchase, or maybe you avoided opening your credit card statement, or maybe you didn't put money into your emergency fund even though you had the cash sitting there. Now ask yourself: who were you being in that moment? What story were you operating from about who you are? And I'll give you some examples I hear constantly. So one example is I'm just bad with money. This, friends, this is identity. And when you believe it, every bad financial behavior confirms it. And every good financial behavior, well, that feels like a fluke. Here's another example I hear. I'm not a saver, I'm more of a live-in-the-moment person, right? The whole YOLO and FOMO, fear of missing out, and you only live once. Again, this is identity, and it gives you a built-in excuse to never build a cushion. And here's another excuse. Money stuff is just overwhelming for me. Again, this goes to your identity, and it keeps you from ever sitting down to learn the basics. And then here's a fourth example that I hear. I grew up poor, so I don't know how to manage abundance. Again, friends, this is identity, and it can keep inherited scarcity thinking alive, even when your income has changed dramatically. Here, friends, here's the key insight from behavioral finance. Our brains are not trying to optimize our financial outcomes. Our brains are trying to manage or maintain consistency with who we believe we are. This is called cognitive consistency, and it's one of the most powerful forces in human psychology. We will actually sabotage our own success to stay consistent with our self-image. Let that sink in. We will actually sabotage our own success to stay consistent with our self-image. Bernarzi and his colleagues eventually cracked the 401k puzzle, by the way. They stopped trying to educate people. They started trying to make the default behavior the right behavior. So auto-enrollment and automatic escalation. You don't have to decide to be a saver. It just happens unless you opt out. And suddenly, suddenly the savings rates soared. But here's what I want you to notice. What they were really doing was making the identity of saver effortless to adopt. When you're automatically enrolled, you start to see yourself as someone who has a retirement account. And that changes things. Identity first, behavior follows. Let me now introduce you to a framework that I think is criminally underused in personal finance conversations. Identity economics. So in 2010, Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerloff and economist Rachel Cranton published a book called Identity Economics. Their central argument was that mainstream economics had fundamentally missed something. People don't just maximize utility, they maximize identity utility. They make decisions based on the norms and ideals associated with the social categories they place themselves in. So in other words, you behave in ways that are consistent with who you believe you are, and you avoid behaviors that would threaten or contradict that self-image. Well, friends, this has massive implications for money. So let me give you a few examples. The not a money person identity, right? Those people that say, I'm just not a money person. Research consistently shows that people who identify as not a numbers person or not a finance person, they avoid engaging with financial information, even when that information is simple and directly relevant to their lives. They're not avoiding it because it's hard. They're avoiding it because engaging would create a threat to their identity. If I'm not a finance person, why would I be reading about asset allocation? Here's another example. The I work hard so I deserve this identity. This one is subtle but powerful. People who strongly tie their identity to hard work and sacrifice sometimes use spending as a form of emotional reward. Behavioral economists call this licensing. And licensing is that idea that doing something virtuous gives us permission to do something indulgent. So those that say, I worked 60 hours this week, I deserve this vacation, I can't afford. The problem isn't the vacation, the problem is that the identity of hard worker is being used to justify financial decisions that undermine other goals. Here's another example: the class identity trap. This one, this class identity trap, does not get discussed enough. Research in behavioral economics has shown that both ends of the wealth spectrum can develop identity-based financial pathologies. People from lower income backgrounds who move into higher income brackets often experience what some researchers call the wealth imposter syndrome. They feel like their money is somehow fake or temporary, and they unconsciously behave in ways that bring them back to a financial state that feels familiar and therefore it feels safe. Meanwhile, people raised in wealthy environments may feel that budgeting or frugality is beneath them. Not because they consciously think that, but because it's inconsistent with how wealthy people in their world behaved. And here's another example, a fourth example. The gender identity and money connection. Behavioral research, including work by financial therapist Brad Klantz and others, has found significant gender-based money scripts, unconscious beliefs about money tied to gender identity. Historically, many women were socialized with the identity of not the breadwinner or not responsible for financial decisions, which created this lasting psychological barrier to financial engagement, even as social realities shifted. Men, meanwhile, often carry an identity burden of provider that makes it deeply shameful to admit financial difficulty, leading to risk-taking behavior and silence about the debts and about the struggles. Now, here's what makes identity economics so interesting and also somewhat uncomfortable. These identities are not fixed, they're constructed. They came from somewhere. Usually they came from our families or our communities or our culture or the stories we absorbed before we were old enough to question them. Behavioral researchers have actually developed a framework called money scripts. And money scripts are these unconscious beliefs about money that were formed in childhood. Things like money is the root of all evil, or there is never enough, or rich people are greedy, or if I'm good, money will come. These scripts aren't just thoughts, they become part of how we see ourselves in relation to money. In other words, they become identity. And here's the critical piece. The research shows that awareness alone is not enough. Just knowing your money scribbled intellectually doesn't automatically change your behavior. You have to do something more intentional. You have to actually construct a new identity, a new set of beliefs about who you are, and then start behaving as that person before you fully believe it. This is the part that feels counterintuitive. Most of us think, I'll believe it when I see it. But identity change works the other way. You act first and the belief catches up. So this is actually rooted in a well-studied psychological theory of self-perception theory. And this was developed by Daryl Bemm in the late 60s. Bem argued that we often don't know what we believe about ourselves. We infer it from our behavior. We look at what we do, and then we conclude, well, I must be someone who does that. So if you start behaving like a financially intentional person, even before you fully believe you are, your brain will begin updating your self-concept to match. Act the part, become the part. So before we get into the how, I want to spend some time honoring the why it's so hard. Because I think one of the most damaging things the personal finance space does is make change sound simple and fast. It is not friends. And when you've tried and failed, you don't just feel broke, you feel like a failure. And then that reinforces the negative identity even further. So let's look at some of the reasons, grounded in research, of course, why financial identity change is legitimately difficult. And I have four reasons. Reason one, loss aversion applied to identity. And you've heard me speak about loss aversion many times. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Traversky's work on prospect theory shows us that losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel good. We feel more pain losing$100 than we feel pleasure gaining$100. This asymmetry doesn't just apply to money, it applies to identity also. Changing your financial identity feels like a loss of the old self. Even if the old self was serving you poorly, it was still familiar. It was you. And your brain registers the loss of that familiar self as a genuine threat. This is why people often unconsciously resist change. Even change they consciously want. The brain is protecting the old identity like it's protecting a precious possession. The resistance isn't weakness or laziness, it's neuroscience. So that's reason one I have for you, the loss aversion as it's applied to identity. Reason two, cognitive dissonance and avoidance. So Leon Festinger, one of the great social psychologists of the 20th century, described cognitive dissonance as the mental discomfort you feel when you hold two conflicting beliefs or when your behavior conflicts with your stated beliefs. So in finance, this shows up constantly. I believe I should be saving for retirement, plus I am not saving for retirement equals a cognitive dissonance. That dissonance is uncomfortable, and there are only a few ways to resolve it. One way is to change the behavior, start saving. Another way is to change the belief. Retirement savings isn't actually that important for someone in my situation. Or a third way, and this is the sneaky one, is to avoid thinking about it entirely. Don't open the statements, don't look at the account balance, don't listen to the podcast about saving. If you never confront the dissonance, it doesn't hurt. Financial avoidance is not just laziness. It's a psychological defense mechanism, and it's extremely common. Research by financial therapists has found that significant percentage of people experience genuine anxiety when they think about their finances. Anxiety that triggers avoidance, which worsens the finances, which increases the anxiety, and we have this loop, this vicious cycle. Breaking that loop requires addressing the identity at the center of it, not just throwing more information into it. So that was reason two is the cognitive dissonance and the avoidance. So reason three, social identity and belonging. Human beings are deeply social creatures. Our identities are not just personal, they're tribal. We adopt the financial behaviors of the people we belong to, because belonging to a group requires conforming to that group's norms. Behavioral economists call this social proof, right? We look to others to determine the correct way to behave. And friends, this is extremely powerful in the financial domain. If your social group spends lavishly on nights out and vacations and appearances, well, spending at that level feels normal. Saving feels weird. It feels like you're opting out of belonging. And the threat of social exclusion is evolutionarily speaking, a genuine danger signal. This is part of why financial change is so hard when you're surrounded by people whose financial habits differ from the ones you want to build. You're not just fighting your own habits, you're fighting the social gravity of your environment. And here's the fourth reason. There are two systems at war. So Daniel Kahneman's famous framework from thinking fast and slow describes two modes of thinking. System one, which is fast and automatic, it's emotional, it's intuitive, and system two, which is slow, it's deliberate, it's logical and effortful. Here's the problem with most financial advice. It is written for system two. Most of the financial advice we hear is logical, is rational, and it's step by step. But financial decisions, especially in the moment, are almost entirely driven by system one. The impulse purchase, the avoidance, the anxiety-driven splurge. These aren't conscious choices, they're system one responses. And here's the crucial insight: identity lives in system one. Your gut level sense of who you are isn't a deliberate calculation. It's an automatic response. Which means that changing your financial behavior by only addressing system two, which means by only adding the information and all these logical frameworks, that will only get you so far. To make lasting change, you have to change what's automatic. You have to change the identity level programming in system one. And that, well, friends, that requires repetition, it requires emotion, and it requires time. It doesn't just require understanding. All right, all right. So we've looked at why identity matters, we've looked at why change is hard. Now, let's get practical. So here is a four-step framework rooted in behavioral science for deliberately shifting your financial identity. And friends, I want to be up front. This is not a quick fix, this is a process. But it's a process that actually works because it's working at the root level rather than the surface level. So step one, name the old identity and where it came from. This makes sense, right? As step one, because before you can shift an identity, you have to see it clearly. And that means getting specific, not vague, specific. So not just I have bad money habits, but I believe I am someone who is fundamentally irresponsible with money. Or I believe that having money makes you a certain kind of person I don't want to be. Or I believe that worrying about money is what people like me do. It's normal in my family. Get specific. Specific. Behavioral finance researchers suggest a journaling exercise for this. It's sometimes called a money autobiography. You write out your earliest memories around money. What did you observe in your household? What were the spoken and unspoken rules about money? What did money mean? What did lack of money mean? Now, this isn't therapy, though it can sometimes feel like it. It's archaeology. You're excavating the source of your financial identity, so to speak. So and you're doing that so you can look at it clearly. So some questions to sit with. Here's some questions. What is the earliest memory I have involving money? Here's another question to sit with. How did the adults in my life talk about money or not talk about it? Another question: what did it mean in my family to be good with money? Was that even valued? Another question, what story do I tell myself about why I am the way I am with money? And here's another question. If I'm honest, what financial behavior am I protecting? And why? The act of naming the old identity explicitly starts to loosen its grip. When it's named, it's a story you carry. When it's unnamed, it feels like the truth about who you are. So step one, name the old identity and where it came from. Sit with those questions. Step two, define the new identity with precision. So here's where most people go wrong when they try to change. They define the new identity in terms of outcomes, like I want to be debt-free, or I want to have a million dollars, or I want to be financially free. Those are goals, friends. Those are not identities. An identity is a statement about who you are, not a statement about what you have. And behavioral research is clear that identity-based motivation is more durable than outcome-based motivation. So instead of I want to be debt-free, the identity-based version is I am someone who eliminates debt because I value financial freedom more than I value short-term pleasure. Instead of I want to save more, the identity-based version is I am someone who pays themselves first. Every time money comes in, a portion is set aside. That's just what I do. And here's another one. Instead of I want to stop overspending, here's the identity-based version. I am someone who makes intentional financial decisions. I spend on what I value and I don't spend on what I don't. Notice the language here, friends. Not I want to be or I'm trying to be, just I am. Present tense. I am. This is a deliberate intervention in your self-narrative. Behavioral psychologist James Clear, in his work on habit formation, describes this as identity-based habits. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner, because runners run marathons. When you shift the identity, the behavior follows naturally. Research on implementation intentions, a concept developed by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, also supports the specificity of the new identity. Vague intentions, like I want to be better with money, have very low follow-through rates. Specific if-then plans, such as when I get paid, I immediately transfer 10% to savings before paying anything else. Well, those specific if-then plans have significantly higher rates of execution. Specificity in your identity works the same way. The more concrete and behavioral your new identity statement is, the more it functions as an automatic guide rather than an aspiration. So write it down. Literally, friends, write it down. Write your new financial identity statement. Put it somewhere you'll see it. Not because reading an affirmation magically transforms you, but because you need to externalize the new story so you can keep orienting back to it. Okay, step three. So step one, we're naming the new the old identity and where it came from. Step two is we're defining the new identity with precision. And here's step three, collect evidence. Okay? Deliberately collect evidence and aggressively collect evidence. Here's where the behavioral science gets really interesting. Your brain already has years of evidence that you are the old version of yourself. Every avoidance, every impulse by, every time you told yourself you deal with it later, your brain catalogued all of that as evidence for the old identity. To shift the identity, you need to start building a competing body of evidence. This is where small wins are not just nice, they're neurologically essential. Every time you act in alignment with your new financial identity, even in a tiny way, you are casting a vote for the new story about who you are. You're giving your brain a data point. And over time, enough data points create a pattern. The pattern creates a belief, and that belief becomes identity. The behavioral science term for this is behavioral activation. That's the idea that action precedes motivation, not the other way around. You do not wait until you feel like a financially intentional person before you start acting like one. You start acting like one, and the feeling then follows. So here's practical ways to collect evidence. Transfer$5 to savings. Yes, friends,$5. The amount is almost irrelevant at first. What you're doing is proving to yourself that you are someone who saves. Every transfer, no matter how small, is a vote for the new identity. And over time the amount grows, but the habit and the self-concept are established. Another practical way to collect evidence. Check your accounts once a week. And don't do this to judge yourself, don't do this to feel bad, just to look. Financially avoidant people don't look at their accounts. Financially engaged people do look at their accounts. The act of looking, even without doing anything, is evidence that you are an engaged person. Here's another way to collect evidence. Learn one thing. Just read one article or listen to one episode. Not to become a financial expert overnight, but to prove to yourself that you are someone who is curious about and engaged with their finances. Another way, track one purchase. Just one. And don't do this to restrict yourself, friends. Do this just to be conscious. Financially intentional people know where their money is going. And you're becoming someone who knows. And here's one more way to practice one more practical way to collect evidence. Have one financial conversation with a partner, with a friend, with a financial advisor. People who are financially engaged talk about money. Start talking. Each of these acts, friends, is small, but they are not small to your identity. They are evidence. They are votes. And then here's step four: leverage the fresh start effect. This one, this fresh start effect, is beautifully supported by behavioral research. So in 2014, there was a paper published on what was called the fresh start effect. They found that people are significantly more likely to pursue goals following temporal landmarks. The start of a new week, a new month, a new year, or a birthday, or a new job, or a move. Why? Well, because these landmarks create a psychological separation between your past self and your present self. They give you permission to say, that was the old me, this is the new me. The good news is that fresh starts don't have to be dramatic life events. You can manufacture one. You can say, starting with my next paycheck, I am someone who invests first. You can say, This month is the first month of my renewed relationship with money. You can use a literal or a metaphorical line in the sand to mark the transition from the old identity to the new one. What makes this work from a behavioral finance standpoint is that it activates what researchers call temporal self-appraisal, which is our tendency to view our past selves more harshly than our current or future selves. And this frees us from the guilt and shame of past failures. If the bad decisions belong to a former version of you, they don't have to be part of your current narrative. And friends, this is not denial. You still own the consequences of past decisions. You still have to do the work of cleaning up debt or building savings from scratch, but you do that work as someone who has decided they're different now. And that shift in framing changes the emotional relationship to the work. One caution here, friends: the fresh start effect can become an excuse for perpetual delay if you are not careful. So if you say, I'll start in January, or I'll start after the holidays, or I'll start when life settles down, if you're always waiting for the next fresh start, you're not using the fresh start effect. You're using it as avoidance. So here's the prescription. Pick a fresh start that is close in time and specific in action. Not next year I'll get my finances together. But starting this Sunday, I am someone who reviews my week spending every Sunday evening for 15 minutes. Pick a fresh start that's close in time and specific in action. Now, let me add one more layer because we'd be leaving the behavioral finance behind if we didn't talk about environment. One of the most consistent findings in behavioral research is that behavior is less about willpower and more about environment design. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's work on choice architecture, also called nudge theory, demonstrates that small changes in how choices are presented or structured can dramatically change outcomes. Here's the key insight. If you want to change your behavior, don't rely on motivation. Change your environment so the right behavior is the default and the wrong behavior requires effort. This applies directly to financial identity. If you want to be someone who saves, set up automatic transfers so that savings happen before you even see the money. You don't have to be motivated. You don't have to exercise willpower. Saving is now just what happens. It's the default. If you want to be someone who doesn't carry any credit card debt, put your card in an inconvenient place, in a drawer, in a safe, literally frozen in a block of ice. Yes, the research supports this as an effective delay tactic. Adding friction to the behavior you want to reduce is as powerful as adding ease to the behavior you want to increase. If you want to be someone who invests consistently, automate your brokerage contributions to come out the day after payday. It never touches your checking account. Decision fatigue is bypassed entirely. It's just something that you already do. If you want to surround yourself with people who reinforce your new financial identity, seek out communities, either online or in person, but seek out communities of people who are doing what you're trying to do. Behavioral research on social norms consistently shows that we adjust our behavior to match the perceived norm of our reference group. Choose your reference group deliberately. But here's the deeper point that I want to make about environment. The environment that shapes your financial identity isn't just the external world, it's also the internal environment. The information you consume, the stories you tell yourself, the way you talk about money. If you consistently and constantly talk about money as something overwhelming and something scary, you're reinforcing the old identity. If you surround yourself with media and conversations that treat financial management as impossible or irrelevant to people like you, you're again reinforcing the old identity. So audit your internal environment too. What podcasts are you listening to? What's your narrative when you talk to friends about money? What stories do you tell yourself on the days when you make a financial mistake? The goal is to make the environment of your mind as supportive of the new identity as the environment of your external financial life. Before we close, a few words on what to watch out for. Pitfall one. Perfectionism as I as identity threat. The new financial identity is not I am someone who makes perfect financial decisions. That identity is a trap, friends, because the first mistake and there will be mistakes, but that first mistake will feel like the whole identity has been disproved. Instead, the new identity should include something like, I am someone who learns from financial mistakes and adjusts. The setback becomes evidence of growth, not disproof of change. Pitfall two, the all or nothing reset. This is closely related to cognitive dissonance that I talked about earlier. You've been doing great for three weeks and then you slip up. You make an impulse purchase, you skip the weekly review, and suddenly your brain says, See, I knew you weren't really a financially intentional person. This is what researchers call the abstinence violation effect, which is that tendency for one violation to trigger a complete abandonment of the effort. This is the all or nothing. The antidote to this is pre-commit to a response for when you slip. Not if. Notice I said when you slip, because you will, friends, everybody does. The pre-commitment looks like when I make a financial mistake, I will do a brief reflection, note what I would do differently, and continue on. I do not use one bad day to define my financial character. And pitfall three, something else to watch out for. Confusing busyness with identity. Some people adopt the identity of someone who is working hard on their finances without the actual financial outcomes improving. They read all the books, they listen to all the podcasts, they follow all the accounts, but the actual account balance hasn't moved. This is called the pseudoset fulfillment. It's feeling like you've completed a task by engaging in a related but non-essential activity. The identity you want isn't someone who knows a lot about personal finance, it's someone who does the actual thing. Knowledge in service of action is valuable. Knowledge as a substitute for action is just is just procrastination in a smarter outfit. So those three things to watch out for perfectionism as an identity threat, as identity threat. We are not here to make perfect financial decisions. And then the all-or-nothing reset, and then confusing busyness with identity. We actually want to do it. Here's what I'm gonna leave you with today. You have a financial identity. You were given most of it without your permission by your family, your culture, your experiences, and for a long time it's been running the show, often without you even knowing it. But here's what the research tells us, and what I genuinely believe: identities are not permanent. They are constructed. And what was constructed can be reconstructed. You don't have to be the person who avoids their bank statements. You don't have to be the person who panics every time money comes up. You don't have to be the person who keeps starting over every January. You can decide, you can decide deliberately, intentionally, and starting right now, friends. You can decide to be someone different in relation to money. And if you act like that person consistently, your brain will catch up. The belief will follow the behavior, the identity will solidify. Shift your identity, shift your money. You got this, friends. Hey everyone, thanks for listening to Personal Finance with Molly. If this episode resonated with you, if a friend or family member or someone you know pops into your mind when you listen to this and they need a reminder that how deliberately shifting who you believe you are can change what you do with your money, please share this episode. If you are finding value in this podcast, all about how your money, your mindset, and your behavior intersect, please follow the show. It helps more people find it. Leave a review. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday.