Money Scripts: Why You Handle Money the Way You Do | 107

Money Scripts: Why You Handle Money the Way You Do | 107

There's a subconscious reason why and how you make every money decision.

In this solo episode, Chris dives into money scripts, the subconscious beliefs about money that get programmed into us in early childhood and quietly steer our financial lives well into adulthood. Drawing on the research of financial psychologist Dr. Brad Klontz, Chris walks through the four core money script categories (avoidance, worship, status, and vigilance), explains where these scripts come from, and breaks down the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset, including why scarcity isn't just a feeling but an actual measurable brain response.

Chris also gets personal, sharing a money memory from his own childhood, and explains how money scripts get passed down through generations until someone finally stops and asks "does this still serve me?" The episode wraps with reflection prompts you can use to start the conversation with your spouse, your kids, or just yourself, plus info on the free, completely anonymous Money Script Assessment available at heavymetal.money/moneyscript.

If you've ever wondered why you avoid your bank account, why you can't stop buying things you don't need, or why money feels like a fight even when the numbers are fine, this episode RAWWWKS!

Contact Chris:

https://heavymetal.money

https://www.facebook.com/MoneyHeavyMetal

https://x.com/MoneyHeavyMetal

https://www.instagram.com/chrisluger

https://www.tiktok.com/@heavymetalmoney

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Resources and Links:

DR. BRAD KLONTZ

Financial Psychologist - Author | Professor | Speaker | Psychologist | Financial Advisor

https://www.bradklontz.com

https://heavymetal.money/moneyscript/

Download the KMSI PDF Assessment
 https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/01bUVmJoHyb_FVozzM9GlUiNg#kmsi-r-revised.pdf

Contact Chris:
https://heavymetal.money

https://www.instagram.com/heavy_metal_money/

https://www.youtube.com/@heavymetalmoney

https://www.facebook.com/chrisluger

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

There are beliefs and mental programs that are running underneath every financial decision we make. This week on the Extreme Personal Finance Show. Hey everyone. So recently I had an in-person meetup where we were all talking about money scripts or the money stories that we live by throughout our lives. And it was a really great group discussion talking about our early childhood memories of money, what money meant to us growing up. I thought it was really amazing just the diversity in the group that we had. On, you know, some people were more well off than others. And some people were literally thinking about money as survival in their upbringing. It was really interesting to have these discussions, but most importantly, how those discussions shape our lives into adulthood. So today we're going to talk about money scripts and how to identify which money script that you may identify with. And then, you know, if you can change those money scripts. And we're going to go through that today. This is a short solo episode. Thanks for joining. Let's go ahead and jump in. So, you know, a lot of times on the podcast, we are, we're, we're always talking about budgets, we're talking about credit card debt, we're talking about paying off debt. You know, we're talking all these things about money and personal finance, but there's there's a thing that we need to understand to go deeper, right? Even deeper yet. And those are the beliefs and like the mental programs that constantly are running underneath all of the financial decisions that we make. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about money scripts. So if I look at money scripts, these are think of this as kind of like the software that's just running underneath in the background. Um, you know, we don't we don't see it, we don't really, we don't install it. It's just kind of always there. And there's this guy out there, Dr. Brad Klantz. He's a financial psychologist in a CFP, and he studied like tens of thousands of people, and the research was very, very clear. And that's that there are subconscious beliefs about money that are quietly just running the show, right? So it's up, it's subconscious. We don't really even know it. And so what he did was he created something called a KMSI. This is the Klantz Money Script Inventory. He he developed this like assessment, and across these massive populations of people, the scores directly related to the financial outcomes of those individuals. So it's not just the feelings of money, but it also correlation to how much income they made or what their net worth was. So that's why it is critical to kind of understand that money script that we're brought up with and that's running in the background. So, where exactly does the money script come from? Well, it comes from basically our upbringing, right? We just kind of pick it up. It's just like picking up an accent, right? You start talking the way people around you were talking, right? You just pick it up throughout uh throughout childhood. And the same thing happens with money. So think about this a little bit, right? So if your parents always fought about money, well then you may have learned that money was, you know, money equals conflict, right? There was always fighting around money, and that's something you kind of always identified with. Or maybe if maybe no one talked about money growing up, if no one talked about money growing up, well then maybe you you kind of felt money was shameful. It was taboo. I shouldn't talk about money. I I mean my opinion, I don't really feel like that's right either. Maybe you had like a relative or a friend or someone you know that went through and you know they they lost everything in some like financial disaster, some k something catastrophic happened. So you might have absorbed this like deep-seated fear of investing or money, or maybe you just think it's gambling, right? Keep in mind that none of this was your choice. Like you're not choosing to think this way, right? That just became your default programming. And this is crazy to me. Like when I was actually looking at this, there were some researchers at the University of Cambridge that found that the core framework, the core framework of how we think about money, is basically in place by the time we're seven years old. Ain't that crazy? Seven. So it's not like when we get our first job, it's not like when we get our first credit card or we start building a credit score. It's by the age of seven. And and most parents don't even like start talking to their kids about money until 15, right? Like when you start getting your first job. So from early childhood throughout grade school, into adolescence, and even into college, like modeling is the most powerful tool and teacher for those kids. And they will, again, model behaviors that they see from the family, the parents, the community that's around them. And the good news though is that you know, we know that habits, right? I mean, there's been tons of changes, even in the last 20 years. Like, we now know that there's neuroplasticity, and like we can form these new neural pathways so we can we can learn new things, um, our brains can grow, and we can change the habits that we have, right? If we have those money habits that we learned as children, we can change the money habits at any age, even though, I mean, we know it it may be a little bit harder as we get older, but we absolutely can do that. And one thing that that Dr. Klantz discovered was that he actually identified four distinct money like script categories. Okay. So three of the four of these were like associated with like a negative financial health. And you know, it's basically like we there the four are as follows. We have money avoidance, we have money worship, money status, and money vigilance. So only one of these, money vigilance, tends to produce like better outcomes into adulthood. And even vigilance, though, can can if if it's elevated, if it's too elevated, it can kind of lead into you know money and you know, anxiety around money and finances, or even lead to like hoarding behavior where you're just hoarding the money. You're like a Scrooge McDuck, right? You're just hoarding the money, and you're not really going to do anything with that. And I'm gonna go through and just kind of uh for those that are listening to the audio podcast, we have some visuals here that I'll probably provide in a download link afterwards. And we have an assessment that everyone else can take as well. We'll provide that link as well. But I'm gonna actually just read through kind of the a little bit of description so you understand some of these money scripts. So the first one we talked about was money avoidance, and this is where you you literally feel as though money is bad. Right? Money is bad, rich people are greedy. Most of the time you feel as though yourself doesn't deserve financial success. That's kind of crazy, and that's that's that's money avoidance. Money worship, you really do feel as though more money will solve all my problems. That's a common one, right? Most people just focus on income. They focus on, you know, if I only had money, I these problems would go away. But most of the time it's behavior-based. So the more money you have, the more problems you'll have, you know. Like we always talk about, you can have a really good income, but you can still be broke. You can still be living paycheck to paycheck. And so you often tend to think with money worship that there's never enough, there's never enough. We also that also can lead to uh workaholism, right? You can work 50 hours, 60 hours a week, you can have two, maybe three jobs. I'm not saying that that that always classifies you as this type of money script, but it can lead to some of that stuff. That's just some of the behaviors when you have the money worship tendency. The third one is money status. This one, um, I believe it's unfortunately it is something that is in today's society where your your self-worth, right, as a human, as a person, is definitely correlated with your net worth. So your net worth is your self-worth. That is linked to mostly high credit card debt, things like that, because you know, you need to identify as someone that has the fancy shoes, the fancy car, the fancy watch, the designer clothes. You you identify as someone that has these things, and those nice things it will have you feel as though your self-worth is higher. And so that's you know, when you have, believe it or not, struggling households. If you're a child in those households, you may now have money status as you get older. So that's money status. And the last one is money vigilance. And this is where you know you're you're saving money, you you are prepared, you have an emergency fund, you um, you know, this one, like we talked about, it's associated with better outcomes. But as we mentioned, if it goes too far that way, it can really produce some chronic financial anxiety around money. Out of these four money tendencies, these money scripts, most of us carry some sort of blend across a couple of these of these money scripts. But very few, this is the kicker, this is the kicker, man. Very few of us ever stop to ask, hey, wait, why do I actually feel this way about money? Right? Why do I do the things I do about money? And that's what we're we're kind of talking about here in this episode. So one thing I want to just again, I'm gonna toss it out there, but I'll have a link in the show notes, and that's where everyone can go to heavymetal.money slash money script, and I have a free assessment there based on Klonz's money script inventory. And um, it's interactive, totally free. I'll have some resources uh a little bit later on. Is that you know I just wanted it to make sure that you didn't have to sign up. I don't want your emails, I don't want any of that to go through this practice on your own. So one of the big things we need to identify as we uh as we look at our money scripts is the differences between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. And this actually, I always equate this to kind of a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, kind of right. A fixed means like, oh, I can't learn anything else, like this is just how smart I am, and I can't do anything more about it, right? But a growth mindset says, oh no, I can continue to learn, I can grow these skills or the knowledge in a particular field or whatever I want to know how to do. That's the growth mindset. It's very similar because a scarcity mindset believes that the resources, the money around us is limited, right? So it's constantly at risk and like there will never be enough money. So like if someone else if I have the money, then someone else will not have the money, right? Or if someone else has the money, then I won't have the money, right? Rich people are greedy. That's that's not the way it works. There is enough money for everyone. Everyone. On the other side, the abundance mindset believes that there are opportunities and resources available everywhere. You can grow. I like this because you approach challenges with the uh the mindset of I can figure this out. Right? Whether you're gonna get a side hustle, whether you're going to you know go back to school and get a job, whether you're gonna go get that certification, whether you're gonna try to get that promotion at work, whatever it is, you can figure it out. It's not like I'll never be able to afford that. It's well, how can I afford that? I can figure this out, right? I mean, let's say you you're a growing family and you got five kids and you you're just you're bursting at the seams, and you need to get a bigger house, right? You need you need a bigger place. Well, you know what? You can figure it out. And kudos to my friend who just did that. So you can figure it out. So scarcity mindset, you know, it it also is not just a feeling. This is this is crazy to me. This is not a feeling. This has measurable effects on your brain. Because when you're in financial panic mode, you're in fear mode when you're in scar when you have that scarcity mindset. Right? And when you're in fear mode, we we may know you may know this, right? We've talked about it in a lot of other other books, other podcasts. Scarcity triggers the brain's threat response. That threat response is literally that that people sometimes call it the reptile brain, right? The reptilian brain. It's the freeze, fight, or flight response when you get into that fear mode. So, this is the part of the brain that handles long-term planning, rational decision making, it goes offline. It does. When you're in that panic mode or fear mode, you literally are less capable of making good financial choices. When you're trapped in that scarcity thinking, you're unable to make good financial choices. But I want everyone listening here or watching on YouTube, but please understand this is not like a character flaw. This is you're not broken in any way. This is neurobiology. This goes back to our, you know, cavemen on the running away from a saber-toothed tiger. I don't know. But that's what it's there for, okay? And like we said before, abundance mindset believes there's opportunities and resources out there. You approach money differently, you approach it from a position of agency rather than fear, right? I can take action on something, I can change something, that's agency. I can I can change that thing rather than I now have the scarcity mindset and it'll never be enough, and that's just the way it is, right? So once we understand our mindset, is it an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? Well, that shift alone, once you understand that, that shift alone can change what actions you're willing to take to better your situation. Now, we take these money scripts with us into adulthood. And so what I think we should do, check this out, just think about your own money habits. Right now, as an adult, right? Think about your I may have some kids listening, I don't know. But as an adult, listen, listen to yourself. What are your own money habits? And I bet, I bet there are behaviors, there are money habits, there there are ones that you can't rationally explain. They're just the way that the way that you are. It's your money script, it's your default programming. For example, maybe you you avoid looking at your bank account. I was there. I've said this story many times. For years, there was a period where I didn't want to know how much money I didn't have. Um I didn't want to know how much the groceries were. I didn't want to know how much the bills were. Because looking at looking at my bank account for me would have caused anxiety. So I avoided it. Maybe that's one of your behaviors. Maybe what happens, you spend impulsively after a hard week. Or maybe it's a stressful day at work with your boss and you you splurge on the way home. You stop by yourself buy yourself something shiny. You you buy and you spend tons of money on a great meal, right? But you know you have food at home, but you spend impulsively if you had a bad week. I know a lot of people that can be their default programming. I know one that a lot of people may have is guilt is a big one, right? Maybe you feel guilty every time you treat yourself to something. A lot of people feel that way. And keep in mind, these aren't just like random things that you do. These aren't just like I have this quirk that I do this thing. No, it almost always is traceable back to what you absorbed as a child. And the research shows these patterns literally are passed down through generations. So until someone actually looks at themselves, looks at the script, understands where they're coming from, what their mindset is, and then looks at their behaviors and their habits, and they ask themselves, right? You need to ask yourself, hey, does this still serve me? Like, does this still make sense? You know, maybe you were doing it 10 years ago because that's the way you were brought up, that's the money script you had deep embedded in yourself, but maybe now your times are different. Maybe you don't have to do it that way. Maybe you can change your money script. And so that's the great news, right? We can overwrite our money script. We can record over the old script. So, like once you see them, once you know them, you can start working with it, and you can start to identify where you fall, and you can absolutely start changing your life. You know, one thing that that is is a real thing now is financial therapy. Financial therapy is absolutely amazing for people with deep-seated money trauma, so like financial infidelity, which is a huge thing. If you're not on the same page with your partner or spouse, I mean I have I have talked to people where their spouse had secret bank accounts, secret debt. I know someone that they had their spouse racked up thousands of dollars of debt in their spouse's name, using their spouse's social security number, and then they got divorced. Right? That's financial trauma. Financial abuse. We talked to somebody earlier on the show where literally she would get paid, and the husband would demand that the paycheck is given to him, and he's going to decide how money gets spent and what she can get. That's financial abuse. That's financial trauma. So if you have trauma, if you have self-destructive financial patterns, financial therapy can literally change your life. But even something as simple as starting a conversation or listening to a podcast like you're doing right now, can can start to begin to record over that old money script. Just by starting to name these things, understanding that these things have a name, and start to identify with them, absolutely you can change it. So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at some conversations you can have with your friends, your family, um, with yourself, most importantly. And I have some prompts here to kind of get the ball rolling. And I think the most important thing here, if you're listening to this, is understanding that you're not alone. Right? You're not alone in this. Once you understand that the patterns are kind of universal, and many people will have these financial habits or these money scripts, well, then the shame kind of goes away. And you can have real conversations with others about why they do the things they do with their money. You know, are they hoarding their money? Right? Do they impulse spend that type of thing? I'm curious. Let's go ahead and we'll uh we'll do this on our social media here on heavy metal money. What type of money scripts got handed to you as you were a child? And maybe you have a money script that you're determined that you're ready for a change. I want you to go to our Facebook group, go to the heavy metal money mosh pit. And if you're not part of the Facebook group, go to heavymetal.money and join that Facebook group. And I want us to start having this discussion, it's so important. So some things to think about are, you know, what is some of your earliest money memories? Right? What kind of emotion do you feel when you start thinking of those early money memories? Is it stress? Is it anxiety? Start thinking about that. In your household growing up as a kid, was money always an area of stress? Right? Maybe you have memories of your single parent writing checks, paying the bills. That was one that I had. I remember my dad at the kitchen table in our two-bedroom apartment, and he was writing checks to pay our bills, and we had to really know. I remember he wrote a check for the bills, and then I remember he wrote the check for the rent, right? And I remember he was open and talked about how much we were paying for rent, and then he would let me go deposit the rent in the slot. There was a slot in the apartment building, anyway. But that's a memory that I had. I'm curious too, like think about your own self and your financial future. Do you operate from more of a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset? Think about that a little bit. And then we talked about the four money script uh tendencies earlier. Which of those do you most recognize in yourself or maybe in your spouse? In your kids? Kind of an interesting exercise, right? You can start having those discussions. But most importantly, like we talked about today, is there a behavior, is there a money habit that you would like to run a different script on today? Which one are you ready to change? Alright. So, what I want to do is also let you know that in the show notes of the episode, we're gonna have links, and we're gonna have links in our the heavy metal money mosh pit. Go ahead and jump into that group. And what we're gonna have a downloadable PDF of the Klant's Money Script inventory. It is online. You can go to his site. We'll have his link there because he's got a lot of other resources. He's got videos, he's got a program, you can work with him. There's a lot of things there. You can absolutely use his resources. Um, you can also download uh this PDF. Now we also have the free online assessment. This here is at Heavy Metal Money. Go ahead and go to heavymetal.money slash money script. This is where we're gonna actually have a web-based, interactive, totally free. There's no sign up, I'm not capturing an email, and it's 100% anonymous. We don't collect any data, right? It all just stays in your browser. And the minute you refresh the page, the data's gone. So just keep in mind that your privacy is 100% protected on heavymetal.money. So go ahead and jump over to heavymetal.money slash money script. But the one thing I do want to mention is to get the most out of this assessment. It is super important to be honest with yourself, even if it feels like weird and uncomfortable. People often, when they're doing these type of assessments, they try to kind of look good when they're when they're answering the questions. Like, well, what should I put here? What would look good to the group? What would look good to somebody else, right? What what would my spouse think I put there? That's not what we're doing with this assessment. This this won't help you here. Instead, read each statement and then go with your gut, go with your first instinct when you're filling out this assessment. Even if the answer doesn't really make you look great, that's okay. Totally fine. Your first gut reaction is often the very best answer when we're doing this type of assessment. And that really will drive down to your money habits. So again, I want to thank everyone for listening today. I really do appreciate it. Those of you that are following us on YouTube, and go like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please share with anyone else you think would find value. And we will see you next time on the Extreme Personal Finance Show. See ya!