Money Psychology Thread

[7thLetter]

A thread for us to go deeper into the understanding of “Money Psychology.”

(mods please don’t move this to the “Life Purpose, Career” sub-forum.)

Leo has some really good points in his Money Psychology video, and I’m just wondering if anyone has any additional insights on the topic. Any explanations on healthy or unhealthy behaviors or mindsets that you may notice around you are welcome.

An unhealthy mindset that I’ve noticed with some of the people around me is a “careless spending” mindset. It seems to come from a place of acting as if they’re rich or that they don’t worry about money. “$8? Pshh, who cares.” With that mentality, it almost doesn’t matter what the dollar amount is. It’ll be the same for any dollar amount then eventually they’ve emptied their pockets. I had the same mentality a few years back and it really burned a huge hole in my pockets. “$800 flight? Whatever.” “$180/hr for a stupid arm tattoo? Sure.”

A healthy mindset around money that I’ve adopted these days, is that I tend to think from the perspective of the business, and try to find an alternative for the purchase. For example, a whole watermelon is $7, but grocery stores will literally rip people off and charge $7 for 1/8 of a watermelon, all chopped up in cubes and ready to eat. Or when it comes to eating out, one meal of chicken  rice and veggies is $9.99, when you can buy 9 pieces of raw chicken thighs for $10 at the grocery store and just cook it yourself. And last example is that most products are imported from China and these companies sell it for up to 10x the price. Just buy it online from China instead. Of course these businesses are saving us time by making it more convienient for us, but a lot of the time our purchases are quite unecessary. It just ends up with us wondering where all our money went, and happy business owners.

What I’m talking about may seem shallow to some of you, but I’d love to hear your own insights.

 

[Aeris]

Read Picsou life'

[Surfingthewave]

Absolutely there are healthy and unhealthy habits when it comes to finances, I feel Leo has only touched on the topic of money psychology. 

Insights I had when I looked into my own spending patterns was looking at what the function was of over spending. The function was comfort and filling a void. I would spend money I didn't have to put a plaster over emotional problems, or because I was in a job that wasn't my life purpose I was frustrated - over spending became a way of dealing with it. 

Ramit Sethi has written a good book about this, as I'm sure have many financial gurus.